DAL OFFSEASON: Trade & FA | Mavs "mostly done...but you never know."

[KillerLeft]

The odds of expirings + no picks after draft night? netting another star player are almost zero. Most star players are moved for players of value + picks. I think MBT will do it anyway just because they like to keep their "powder dry." They just tend to think they can sign anybody they want with enough cap space.

To be fair, we've never really seen how they'll handle this, specific situation.

What we know is they decided they had a better chance of going from "no star, no future" to "ok, now we've got something to build around" by using cap space to attract a free agent than they did through the draft. They were very wrong about that, and tbh, even the players they targeted didn't turn out to be the right guys, so in a way they were fortunate to be unsuccessful.

But now, they have Doncic/Porzingis in place. That's the hardest part. Think back to the point when they first KNEW they were in a good situation with Nash/Dirk. 

First of all, that realization didn't happen less than a year after acquiring them like it did this time around. It took quite a while for Dirk/Nash to show signs that they could be successful. This time around, Luka was a star from damn near day 1, and KP's progress was steady, once he started playing. 

Second, think about the financial situation of the team by the time they figured out what they really had with Dirk/Nash. Don't you think they made some really, really dumb trades to take on bad money early on? Don't we think, if we're being honest, that those mistakes made things more difficult, not easier? 

Like, take the Juwan Howard deal, for example: Decent player. He made them marginally better on the court, but they were still FAR from contending. Terrible contract for the time. That move, and others like it, resulted in a total lack of flexibility for non-trade roster building for years and years. Basically, all the meaningful years of Dirk's career. 

Now, it's true that if you follow those bad contracts, you can see that they WERE successful more often than not moving them for other bad contracts, and in most cases, there were incremental increases in quality of the on court product with each move. But, Cuban has gone on record saying he had to lose $100 million to keep this approach moving forward. He used the words "embarrassed to admit it" when discussing that. People always say "he'll spend what it takes to win" and that's probably true, but I'm telling you, I don't believe he wants to spend like THAT again. Tax for a team that has realistic chance to win a title, maybe. Tax for a team making bad choices that result in moving from the 7th seed to the 5th seed and will probably lose in the 2nd round? That's duuuuuuumb, and irresponsible. I don't believe he wants anything to do with that anymore, and I don't blame him. 

Plus, since the approach above is the only thing they could do during the Dirk era, that's all we've seen them demonstrate that they're able to do. The post-title free agency swings were clearly unsuccessful, but how could they not have been? Dirk was 97 years old, the team had no talent, and the only thing they had to offer is "Dallas is awesome, and we've got a great organization that's won a title recently." Now, I think the "Dallas isn't a free agent destination city" narrative is WAY overblown, personally. It's a great place to live, relative to Minnesota, Milwaukee, San Antonio, Sacramento, Indiana, etc. And, due to the time of year NBA games get played (in normal years, not pandemic years) the fact that it's a warm place probably puts it ahead of NY, Chicago and Philly for some people. But, if Dallas, as a city, is the BEST thing you have to offer, you are very likely going to lose out to teams in LA and Miami (for pretty much anyone) and those great east coast cities (for people who don't mind the cold). 

Failing to understand the realities in the paragraph above was an unforgivable mistake. No doubt about it. 

But now? They have the DARLING of the basketball world under contract. They are a playoff team who is clearly getting better for the foreseeable near future, with or without any single player they could hope to add. Again, Dallas can't be the selling point, but it's FAR from being a turnoff. This situation is undeniably attractive for any player who doesn't feel he needs to have the highest usage rate on his team to succeed. If you can play off the ball, and you want easy shots, you are looking at Dallas right now with envy. That's a fact. Does this mean they'll be successful in free agency? No, there's still risk involved. But, it's not the same ridiculous endeavor that it has been since 2011. 

We never got to see them take a swing at free agency during the young Nash/Dirk era, so we don't know that the results of that wouldn't have been much better than what we got. 

So I said all that to say this: the dumbest possible way to look at this is to try to decide whether they should put all their chips into trades or put them all into free agency, because both answers are wrong. They should be on the search for talented players who significantly improve their immediate and future chances of playing better basketball than other teams, period. The fact that they're in position to go EITHER way is a good thing, imo.

If a deal good enough to get you to where you want to go comes available, take it, even if it ruins the 2021 thing! If smaller deals come available that you think will improve your team but at the sacrifice of cap space, take them, but only if you can envision steps to undo that sacrifice if you need to. If all you see out there are deals that will only marginally improve your team while drastically limiting your flexibility moving forward, I think you pass. Doing something like that just to feel like you're taking action is DUUMMMMMB, and my opinion on that has nothing to do with Giannis. 

Can you move a bad contract? Almost always, yes. I mean, the worst 5 contracts in the league are probably pretty immovable, but the next 20 worst ones are. But, you have to spend other assets (and maybe even worse: TIME) to accomplish this. The desire to avoid this situation is not 100% tied to "we think we can get Giannis." It's not binary. If we know they were prepared to spend their cap wad on Kemba Walker, then we also know that they're not experiencing tunnel vision aimed at 2021 and Giannis. It's on their radar, right where it should be, but not to their detriment, so far. 

Ultimately, it doesn't matter HOW they build the roster, only how WELL they do it. I just think the more options they have, the easier it will be for them to find success.