MAVS NEWS:

[KillerLeft]

FWIW, Brian Dameris on his podcast with Followill talked about Flagg being able to play WITH PJ, AD and a center.  In other words, at the two or as a secondary creator or even as your primary ball handler.  Flagg got 20% of Duke's offensive possessions as the PnR ball handler.  Everyone coming out of Duke is a system player and that system often holds down the stats for Duke's best players.  Dameris also pointed out that Flagg was 44% from 3 the last two months of the season.  Dameris thinks there is more to Flagg's offensive game than meets the eye.

The point here is if this proves true, we don't necessarily have to trade for PG help until Kyrie gets back.  Flagg can be part of the solution along with Naji, Williams and presumably Exum (assuming we can work with Kyrie to stay under the second apron).  Even when Kyrie returns, the suggestion was our best lineup might be Lively, AD, PJ, Flagg and Kyrie.  The D would be incredible.  PJ would be relegated to the corner 3 where he's a better shooter and most of the offense would run through Flagg, Kyrie and AD.

I actually buy the potential ball-handling part of this point. I was wondering about that almost right away - can Flagg literally step into Luka's shoes, offensively, just (hopefully) not in such a heliocentric way, where the ball moves a lot more?

I do NOT think that combination holds up, defensively, no matter how good the individual defenders involved might be (and I admit, they're all very good). At some point, being too big just means you're too slow. I think Flagg's defense is one of the main points to get excited about with all of this - doesn't mean I think he should be on the perimeter trying to stay in front of Donovan Mitchell, lol. Davis, PJW and Flagg are ALL great defenders, but they're all great low HELP defenders. I suppose there's a high value in creating a lineup that can't be schemed out of low help defense, and that part is cool, but something tells me this lineup of Brian Dameris's wouldn't be effective against many teams. 

Either way, so nice to have something basketball-related to think out/debate around here again!