MAVS NEWS:

[KillerLeft]

I had the same question.  If he has a resurgent season, seems like it would be hard to keep him.  That would create more room, but not enough to avoid dumping Martin.  Given how buried he is on the depth chart it really looks like we are going to have to pay an asset to get off that contract.

The elephant in the room is what I've been saying for over a year. It's unreasonable to pay Davis AND Gafford AND Washington AND eventually Lively AND NOW eventually Flagg (even his rookie contract is significant, compared to Lively's), all to play center and forward. They've done a good job at getting a collection of good players on what I think are pretty good deals, but there's just too much positional/skill overlap. This is why I came into the summer expecting them to turn either Gafford, PJW or BOTH into ball-handling creation, most likely at guard (POA defense would be helpful, too). 

But, we also don't know quite how Flagg fits just yet, so I'm cool putting decisions like that off...as long as you don't get stuck with a guy you can't trade. There's potential for that with Gafford, PJW and even Davis, based on his high salary.

I think expecting to have ZERO bloat at the bottom of your roster is unrealistic, given how easy it is to be wrong about these guys ahead of time. We act like it's all only about judging their skills and talent in a predictive way, and that's difficult enough, but add in human nature (will the guy not enjoy his teammates, or lose a family member and be too depressed to work hard for two years? Just an example) and it's quite literally inevitable that parts of the plan don't work out. As long as those misses are Hardy-sized misses (though that one might be a bad example, because I think they did his contract early), I'd say you're in a better position than most teams.