A Few Thoughts on Mavs 114, Lakers 100

[Sigma4Life]

I don't think you can fault the GM for not signing certain players. It's not like Donnie can just pick players and force them to sign with the Mavs. They tried to get Green but he chose the lakers. Brogdon would have been awesome, but he clearly wanted Indy. Kemba clearly wanted Boston. We can't assume that the Mavs had a choice in those matters. They did well to recover with Wright. Curry will contribute sooner or later as well.

I think you can fault the GM for having at least (without a trade, where you get the commitment from the FA and then figure out how it will work out, or having contingency trades in place to make it work) $30M and not coming away with more than they did. They didn't seem to tamper, which put them behind, which means the wasted time spent on the trade put them behind even more. The credit I will give Donnie is he scrambles well when it falls apart and can get the diamond in the rough bench players, but this is an every year occurrence where it all falls apart and we're a part of historical/epic type failure.

It's certainly possible that you are 100% correct and the Mavs were caught with their pants down. I'm just saying it's also possible that none of the FA targets wanted to tie the last few years of their prime to a lottery team banking on a semi-unknown 20 year old. Now that Luka has established himself as much more than a 1-hit wonder, we won't have problems convincing FAs to sign with us in the future.

Lottery teams that don't have LeBron on their roster don't usually get top free agents. All of our top FA targets went to playoff caliber teams from the previous season. That can't be understated.

Brogdon to Indy
Kemba to Boston
KD to Brooklyn
Kawhi to LAC
Beverley return to LAC
Green to LAL (Lebron / AD effect))
Bogdonavic to Utah
Butler to Miami (barely missed the playoffs)

If I'm a top FA in my late 20s early 30s I'm not tying the rest of my prime to a 20 year old unknown player.