You’re now the Mavs’ GM. What are you going to build?

[F Gump]

I have a hard time seeing a trade including AD or Kyrie that makes sense for both teams while Mavs are trying to contend (or that Nico would have any interest in trading one of his guys).  

I think Kyrie will miss most of the season and will likely never be fully back to what he was.  I think AD misses 20-30 games and Lively at least 30 games.  I think we should expect more injuries in general as the medical staff has gone from a strength to a weakness.

Kyrie is an elite Robin, but never really thrived in the Batman role.  I don't expect that to change when he is 34 and returning from a significant knee injury.  AD is a really good center., too bad he will be playing a lot of minutes at the 4.  Top rookie is cool, but historically that player is generally been no more than a decent starter.  Even Lebron needed a year before he took off.  There are exceptions (Luka, Victor) but given how young Flagg is, I don't think you should expect him to be one of them.

So your answer to "there's nothing in-between?" is that EVERY unknown for these players and this season will play out with the "worst case possible" outcome? Good grief. 

Yes it's easy to accept your assertion that Nico won't want to trade Kyrie or AD, at least not anytime soon, but mostly because they are huge talents and the Mavs need that. But how is that a disaster looming? The Mavs future does NOT revolve around them necessarily being traded, and at the first available moment. Let's see where this goes first. 

But it's not so easy to accept that every coaching and lineup decision will be made with blind stupidity (with no recognition of what might be advantageous and what is not), every health unknown will turn out for the worst, every player development possibility will take way longer than people think, and so on.

Even with Nico being in charge (and my total distrust of what he might do), I just see the assumption that "everything that can go wrong will go wrong" as nonsense, and extremely lazy. 

Why? Because by plenty of observation, we KNOW the coach and the players are way better than that. These are skilled professionals, and I expect they will figure things out in some manner that befits their basketball knowledge and experience. Assume EVERY unknown will happen to play out with the "worst case possible" outcome? It just doesn't work that way (unless you're tanking, of course).

Where will next season take them, and will they at some point shift directions on their current roster choices? Perhaps, but even that would be NBD. That's part of how roster-building works. Yes, some things will perhaps not work, but others may be an incredible success, and in total I believe there are way better overall possibilities for this roster than you want us to expect.