05-24-2026, 10:05 AM
(05-23-2026, 09:41 PM)F Gump Wrote: I'm also not a "move down" guy because my observation is that you typically trade THIS (whether good or bad) for what tends to be a poo-poo platter of meh. It looks more promising than it tends to turn out. (And I'm even extra-ultra pessimistic when I saw what Cuban did with such moves, the worst being the Giannis fiasco, of course.)
We may be discussing things the Mavs aren't that interested in doing anyhow.
Unless I missed something, Masai has never moved down on draft day. And he's never moved up, either. He just tends to pick the pick, and hope for the best.
Schmitz has never had the final say, so we probably can't read anything into his past places. But, for the record, but the last few years in POR, there have been a few draft day swaps. IMO the most notable was a move down last summer, from 11 to 16. Instead of getting Coward at 11 (who turned out to be a decent rookie) or some other pick, they took Yang Hansen at 16 (who they apparently had prioritized and wanted to take, period, and figured he would be there at 16). Hansen (a project, by their own admission) was fairly bad as a rookie (but they said he's a 3-year development). However, they did also land 3 future picks for trading down (one FRP, 2 SRP). So the score on that deal is TBD. But again, Schmitz didn't make that decision to trade down.
THE MOVE to have made would've been doing their trade down with New Orleans, while picking up #8.