(02-25-2021, 02:29 AM)cow Wrote: Maybe it's the tail wagging the dog or purely coincidental, but something doesn't feel right with him missing games with lower back tightness after a week long layover. Did he come back too soon from his most recent knee surgery? Why would the Mavs allow that in the first place? His role and blackhole usage in the offense has been strange and some of the off hand comments about how he's being used have also felt off. And now we get all these reports. You can write that off as Donnie doing his due diligence and normal operations for any GM, but why is this being reported then and not every other fact finding mission from other GMs leaguewide?FWIW, Followill and Dameris dropped a podcast yesterday pouring a lot of cold water on the KP situation as a salacious story. They disclaimed having any actual specific knowledge, and were basing the comments mostly on Dameris' experience in the front office.
Dameris said that front offices keep tabs on what other teams think of their players as a matter of course. He said that when he was with the Mavs, every player not named Dirk was routinely discussed with other teams in terms of value, whether the Mavs had any immediate interest in trading them or not.
He put particular emphasis on the fact that the "story" was broken by a low-level reporter, and that none of the major NBA news breakers (Woj, Charania, Stein, that level journalist) ran with it. The lower level journalists tend to have lower level contacts among agents and team offices, and they might well be honest when they say they have heard particular players being discussed, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Also, the comments reportedly made by other team executives probably wouldn't have been high-level executives, who typically deal with the high-level reporters, and the comments about KP's physical deficiencies could be made by anyone who is watching, and weren't in the nature of privileged info.
Also said the original report contained a section on Luka's friendship with KP being an obstacle to the Mavs' ability to trade Porzingis. The podders thought that was a giveaway that the reporter doesn't have a clue. First, while Luka and KP get along well, they aren't really personal friends away from work. Secondly, Luka is about winning and is very professional. There is no way he would get in the way of improving the team because a player is a friend of his. Barea was his best friend on the team, and he was okay with the Mavs not keeping him.
Not saying that KP will be a Mav forever, or that we shouldn't carefully consider the possibilities. But I'm not sure how much can realistically be read into the story, in terms of whether the Mavs are really aggressively shopping KP.