TDL Archived: The 2nd Rnd Pick Yankee Swap

[Ghost of Podkolzin]

I feel like I have walked into a little bit of a Twilight Zone in terms of the issues with Christian Wood. I have this strange sense that his injury has muddied the perspective on things here. Some observations:

1) I sense a conventional wisdom to which the board has come over the past month, largely due to our gentlemen of weighty opinions, F Gump and Dan, that Wood simply does not fit with the Mavs because his defense is trash. Therefore, he isn't worth a Brunson-size contract to the Mavs.
2) It seems evident from tea leaves that we are seeing on Twitter that Wood is gone, which indicates that the Mavs don't envision signing him long term.
3) As F Gump has pointed out, his trade value right now is poopsville since he is a rental. 
4) Wood must not be very interested in being part of a winning team in any event, since, to my knowledge, none of the teams scheduled to have cap room this summer are contenders.

All this seems quite weird to me. I thought Wood was doing better than expected on D, and was certainly working hard on learning the scheme and putting in effort. I know that the advanced stats aren't good, but we were missing DFS, Green, and Maxi. He seemed happy here. He seems to mesh well with Luka. Overall, he seems to me to be tied with Brunson as the most talented teammate Luka has had here. 

Bottom line, I do not agree with Dan and F Gump. I think Wood would be very fine here as the third best player. Third best players on recent championship teams have made good money. A 2/$52 mil or 4/$105 mil contract does not seem unreasonable to me for Wood given what he has brought, and they should be able to retain him for less if he has any interest whatsoever in playing for a winner. I am completely confused at the Mavs' seeming unwillinghess to keep him long term. What I'm smelling is that it's a rotten JKidd issue - and JKidd should absolutely be gone this April or May if we don't make the playoffs (unless, of course, Luka gets injured and we go into active tank mode). 

To me, this is just a nightmare of really poor asset management. I have no issue with last year's draft pick; that argument does not concern me, especially given the poor selections (which, tbh, I thought were excellent ones at the time) of Terry and Bey in the draft two years ago. It's not their strength. However, I feel like Wood is one of the best assets on the team. You lock him down at market value (i.e. less than the numbers I listed above), and he helps the team in the short term and can be a trade asset in the long term. 

Bottom line, 1) there had damn well better be locker room issues that we don't know about and which have not been visible *at all* in what we have seen publicly this season, including perhaps alcohol or drug addiction, and 2) the Mavs had better make big hay out of whatever they get in the undervalued trade they make for Wood. Of course, you can forget about all of this if all of the tea leaves are wrong, we don't trade him, and he extends with us or re-signs in the summertime.

Wow.  Excellent, and I agree 100%.

If Wood was on another team right now, most of this board would be trade proposals to get him.