Why can't Josh Richardson be that guy?

[KillerLeft]

but the chance of him being back is higher without Rick here. 

What makes you say this? Is it because of the role change during the playoffs? 

It seemed to me like Carlisle was his biggest fan, and he put off making that obvious change longer than most people thought was reasonable, but that's speculation, I guess. 

Still, we know that as far as analytics are concerned, Richardson was one of the worst rotation players on the team pretty much all season. We know that because @"Kammrath" told us so like once a week. I think it's fair to assume that Bob V or anyone else crunching numbers for the Mavs probably reached a similar conclusion, don't you? My hunch is that Carlisle was being semi-pressured to move Richardson to a much lower rung in the rotation by the end of the season, and BTW, that turned out to be a good move, right?