John Collins...Our Third Star

[Mavs2021]

Collins had some big plays with follow up dunks in the third quarter that led a Hawks charge.  He also had a big 3 pointer down by 4 late in the game.   My view on him does not change.  Really nice player, but not someone who I want to pay max money too.   

The Hawks team is fun.   Their GM was made fun of a lot the past few years.   Luka is the better player...but he had a vision and built his team to that vision.    Compare that to the vision of our home teams vision.  

I think Philly should remain the favorite in the series, but Embid knee is the big question mark.  Going down the stretch, I felt like Philly had no one who could get a basket if Embid is compromised.  That may be unfair to Harris, but Atlanta just feels like they have more options to get buckets.   Atlanta won without shooting well...good sign for them.

The Mavs mistake was not signing Harrison Barnes. Their mistake was stopping there. The next logical Barnes choices would have been Randle and Lavine. The logical choices this summer are Collins, Markkanen and Ball.

If you are not willing to play the asset/draft (rebuild) game, then you basically have to be opportunistic and make good FA reads. I really don´t see how Collins in Atlanta is that different from Love in Minnesota or Bosh in Toronto. Before Young arrived Collins was a 20/10 on a losing team as early as his 2nd season. He can easily be the efficient 3rd best guy on a championship team, maybe more. Question is to figure out how to get the #2. Maybe it´s Lavine. Maybe it´s Butler. Maybe it´s Beal.