2026 NBA draft thread

[KillerLeft]

Is this assuming Kyrie gets moved?

No, not really. 

1) I don't really like Kyrie as the MAIN ball-handler. I've always thought of him as more of a secondary playmaker, like he was here with Luka and in CLE with LeBron James. This is only my opinion, but I don't think he's perfectly cast to be the lead ball-handler on a team. 

2) He's 34, coming off of significant injury and an entire season missed as a result. Because I don't believe the Mavericks have any chance at achieving competitive relevance again during the rest of his career, Kyrie doesn't really play into my thinking one way or the other. That doesn't mean I'm oblivious to the potential benefits of having him in the mix here as the team grows and develops, but his current presence on the roster damn sure wouldn't stop me from launching an all-out mission to put a lead ball-handler next to Flagg, because I want THAT player to reach full maturity and readiness at around the same time Flagg does, if at all possible. In lieu of that perfect timing, I'd accept one who's slightly ahead of Flagg on his timeline but still young enough to have at least an entire contract's worth of prime ahead of him when Flagg gets to around 26 or so. Kyrie obviously doesn't check either of those boxes, so building around him seems monumentally silly to me. I wouldn't give him away just to dump him, but I'm also probably not giving him another contract, which means he's likely to want to get to a situation more suitable to wind his career down pretty soon. If I had to guess, I'd say he's already looking around for a better situation right now. Either way, I'm in the Cooper Flagg business now, not the Kyrie Irving business, and sadly they are FIFTEEN years apart in age. Flagg needs and deserves to have a running mate that he can grow with and I'd be single-minded about getting him one.