MAVS NEWS:

[mvossman]

My desire to trade AD was due to his wanting to play the 4.  AD at the 4 with everyone healthy never made sense.  Now that he’s playing center I’m perfectly ok keeping AD unless a trade offer just blows me away.  AD/Lively is a great center rotation assuming both are healthy which I know is a big assumption.  Lively is still young enough and his value and contract low enough that I take a chance that he can back up AD at the 5 and eventually replace AD when he ages out.  Flagg in your 4 period.  Maybe eventually a 3 but I much prefer him at the 4.  I definitely want to see Flagg-AD-Kyrie.  For me Gafford is now the odd man out.  His style of play simply no longer fits in a non-Luka world.  I like PJ and at times his fit with Flagg seems great and other times poor.  I simply can’t make up my mind.  But the idea of a front line of AD-PJ-Flagg is appealing.  For me with Kyrie back the hole is a 2 guard who is big-can play the point if needed-shoots the 3 well and can “get his” when needed.  He needs to be a consistent 18-20 ppg scorer.  I don’t know if that player is available or even exists.  But if he does any combination of Gafford-Martin-Klay-Hardy that gets us that type of player on Flagg’s timeline is the goal.

I completely agree that is the kind of player needed to give this current version of the team any chance of contending (I have referred to this in the past as a Jrue Holiday trade, and a good example today would be Derrick White).  But you are not getting that guy with Gafford, Martin (LOL!), Klay or Hardy.  You would need to spend every future asset you had to get that player (if it were even possible).  But nobody seems interested in going all in on something like that, and with good reason.  Which is why my mindset has been that if you can get a reasonable return for AD (meaning assets and/or young players to build around Flagg) you do it.