Mike1989

Fair point. There would be a section of fans that wouldn’t be happy if the team made moves to try and avoid playing in the postseason. However, there would also be fans that would understand because they would see the advantage of adding another piece rather than a play-in loss or first round exit. For example, trading a veteran player to acquire a pick and free up a starting spot for a young prospect. It will be interesting to see if the league does enforce the ranking rules, though I suppose the difficultly is proving that a team is tanking. Sometimes it’s obvious like sitting/shutting down healthy players. However, there are legitimately bad teams that aren’t trying to lose, but I suppose they also aren’t trying to make moves to help them win because they are riding it out for the draft and FA. Personally I would put every team’s name that doesn’t qualify for the play offs or play-in goes into a hat, then draw them one by one. That way a team that blatantly tanks (eg Pacers) has the same odds as a team that is ineptly run (eg Kings) and a team that has tried but isn’t good enough (eg Bucks). I guess teams could still try to miss the play-in, but at least everyone has the same odds. Alternatively, have two postseason tournaments. Go back to the top 16 making the play offs and play for the championship, while the bottom teams compete for the first overall pick. I guess that could favour the ‘better’ bad teams and might still encourage fringe play off teams to miss the play offs, but the flip side is it should also encourage every non-play offs team to play hard to secure the best possible draft pick.

I can understand Silver trying to tackle teams tanking by targeting those teams that blatantly gut their rosters to maximise their draft odds. This new system appears to be trying to tackle that problem, but in doing so, it could create a new problem for the league with teams ‘tanking’ to miss the play-in tournament. Think about the teams that finish 9th or 10th. Has any of them gone past the first round of the play offs? I don’t think any of them has. Most have no realistic shot at a deep run in the play offs or winning a championship. So what’s the point of making the play-in when finishing 11th in your conference secures a near 1-in-4 chance of a top three draft pick or 39% odds of a top five draft pick? I think this new system could see fringe teams sell players before the deadline and/or be less inclined to play hard post-all star break to ensure they miss the play-in to maximise their draft odds.

It’s the benefit of hindsight. Imagine how TWolves fans must feel knowing they drafted Rubio 5th and Flynn 6th with Curry going 7th. It happens… Cole was a solid pick with upside. Sadly, he never developed as we hoped. I wonder why he hasn’t reported? Does he want a buyout?

Agreed, if that’s the worst mistake in the last 5 years then our front office are doing well, though an argument could be made for giving Jonathan Isaac $84m over 5 years or for some of the FA signings that haven’t done as well as expected either. In someways being a small market team has kept this front office in their jobs as 2 winning seasons, a .500 season and 5 losing seasons is not exactly a stellar record. I suppose four play off seasons out of eight seasons is not bad, but we’ve never been a real contender in the east and time will tell if the team can ascend towards that this season in a “weaker” eastern conference.

The defensive potential of the line up is really good, but unless the offense starts to catch up then well might not be a true contender. It’s critical the team becomes more balanced and offensively efficient because that’s what wins championships in the current era. If they can get the offense anywhere near the defense we’ll be a true contender.

Desmond Bane adds a proven 3pt shooter with a career average of .410, though it must be noted that he has averaged .386 over the past two seasons. Hopefully he’ll shoot nearer his average but he’ll need support from others to thrive. The offense is what is holding the team back in terms of the pace of play, ball movement (etc). So hopefully this is the first move towards helping the offense get nearer to our team’s defensive capabilities. My main concern about Bane is he’s played 68, 76, 58, 42 and 69 games. So he’s not played a full season and has missed a number of games over the past five seasons. I’m not well informed on why he’s missed games, but hopefully he won’t be missing as many games for us. I suppose this trade will come down to whether this move (and others) helps this team become a top four team in the east. If it does, the cost will not be looked upon negatively. However, if the offense continues to be inefficient and holds the team back, then it will be seen as an overpay.

It does have that Shaq era look. I think I’d have preferred them to commit to all black pin stripe, but I’m sure it will look the part when it’s worn by the players.

The ones on the right and left are excellent. I’m not sure about the middle one.

It’s going to be interesting to see if OKC and Indiana can close these series out 4-1, or whether the Wolves and Knicks can mount any kind of comeback. There’s been successful comebacks from 3-1 like Denver doing it twice during Covid and Golden State did it in the conference final and NBA finals. That said, there’s been unsuccessful ones too like Houston this year and Boston coming back from 3 nil and falling flat in game seven against Miami. I would agree that our team would benefit from reworking our roster to adopt some of the stylistic features we have seen from the likes of OKC and Indiana. However, you can say that most years because it’s a copycat league. The problem we have is our two main players and scorers - Wagner and Banchero - have similar strengths and flaws, which only become more obvious due to their supporting cast sharing similar strengths and flaws. If the team wants to build around Wagner and Banchero, then arguably they will need to consider the future of the other three starters. It’s still early days for Wagner and Banchero, both are young enough to get better and lead this team to where it wants to go. After all, it took Tatum and Brown until their 7th and 8th season to win a title, and that was after years of speculation about their ability to play together (though admittedly both shot better from behind the arc than Wagner and Banchero).

Malik Monk, Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, Keegan Murray, Domantas Sabonis I’m not really sure what to think of the King’s starting five. They don’t look like a contender. If anything look like a team heading towards yet another rebuild, unless this lineup does something unexpected.

I never said it was fair value. I mean, Kevin Durant cost 4 first round picks and a pick swap. Damian Lillard cost 1 first round picks and two pick swaps. So what would AD’s and Doncic’s current trade value be? AD would probably cost at least what the Bucks paid for Damian Lillard, while Doncic should cost at least what the Clippers paid for Paul George. Could the Mavs have got more? Sure they could, but they either didn’t ask or didn’t push it because they wanted AD. Again, never said it was fair value. Also, nowhere near Pelicans AD is simply not true. He’s currently 2 points per game short of his best years in New Orleans and he was the second option in LA compared to the first option in New Orleans. His other stats are fairly similar. He’s been a very good player for the Lakers, and although he had a three season stretch after their championship when he missed a fair amount of games, he’s been fairly durable for the 23/24 and 24/25 seasons. That said, the Lakers have got a gift because five years from now Doncic will still be in his prime years while AD will be nearing the end of his career. So there’s no doubt that the Lakers got a steal and I would be an annoyed Mavs fan to see Doncic go.

There’s always an argument that can be made towards a league having preferred teams. For example, they are more likely to get a 50-50 call than another team. Look at the recent Bills-Chiefs game and the so-called catch in the first half by the Chiefs player. I suspect that wouldn’t have been ruled a catch if it was a Buffalo player. So yes, some teams get preferential treatment. However, my point purely was if the league was openly biased towards them, then they wouldn’t have vetoed the CP3 trade.

CP3 was going to the Lakers in that trade. So if the league was biased towards them they would have let it go through…

In theory you get “better” offers, but what would they be? Doncic has a player option in 2026 and will want to go to a contender. So, that limits the field a little bit. There’s teams who would want him, but they need to be able to put together a package that appeals to a team wanting to “win now”. Who could offer them a player like AD? The closest would be Jimmy Butler from Miami, or perhaps Paul George from the 76ers, but he’s injured at the minute. That said, as soon as the news leaks they would have to deal with distractions like the Heat are currently experiencing with Jimmy Butler. However, the Mavs would arguably be ten times worse because we’re talking about a 25-year old MVP candidate in his prime years being traded away, rather than a player in his mid-30s who has left teams in the past due to issues. So Dallas would be hit by media scrutiny, their fans would be in uproar, and their players would be questioning the team’s direction. At least this way the deal is done and they can start to fight the fires. They can try to sell their fan base on AD being a better fit in their team, but it’s a real hard sell and I’d be furious if I was a Mavs fan.

The only defence I can come up with is that their GM (and/or ownership) wanted to get this deal done before the media caught wind of it, or another organisation leaked the information that the Mavs are wanting to trade Doncic. If that news got out, then there would be a lot of negative press heading their way and they’d be fighting battles on multiple fronts. That said, I question how this trade gets passed when other trades have included significantly more. I mean, sure, Davis is a hell of a player and the Mavericks should get better defensively, but the Lakers got prime Doncic for Davis and a first round pick. The Mavericks got fleeced, unless of course they win championships with this lineup and the Lakers win nothing.