MAVS NEWS:

[mvossman]

Been thinking about alternate timelines...

Along the lines of what if Luka was still here and his new max extension kicked in this year? He'd be making ~$70M annually over the next 5 years. More actually, since it would be tied to a % of the team cap. Without the draft capital traded away trying to build a team for him, how hamstrung would DAL have been? Would we be down to paying starters and hoping for rookie or VM contracts to fill the roster?

In other words, are we in better shape to build a contender than we were a couple years ago?

I think if you do the what if with Luka, it would have to be that Nico never came into full power.  This is somewhat of a guess, but in that scenario the differences on this team are:

Still have Luka (obviously)
still have DJJ
still have Grimes
still sign Naji while dumping Green

You would not have:

AD
Max
Hardy extension
Klay
Caleb Martin
Dlo

I would have to look at the numbers to see where they were at with Luka extension.  They would not have paid tax last season and they would be in a contention window (so reasonable to pay tax now), and we would not have had all the bad cap that Nico added.  We probably would have been arguing about the Grimes potential contract.

I think with Luka we would have had a multiple year contention window.  With quality moves (Linsey would have been our best bet for that) I think they could have extended that window into his extension.  We have traded that window for a future window (thanks to Flagg luck).  Given how the KP thing worked out, we are probably in a better position starting next season than we were in Luka 2nd year.  Hopefully we do a better job than we did last time.