The MBT is back!

[meistermatze]

Guys,

I thought now was the time to say it: The Mavs are a smart organization again. Look at what transpired the last couple of months:

1. Our Slovenian draft pick from a couple of years back, Luka Doncic, is almost undeniably the best player in the NBA right now. Thank god we traded Trae Young for him.

2. Our second superstar KP could not live up to his hype due to his fragile body, but the Mavs got him healthy enough to trade him and his horrible contract away.

3. In return, we got the third ball-handler we needed in Spencer Dinwiddie. The guy's also a slasher and exatcly what we need as a sparkplug from the bench.

4. Also, we got a fellow Latvian player who is even better at 3-point-shooting than KP. Bertans is a weapon... it's expensive, but when you split KP's horrible contract in two and get exatly the two players you badly needed in return, the trade is a success (plus KP is still injured).

6. Not to mention our second best player, JB, whom we drafted and developed to this level of play.

7. Of course Dodo, whom we drafted and developed way back as our heart of the team and great 3&D player.

8. The Mavs parted ways with a coach, who did not get us to the second round in ten years and who convinced us all, that this team can just play offense and we should not bother, playing defensive-minded players.

9. The Mavs installed a new coach who is not just the players' coach we all expected, but the guy who really had a vision and implemented a new identity which we previously though to be impossible for this team: Defense first!

10. Wich brings me to the guy we drafted a couple of years back, Josh Green, looks like a two way NBA-rotation-player.

11. Also, finally Reggie Bullock is exatly the type of two-guard we needed for years. 3&D for a reasonable price.

...

I could go on. But it feels like there are so many pieces falling into place for the Mavs right now... one could wonder: Aren't the Mavs stupid and dysfunctional anymore?

[burekemde]

Great post. And every player knows their role. And every player accepts that role, and their expectations of that role is not higher than the actual role the coaches expect. The problem with KP was always that his expectations were much higher than reality. I like the team harmony now. We are one dominant big two-way player away from winning the championship and contending every year. We have the team and the depth at the place.

[meistermatze]

Agreed. Insert somebody like Gobert into this team and it will be hard to stop us. But I especially like your point about everybody buying into their role. This team has a clear identity now and we can build on that. Individually, most of our players are rotation-players at best but assembled like this, they sum is greater than the parts.

[ballsrchr]

I applaud your enthusiasm and sort of agree with you.  I say sort of because we still need an MF (Monster Forward) and a SRPRMC  (Staunch Rim Protecting Rebounding Center Machine) (no...we don't shorten that to SPERM...) to be perennial contenders.  (Hmmm...could be shortened to JOKIC). 

Anyway...it would be best to temper our expectations, not flip flop from game to game, and hope the MBT (and fans) understand that a contending team needs to evolve constantly to stay at a high level of contention.

I AM encouraged by the way things are going.  I'm rooting for Kidd to have learned enough (apparently) as a man to be the coach the Mavs really need.  Time will tell.

Great post, though.  I enjoy your thoughts.

[SleepingHero]

This type of optimism is refreshing, even if I don't necessarily agree with it.

[burekemde]

Agreed. Insert somebody like Gobert into this team and it will be hard to stop us. But I especially like your point about everybody buying into their role. This team has a clear identity now and we can build on that. Individually, most of our players are rotation-players at best but assembled like this, they sum is greater than the parts.

Great analogy. It's a machine!

[KillerLeft]

This type of optimism is refreshing, even if I don't necessarily agree with it.

Idk, man...when you look only at what happened starting this past summer, things do seem to be operating more smoothly. 

At the very least, there seems to be a plan that is seen the same way by front office and coaching staff. That, alone, is improvement. 

Bullock was a decent signing. Not a double off the wall that you can stretch to a triple if you're fast, but a solid, undeniable base hit. I think the Hardaway signing will be fine, eventually, whether he's here or not. The DFS extension was amazing. The trade seems to be even better than I hoped it would be, at least if Dinwiddie continues to play like the type of guy we all wanted over the summer in the first place. And, not to sound like a broken record, but the willingness to get out from under the Hell that was Porzingis says a lot about how realistic this new management team is, imho. 

I haven't felt this good about the Mavs in a long, long time. Still 50/50 on whether they can even get out of the first round, but there were times early this season when I was pretty convinced this thing was heading backwards. There's no doubt in my mind that they're pointed in the right direction now. Would we like the process to speed up a little? Sure, but we need to remember that from a certain POV it just started.

[Jommybone]

7. Of course Dodo, whom we drafted and developed way back as our heart of the team and great 3&D player.

Great post! Yes! (But wasn’t Dorian an undrafted free agent?)