TDL Archived: The 2nd Rnd Pick Yankee Swap

[F Gump]

I wrote about conditional wording not long ago, but I’m under the impression there is a benefit currently to removing protections on the 23 pick ‘IF’ the team wants to trade 25, 27 and 29 with conditions.  You have to be mindful of the max term for a trade to be completed.  The protections on the 23 pick mean it might not convey in time to fit three picks in before seven years is up  I guess a work-around could be creating an additional condition that the last pick becomes something else (two seconds) if it gets pushed past the legal window.  But, I don’t believe you can guarantee three picks in seven years right now without removing protections on 23..

Yes, that's ^ what I was saying. And yes, the "what if's" in such a trade can't include a pick that extends past year 7 (aka 2029).

But there's one additional piece of info that's crucial to understand, which was the key point I was trying to convey -- which is, they can factor in the "likelihood" (or lack of same) for the 23 pick to convey to NY. The trade partner being willing to make an assumption that 23 FRP will indeed go to NY obviously depends on what this team's record looks like when we get to the TDL, but what I wrote was with the stated assumption that the other team would be comfortable with the likelihood that Dallas won't end up in the bottom 10 this season.

As bad as the Mavs are playing right now, I don't think anyone thinks it will get that bad. Or, to put it another way, do we think the Mavs could keep their pick if they wanted to? Seems farfetched to me.

Which is my point.

It's an odds game. If you trade after the season, you know for sure 100%. But if you/they are very very confident by the TDL of what will happen, you should be able to do pretty much the same trade now. And in fact, the Mavs being forced to use picks farther out (25-27-29) doing the "3 picks for a star" trade now, instead of the after-draft possibility of 24-26-28, is probably juicier for the trade partner, incentivizing the tiny risk.