2026 NBA draft thread

[F Gump]

How soon we forget.

If the Mavs had made the playoffs last year, no lottery and no Cooper.

Right now, Charlotte is 14th in the lottery odds/order, and the Tragic are tied with two other teams for 16th. If Ball and his WWE heel cheating beat Orlando, then Charlotte falls out of the lottery, while the Magic - whose pick goes to the Grizz - are in. The Warriors are 11th in the lottery odds and Suns, whose pick goes to Charlotte, are one of those other teams tied for 16th. If Steph pulls off another miracle for the privilege of getting annihilated by the Thunder, then the Warriors fall out of the lottery and Charlotte has another pick there.

If there's a team who ends up picking lower than us with more than one low lottery pick, that, to me, is the Mavs' trade partner if they have the 9th or 10th pick and one of those teams has two picks in the early to mid teens (throw in the 30 and our second rounder). Or let's say the Mavs get second, the Grizz get fourth, and whoever gets the first pick takes Dybantsa. I'll take the Grizz's fourth and their other lotto pick (if Charlotte wins).

1 I would not be in the trade-down biz. Just find BPA at that point, and make your pick. The odds are close to certain they will end up with either a top-4 pick, or a good guard prospect from the pool of a half-dozen waiting to be picked (Acuff, Wagler, Flemings, Burries, Brown, Philon). I'm good with picking BPA. 

2 As far as the way the play-in will impact the draft, since it's right on top of us, I'm the guy who prefers to let the games of the next couple days get played, and then see where things end up.

3 My highest draft-related event of interest anytime soon will actually be on Monday. Do they win the 7-8 coin flip with ATL? 

For anyone curious, here's where slots 7 and 8 have ended up after the lottery, in the current odds-flattened setup:
Slot 7 - 1,4,4,4,7,9,9
Slot 8 - 2,3,8,8,8,10,2

4 One perhaps-meaningful item about the draft. If there are a whole pool of players who TRULY offer the exact same potential (MAYBE like those 6 guards), there's a better-than-0 advantage to the team ending up with a lower pick. The player is the same, but the salary being paid is notably different. For example, the salary diff between pick 5 and pick 10 would be about 1/3 of the salary each year (9,677,000 vs 6,418,000 the first year). While not major diff in NBA terms, by yr 4 the salaries would be almost 4M apart. If the payroll is tight, an extra 4M could help a lot.

Would I want the Mavs trade down to save salary and to assume the players are all the same? No. I want the best choice they can figure. But ....