Preseason Game 4: Dallas Mavericks (2-1) vs. Los Angeles Lakers (1-3) | 9:30pm EST

[Dahlsim]

With Lively developing his inside game better (I'm liking his jump hook) AD may indeed be expendable. Not wild about him jacking up 3's with zero passes. He's an excellent 5 that wants to play like a 3 or 4, but that keeps PJ off the floor and I'm really liking what PJ/Flagg bring when playing together. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not getting a leadership vibe off AD like you do off Kyrie.

Nembhard continues to impress, despite his size. Getting JJB vibes here.

AD is expendable certainly on paper.  Reality check though is in addition to salary, there's the Kyrie dynamic where he will return ideally and those 2 hope to play together and get a chance to make at least one or two runs as stars on the team.  It's likely not a serious consideration until at least this season is in the books unless some team really sees AD as their solutions at the TDL. 

Nembhard gives me Chris Paul lite vibes as elite floor general.  Like the JJB vibe but JJ was a small guard that at times was just unstoppable as a scoring threat even though he was also a solid passer. 

Nemb looks like a steal that you hope not to mishandle with a Brunson style roster/contract fiasco. 

If we forget for a moment that Nico will never trade AD, can you think of a hypothetical trade involving AD that makes any sense?

Hard to be specific but AD's age is significantly less than Durant and he brought back a pretty good reset return at age 37.  I could see a few teams in the East like say Detroit, Orlando, ATL, Indiana, Charlotte etc. that might pair up their elite young guard/wing talent with a veteran star center and make run to get out of the East. 
 
Key is if AD looks like he can put in healthy season(s) still at age 32, he could have final piece type value to the right team.  

... The reality is that any deal involving AD at this point results in a less talented roster, at least for a year or two (depending on what type of draft capital you get in return and how you're able to flip anything you get in the deal).

The one solid argument in favor of trading AD, imho, is that he's an injury waiting to happen, but clearly that hasn't scared the Mavs to this point. So, my hope will continue to be that they actually play him a lot at CENTER, where he is a difference maker on a level that's being trivialized here aggressively.

Ideally if you trade AD it's because you think you can get a better roster blend for that year or two because the mix of talent can remain just as competitive for a run as you are now more or less while shifting the weight to the younger Coop timeline.  As it stands now Mavs don't top anyone's this year contender list but it's not because of raw talent as much as the mix of talent.  

Kyrie returning healthy while still being Kyrie has to overlap with healthy AD time, otherwise Nico's goal of contending can't succeed.  As much as Nico doesn't want to trade his favorites I also don't imagine he wants to watch Luka hoist trophies while his roster under achieves in Dallas.