FA: JaVale McGee 3yrs/$17.2M to DAL | will indeed start at center

[SleepingHero]

Sometimes it helps to be confronted with your own takes. Tell me. Do you see a difference between your evaluation of Brunson before and after he decided to leave?

Absolutely and I'm glad you brought these up. I 100% believed post playoffs that Brunson was a unicorn. I thought he was worth 5/125. I stand by all those takes when I made them.

But you also left out a post I made earlier this week where I sat back and did a relook on Brunson as a lead guy, and how the Mavs were largely a bad team with him getting more of a lead ball handler role.

An excerpt: 

Further, I was perfectly willing to hand Brunson a contract of 5/125 following the playoffs, and even then had some wiggle room in me to go higher. But as I stewed and ruminated I started to come back down to Earth. I kept saying, how many other guards could produce well next to Luka at a replacement Brunson level? Are they all worth more than 25 mil a year? I couldn't honestly say yes.  That made me start to sober up from JB. He's a great player, he flashed some great moments as a fit next to Luka,  but he just isn't worth that money full stop. 

Are we not allowed to change our opinions when presented with new information? As I said, I sobered up from JB and what he brought. I have maintained that I think Brunson is a great player, but at the end of the day I just do not think he's worth that money. I also think there are several other guards that could play off Luka and excel just as well as Brunson did, although maybe not as efficiently.  And I think I've been pretty consistent about that. 

Again in that very same post I lamented about the Mavs inability to learn from their mistakes, and how they squander assets. They deserve to be criticized for this. But overpaying Brunson would've been another mistake as well. 

I said as such here:

But to continue the merry-go-round of mismanaging by overpaying JB screams to me a panic move.  I don't think panic overpaying makes sense, and I truly believe the Mavs can at least in the short term find viable replacement guys that can allow us to find an even better player than Brunson as a permanent replacement later on. It sounds like plan powder, but the terms have changed and the Mavs are a powerhouse right now having just made the WCF. I think good players will want to play with Luka. 

I'm going to leave out the fact you took some of these quotes out of context, because it's mincing words. At the end of the day we both agree Brunson is a good player. We also agree the Mavs front office (read: Cuban) makes mistakes that are reminiscent of a 13 year old playing 2K. But where we diverge is whether or not it was worth paying Brunson a premium to 1) retain the asset, and 2) maintain the roster construction as it was. And I changed my mind on that number after seeing the raw stats Brunson put up next to Luka, and how bad the team was with Brunson as the sole lead guard along with other minute reasons. 

This was further reinforced when it became more and more likely that Brunson didn't care about the money and just wanted a bigger role, something the Mavs could never offer. At that point I was resigned with the move.