MAVS NEWS:

[KillerLeft]

If I were to be honest, i was a little bit more on the side of keeping AD (he was out anyway) and then trying to move him during the offseason.   Looking back, I am not sure his value would have been any higher if they kept him.  I do think he could up his value with a few months of healthy, good play.    

I was more than fine that the added flexibility helped them make several moves this summer.    If you look at what they received back via trade it was pretty much nothing.  Although the flexibility helped them make most of their moves this summer.   Plus I think they still have the MLE (I believe this can be traded too right?).   I was a little surprised when I heard Bill Simmons and zach Lowe (mostly Simmons) trash Dallas for getting nothing back for AD recently.   While that is true, the flexibility did lead to Sergio, Aldama, Sasser, Tarek, Risacher, and full MLE.   Time will tell if any of these guys have staying power, but that trade did open up an avenue so these trades could be made.

Absolutely. Not all trades (in fact, fewer and fewer these days) are about the value immediately changing hands. 

The Mavs were able to hand their new front office the keys to an offseason in which they had the ability to do TWO off-seasons' worth of roster turnover, and they attacked that opportunity fairly aggressively. It remains to be seen whether or not the moves made will come together in a helpful way over the next 2-3 seasons, but they had the tools to get started right away, and that's 100% because of the AD trade. I'd bet my life that the trade was at Ujiri's suggestion, and that it was a condition of securing his commitment to the position.