MAVS NEWS:

[KillerLeft]

I don't know.  Kyrie will turn 35 next season and if you look at the history of big men AD size, a lot of them fall off a cliff in their early 30s.

That's a reality, sure, but isn't the point. 

There's another reality to face, possibly, and that's the idea that through a combination of high salary, age and injury concerns, the situation the Mavs can construct by trading one or both of them might be less likely to yield any sort of success over the next few years, not more. We won't know until we know. Meanwhile, Flagg, AD and Kyrie ARE a talented trio, to say the least, and their games seem to fit together (in theory with Kyrie, so far) in a way I'm not sure we've ever experienced as Mavs fans. 

Thought experiment: Forget Flagg is a rookie, and pretend AD and Kyrie have played here for their entire careers. I really think emotional connection (or lack thereof) is playing a part in our collective opinion about this. 

The Mavs aren't getting their picks back. Period. The picks they'd get by trading those guys are pretty unlikely to be good enough picks to move the needle. If they go the "get younger players for them" route, they won't get younger players who are as good, and probably won't even improve over those specific guys in terms of fit. We don't know that, either, for sure, but I have trouble seeing it based on the rumors that we're getting. Meanwhile, I CAN envision the Mavs being an actual good team over these next couple of seasons if they make the right moves around the margins (I think this is the part the sides are missing each other with, discussion wise). To my knowledge, nobody is suggesting moving future assets to win now - just some small fringe moves, player for player, to play to the new reality of strengths/weaknesses that trio presents, rather than what a Luka team needed. That, to me, is seeming more and more like the "best" (not ideal, but maybe best) way to navigate the next several years when building from scratch simply is not a viable option. 

And, to be fair, if our fears of what is possible in a Davis or a Kyrie trade are unfounded, and someone makes an offer that gives a lifeline to a different reality, I think we'd all consider it. 

I'm just trying to keep an open heart/mind at this point, because I do think there's a possibility that the Flagg/AD/Kyrie trio can give us more reason to follow this team for the next few years than any other possible path. I don't KNOW it, but I can allow for the possibility in my thinking, and I do KNOW, based on how quickly Flagg is improving, that it's possible they're a top 4-6 team in the West next season. That's a pretty high bar to clear in terms of choosing a different outcome. If they can't start over, anyway, and they 100% cannot, why not play it out until the draft capital reaches a more reasonably workable situation through the passage of time?