GAME 21: DAL (10-11) @ DET (6-18) | 125-131 OT loss

[Mavs2021]

Note that you didn’t say second star…Grant isn’t that.  I think if you keep the right guys and jettison the right guys and do something like this, you give Luka the opportunity to do the heavy lifting come playoff time.  You’ve got some young guys with upside and you never know what Luka will do when the spotlight is shining bright.

But, this requires being proactive.  You have to tank to get Sharpe.  You have to sell off some assets now with an eye toward being competitive quickly.  Dallas/Luka won’t survive a multi-year tank.  It is one and done and you better have a plan that gets you hosting a playoff series in the first round of 2024.

You don´t need to host a play-off series in 2024. Luka will know it, when he sees it. He´ll need a day, maybe a week, to understand Wembanyama/Scoot/Thompson brothers/Whitmore is my GUY. Once we have that #2 guy it does not matter anymore what happens immediately. That is what extends your timeline, not hosting a play-off series with Wood/Dinwiddie/THJ as your next best players. Luka knows this sh*t ain´t going nowhere without another guy.

Also the anti-tank argument that we need ALL our future draft assets to make a #2 star trade is so bogus. A top 8 pick this year has more trade value than any two future 1st round picks. 

This is the year to tank. Get Green and Hardy on the f****** floor. Identify some buy low candidates that have no long-term deals, but you can still control. Isaac/Bamba are the perfect candidates as they are expiring/non-guaranteed, but you can control them until 2024/2025 respectively, if they work out.

I think you can pull this off by trading Dinwiddie or Wood to a contender for a late 1st round pick: Nets (Wood) or Pelicans (Dinwiddie) come to mind. Then you immediately flip that late 1st + THJ to Orlando for Isaac.

You start the tank process with

Doncic/Ntilikina
Graham/Hardy
Green/Bullock
DFS/Kleber
Isaac/Powell

I´m not even sure this team would be much worse replacing THJ/Wood/Dinwiddie with Graham/Isaac and heavier minutes for Green, but every team that wants to lose can do it. Otherwise match-fixing in sports would not exist.

Nobody in the world can tell me

Doncic
Scoot
Green
DFS
Isaac

isn´t a better long-term outlook than

Doncic
Dinwiddie
Bullock
DFS
Powell

It´s so obvious what they need to do at this point. The Spurs tanked for Duncan, when Robinson was 32. You think they regret it? Our Robinson is a Batmanson and he is 24.