We're All Going to Die
by andytobo on Dec 8, 2011 10:01 AM CST
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PrintBoweman and I have decided to divvy up approaches to the Mavs free agent approach so far. Stay tuned for his column later today.
The theme of my column is this: If the Mavericks are planning to let their free agents go because they want to reload next summer, they’re making a mistake we’ll all have decades to regret.
Cuddles!
The reason the Mavs are making a huge mistake is a pretty straightforward one, and one I've argued before. No one ever wins a championship, they can't be bought, borrowed or stolen, and passing up a chance to go for another for the vain hope of reloading on the fly is not only a horrible idea, it's a demonstrably horrible idea.
Maybe we need not to know that so we can be fans. But it's not statistically possible to win an NBA championship.
I'm serious. Since the union of the ABA and NBA, 11 different franchises have won the championship. Without doing the math, I think it’s extremely unlikely that there’s another major sport in which that small a percentage of its members meet with ultimate success.
Moreover, if you disregard the first three years of the league, in which the Trail Blazers, Bullets and Sonics won, and never won again, you’re down to eight franchises in the entire HISTORY of the combined leagues.
And I’m not going to do the math but for the record, besides the Rochester Royals in ’50-’51, the Syracuse Nationals in ’54-’55, the St. Louis Hawks in ’57-58, the Milwaukee Bucks in ’70-’81, it turns out everyone else who won from NINETEEN FORTY-FIVE TO NINETEEN SEVENTY-SIX, THE YEAR OF THE NBA-ABA UNION WAS EITHER A LAKER, A CELTIC, A TEAM FROM PHILADELPHIA, OR A KNICK.
That’s bloody it. Literally. We’re talking seventy years.
The Lakers of the 80s won their last championship in ‘87-‘88. The Pistons of the 80s won their last championship in ’89-’90. The Jordan Bulls won their last championship in ’97-’98.
The Lakers won again 12 seasons later. The Pistons won again 14 years later. The Bulls are still waiting.
Once again, that’s of the teams that ever DID win And of those, the number of teams that ever won again is much smaller. On the other side, The Hakeem Rockets managed to squeeze out two championships. It’s not exactly a coincidence that they were in a row, or that they coincided with Jordan’s absence.
Hopefully, you will not now feel as if I’m being coy, or beating around the bush, when I state my point this way: A championship is a rare flower that you gather when ye may. You don’t get back to it by rebuilding and making smart moves. You get it by having the unbelievable luck to draft Dirk Nowitzki and, after ten years, have assembled he right talent to win one or two.
Roughly two-thirds of the league has never been that lucky even once.
That's decades of GMs, free-agents, trading, each year looking for that thing that'll finally make it happen and always, always failing. A zillion careers that ended ringless. Think of all that futile calling and paperwork.
The point is, that there's no way to do it. You don’t draft your way into it. You don’t free-agent cap space your way into it. You don’t smart-personnel decision your way into it.
How do you win a championship? You get Dirk, then you get luckier. You get exactly the right complement to him in T-Chan, not because you were looking for him but because you wanted the chance to take a free agent swipe, he was going to give you tradable cap space, and because he didn’t end up on the Thunder.
You get DeShawn Stevenson, a throw-in with an albatross of a contract, to perform amazingly well.
You get Jason Terry to outperform Lebron James.
If you're not the Mavs, you draft Kobe out of high school before people were scouted much in high school, to pair with Shaq. You draft Tim Duncan because David Robinson went down for a whole year.
Don't believe me? Think about this. What Cleveland learned is that it's not enough to draft LeBron James. And believe you me, all that nonsense about them not building a team around is based on the insane idea that is also behind the Mavs current insane idea, which is that you can just sign the right guys, that's a possible thing, and the Cavs failed to do that. Actually, it's impossible to do that, and even the Mavs only did it by accident, after eleven years.
The Jazz learned that drafting Deron Williams wasn't enough. The Magic are about to learn that drafting Dwight Howard wasn't enough, and the Hornets that drafting Chris Paul wasn't enough. You don't think it's amazing that none of those guys will have won a championship with the team that lucked into them? That the only truly great player drafted in the last seven or so years who did so is Dwayne Wade when, again, he was playing with Shaq?
Fans hate to hear this. GMs must really hate to hear this. You cannot do anything to win a championship and you won’t ever win a championship.
That’s why the Mavericks are making a huge mistake.
You can see what seems like sense in what they seem to be doing, which is only going after their own free agents in a financially responsible way so they can reload in a couple of years when Dirk needs help.
No one reloads. It’s not possible to do. The Lakers did it, after they lost Shaq, because Chris Wallace handed them Pau Gasol. You want to count on that?
Yes, theoretically it would be possible to sign Deron Williams or Dwight Howard at this time next year, if they had cap space. You want to count on that?
It’d be a dumb thing to count on even if it weren’t one hundred percent the case that neither would ever be willing to sign to a team that had only one star, then in his mid-thirties, and no Tyson Chandler, and no Caron Butler. Even if our new young stars don’t want to be the centerpieces in places like Dallas, they want to be moguls, entrepreneurs, which means New York (Chris Paul, Deron Williams) or LA (Dwight Howard).
It’d be a dumb thing to count on because you don’t count on anything. Every single available piece of evidence, every metric, every narrative, every sniff test, stat test or geology test shows the same thing:
You NEVER win a championship. You don’t reload your way into a championship. You don’t free-agent sign your way into a championship. You don’t draft your way into a championship unless you’re drafting Kobe, Dirk, Duncan or Shaq. And that never happens.
The Mavericks won a championship. That means that they HAVE THE PERSONNEL TO WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP. No one ever gets that. You know what you do when that happens?
You commit everything you have to keeping that together as long as possible and you embrace sucking for the next fifteen years, because I have news for you:
Every team, after it loses its championship core, sucks for the next 15 years. No matter how they draft, trade or sign.
The worst part is, the Mavs will know this pretty shortly. Once they whiff on Deron, Dwight and Paul next year, they’ll know that for sure, because there won’t be anyone on the horizon to replace Dirk.
They’ll be stuck staring at their cap space, which will only ever get them the likes of John Salmons, scratching their heads, knowing they made the smart math move, knowing that everyone was talking sense, and knowing that they are completely screwed.
Let DeShawn and Barea go. At some point, you have to see what Beaubois, Brewer, Rudy and Dom can do.
Re-sign Tyson Chandler, no matter what it takes. And re-sign Caron. Sure, the Mavs didn’t NEED Caron Butler, the Caron Butler Mavs of the early part of the season were AMAZING. Basketball isn’t standardized testing, they didn’t sweep the Lakers because they have the answer now, because they’re better than the Lakers in a dominant way. Maybe they will need Caron next year. He’s a great player, and they already have him. Re-sign him n T-Chan.
Or re-sign nobody and embrace the prevailing, immensely easily debunkable myth, that smart business decisions will make ultimate success sustainable.
That never has been true, it’s not going to be true now, for the first time ever, and the Mavs are making an enormous mistake.
They are screwed in three years regardless, because that’s how basketball works. I say embrace it, and try to win one or two more.
Stop worrying. Love the bomb. Pay the men. It's the only hope, Luke.
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I'm with you.
"The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot."
- Bill Russell
this is a ludicrous argument
And I don’t have the energy to dissect it today, so I’ll just say that it is completely asinine, not to mention intellectually lazy, to assume that Dallas will be screwed in three years and use that as a justification to pay everyone whatever they want. Especially when you admit they were lucky to win in the first place. That is just a terrible approach. You would never, ever use this strategy in any facet of your real life, and if you did it would likely hideously backfire. It is much, much better to be financially clear enough to actually attempt to retool, rather than be crippled for the next half half decade. Even if Dallas loses out on Deron, Paul and Howard, they’ll still be able to do something to salvage the Dirk era, as opposed to simply watching it fade into mediocrity and then oblivion.
Anyway, all I really want to address here is this silly little meme that persists and drives me crazy. Yes, the Celtics and Lakers, along with a few other teams, have a lot of championships. But it is not nearly as significant as people make it out. Those teams have been around for seventy years. They played in a league that was, until the late 60’s, comprised of about nine teams total. They didn’t reach 20 teams until the ABA was absorbed a decade later. When you look at it in context, it’s a lot easier to understand why titles have been divided up the way they have. There’ s no magic juice that makes them better than the rest. There’s no intangible quality the other teams lack.
Now, in the last eight seasons, there have been six different champions. So there’s your parity. Yes, the Lakers could get Howard or the Celtics Paul and another trophy could be added to the pile, but that has absolutely nothing to do with what happened half a century ago. It’s irrelevant.
if anything
MMB should be trying to frame what’s going on with the team in a way that will engender acceptance and understanding. Not bitterness and resentment, built on false logic and a misinterpretation of what the surrounding circumstances are.
The free agent evacuation is happening, either way. It’s never fun, but it is necessary. This is the right move, and we should be thankful the front office has the balls to do it, because a lot of other teams might have caved and tried to make the good PR move.
by Alan Smithee on Dec 8, 2011 11:53 AM CST up reply actions
Alan
calm down. we have the opposite argument coming up shortly. please tone down the emotion and insulting.
Managing Editor of MavsMoneyball.com
let me clarify
emotion is fine. misdirected anger is not necessary.
Managing Editor of MavsMoneyball.com
i'm certainly not angry
I don’t think it’s a great argument; and not-great arguments have a way of propagating themselves. Any emotion I have is directed at that, not any person. I’m not out to insult people.
Doing the devil’s advocate angle is fine, but there are more solid ways of supporting that position. My opinion. I think there’s this idea out there among certain fans that the team is making the choice to shun Chandler for no other reason than that they’ve eyed a bigger fish. Understanding why that isn’t true, and appreciating the complexities of the team’s financial structure, is beneficial.
And I don’t think you need to do the “opposite argument”, since j0shi’s posted several very fine articles on this, already. He’s pretty much covered everything.
I know we haven’t seen eye to eye on this before. I don’t want to be the curmudgeon. However, my view is that there is such a thing as good and bad discourse.
by Alan Smithee on Dec 8, 2011 12:44 PM CST up reply actions
For the record, I am not at all being a devil’s advocate. I absolutely believe that the Mavs should either sign Chandler or else face the fact that they’re not likely to win another championship for a while. The tradeoff, as you say, is that if the Mavs go all in now, they’ll be pretty terrible in a few years. But I think they might have another championship when that happens, as opposed to missing out on Chandler, getting a chance at free agency, and being able to stay competitive for years, which is the other way to go. Competitive, though, doesn’t win championships and mediocre-to-good teams tend to stay at approximately that level. I’m certainly not the only person to write about the curse of mediocrity.
I don’t mind too much, but you’re characterizing my argument as if all i said was that certain teams win over and over and others don’t, as if that’s just a law of nature. What is really the case is that, except for the Detroit Pistons, every team that has won a championship, basically ever, has had one of the best players of all time on it, and you basically can’t get those through normal free agency, trades, or the draft (especially if you’re a mid-to-low drafting team.)
It’s not that I disagree with you, that having the economic freedom to stay competitive isn’t a good choice. Continuing to have good Mavs basketball to watch for the foreseeable future, even after the Dirk years, seems great. But, realistically, you’re still not going to win it all unless you have Dirk, Kobe, Duncan, etc. The Mavs have Dirk right now, and I’m arguing that doing the sensible thing, here, is nonsensical because it requires such an entirely paradigm-busting stroke of luck as drafting some scrawny German giant and having him turn into one of the league’s dominant players. You can’t financial manage your way into that situation.
So, yes, if they don’t overcommit this year, the Mavs have a chance to be good for years to come. But they dramatically lower their odds of winning another championship. And it’s not because only the Lakers win championships, it’s because winning championships is incredibly hard.
I think you have it backwards
If they overcommit, they can stay good for a while but likely won’t win another championship, because they’ll have so little wiggle room to improve the team, replace inevitable injuries/aging, etc. Let’s face it: nobody was picking this team to win it all, and that wasn’t by accident. They had lightning in a bottle with an incredible playoff run that saw every big shot go in and many not for the other team. It’s not likely to happen again and I think not signing Chandler is an indication the team feels the same way.
You absolutely can get the best player in the game, by trade or free agency. Shaq went to the Lakers, Garnett the Celtics, Lebron the Heat. Dallas already has a superstar and now they’ve got a ring and the reputation that comes with that.
By keeping the powder dry, they have the ability to make an impact move. Maybe they don’t get the best player in basketball. Maybe they don’t one of 2012’s big three. But the opportunity to retool is there and it is possible. One must also consider that there will one day be life after Dirk, and sooner than that, a point where Dirk will be more suited to “second banana”.
by Alan Smithee on Dec 8, 2011 2:39 PM CST via mobile up reply actions
Well, I reckon you can boil down most any disagreement to one basic difference of opinion, and that’s where we are. As you say, it’s not at all impossible for the Mavs to get a second star, like Deron, Paul or Dwight. But I think there’s nothing so scarce as contender-making basketball talent, and that’s why I don’t think the usual rules of smart business apply. The Mavs up their ODDS of staying good by doing what you say. But what if they don’t get those guys? Then all their smarts don’t do anything because all the Shane Battier signings in the world don’t win you a championship.
They’re betting on being a contender, not for good free agents, but for the best ones. I’m skeptical. Especially with the new amnesty rule, almost anyone could open up the cap space to go after one of those guys, and the indications are that only Deron MIGHT prefer Dallas to other such places. It already looked like, earlier in the day, that we were headed for a Paul-Kobe-Dwight Lakers, which would take two of the big three off the map before the summer of 2012 even really got under way.
I don’t suppose I have a monopoly on being right, and nobody can ever guess how sports will turn out. I think that trying to win one more championship with the same team as last year is a much better bet than trying to restock with new players that EVERYONE will want, so that you can win more than one more. A much better bet. Just an opinion, though.
I agree that it may not be the best argument, etc...
…and I certainly have my feelings regarding the best course of action for the Mavs going forward, both in the present and in the future. In doing that, I understand that the audience here is basically “fans” that want the Mavs to keep going for as long as they can with their favorite players, title-winning team, etc.
Perhaps I need to go through more of your recent posts and I readily admit that I have not done so, as to see what you propose the Mavericks should do. Do you have an opinion on the current roster and free agents? I mean something more specific than “the Mavericks must remain fiscally responsible to sustain some level of success in the future” kind of stuff?
Like I said, I haven’t retained enough of what I’ve read of your comments to recall any specifics, so I was hoping you could lay out some of your thoughts here. I actually like to hear all points of view, because I hope that something might shake up my thought process a bit so that I will come up with something a little better or more thought out next time. I don’t think we can just say “The Mavericks shouldn’t sign this person or that person because it will affect financial flexibility in the future” and just leave it at that. At some point, real decisions have to be made on players and I’m truly curious to understand what you think might be a specific plan going forward.
a specific plan
is difficult to outline, because there are certain aspects of any long-term plan that require projection.
Right now, I expect Dallas to be looking at sign and trade possibilites with Chandler, and at low-rent or 1-year type deals. No point in letting Chandler and Butler walk just to break the bank on someone else.
Assuming everyone isn’t traded soon, I think things will start getting interesting at the deadline. Dallas will have two expiring contracts(Kidd, Terry), and will be able to take back bad salary along with a possible second star. If the Nets really struggle I think they may be a lot more open to trading Deron Williams, and based on what Dallas has said about trading for Paul, they won’t be deterred by a lack of guarantee from the player to sign an extension.
buckets..
Barring the first line being over the top, I thought it was a pretty well thought out counter argument. And you have to love his inclusion of meme into it. Go hug a 4 pack of Charmin Double Roll, always makes me feel better.
I'm a pansy firefly. better?
I never said his post was bad
just asked him to tone down the anger.
and stop calling me buckets… please?
Managing Editor of MavsMoneyball.com
I'm drinking your koolaid.
Im of the opinion that relevant teams with relevant owners find a way to stay relevant. Everyone is gloom and doom around here because it doesn’t sound like the Mavs will get every available player. Cuban will find a way to keep the team competitive and in the mix. And he’s already (hopefully it’s final tomorrow), made the right move in letting JJ pack his bags.
I'm a pansy firefly. better?
by bbob on Dec 8, 2011 12:21 PM CST up reply actions 1 recs
Silly to screw up three years for a small chance at 1 trophy.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: if they bring everyone back, the Mavs title odds are at most 30%. That’s probably being generous, especially if/when Paul or Howard land on an already good team. How is a relatively small chance at a title this year worth sacrificing 2013-2015 with enormous cap tax and no flexibility for a positively antediluvian roster?
Dirk will still be very good for 4-5 more years. His game doesn’t cause the kind of physical strain that aggressive players get in their early 30s. I’d rather they be as good as possible 3 out of 4 years than frontload for just this run.
by fennsk1 on Dec 8, 2011 12:00 PM CST up reply actions 1 recs
So let me just make this point to you, to Alan, to bbob and all that, without trying to get in the way of healthy debate (you’ll all, as Lisa says, get the chance to see the other side argued here in just a few). If the point is staying relevant, than the Mavs are doing exactly the right thing. This will allow them to stay competitive in the free agent market for the foreseeable future. If the point is winning CHAMPIONSHIPS the Mavs are doing the wrong thing. You don’t win championships by being competitive on the free agent market. Championships are super rare. You have to start out with one of the best players ever and get complementary talent. Just staying good doesn’t win championships. It will, however, make being a Mavs fan a bit easier over the long run, even when the Dirk days are past, and that’s worth something to.
My point is only that the Mavs found the formula to win a championship, it’s a much rarer formula than people realize, and that if, rather than just staying competitive, they really want to WIN again they should do whatever they can to keep this team intact. And yes the downside of that is that they’ll be very uncompetitive for a while in there.
I'd rather they be uncompetitive only once Dirk is retired.
It’s also unrealistic to expect Cuban to pay $40mm in cap tax alone in the last couple years of these contracts when the team would be too old to do much.
I also disagree with your overall implied premise that resigning Chandler is the only way they’ll win a championship in the next 4-5 years. Mark and Donnie have much smarter people than anyone commenting here that I’m sure have calculated the short- and long-term probabilities of championships, competitiveness, cap repercussions, etc.
Based on the last 12 years (not just the trophy), I think Mavs ownership and management have earned more trust than many people are giving them.
Right, so I agree with you entirely that it’s a much smarter basketball move not to overpay for Chandler, which is essentially the point under discussion here. But my basic point is that no amount of smart front officeness can make up for having to compete with the Lakers, the Heat, the Thunder and the Knicks for the rest of the Dirk years. Nobody’s smarter than Darryl Morey, for example, in terms of making quality front office moves, but Houston doesn’t currently have a prayer because you can’t smart-front-office your way into the exact player you need, given leaguewide competition for the service of free agents and the timing of free agents going on the market and all the variables that so dramatically complicate being able to go out and get it.
And what’s so strange about the skepticism around here that this is true is that, yes, we all know that Mark and Donnie are among the absolute best but not only did it take them more than a decade to win one with one of the greatest players to ever live, it took the emergence of unguessable quantities such as JJ Barea and DeShawn Stevenson to do it. You know? Smart front office everything. Loved the Stojakovic picked up, loved the Brewer pick up. But there’s no Chandler pick up if the Thunder had just kept him, and not an inch of front office smartness could have changed that.
wow i would hate to see what would happen if you did have the energy to dissect
nonetheless, i completely agree with the sentiment. Although, I have a hard time letting TY go if all it is going to take is 4-5 years at 10-12 million. You would either be banking on him helping win another ring while he is here, or keeping him to offer as trade bait should a trade scenario open up with one of the big 3 free agents. Either or sounds better to me than just letting our second most important player go free.
yeah, but the market's driving his price much higher than that.
CSNBayArea.com reported that the Warriors are trying to sweeten a four-year offer to Chandler valued at $60 million to outbid the Knicks.
damn
i would give hime 5 years at $70 million. take it or leave it. While i have heard the reasonable argument on here that he is not elite so don’t pay him like it. I think that on our team, and the way he fits in added to the fact that he has already proven that he is part of the championship ingredient that we ought to treat him like he is pretty damn close to being an elite player. Even if the stats tell you that you are wrong, there is no denying that he is one of probably 10 players at the most in this Leauge that when paired with Dirk give you a great shot at the title. I have a hard time letting those guys walk, even if it is a big maybe huge risk to take.
On a related note...
Golden State already handed Tyson a 60M/4year contract and is now waiting for his decision.
"The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot."
- Bill Russell
That’s not so bad, I guess. 12 mil is a lot less than 20 mil, and Golden State has the MOST interest.
Just realized that if I were a GM/owner
I wouldn’t want to pay Tyson that amount of money given his history of injuries. At a reasonable price, YES (and that would be 10-12M). I want him to be with the Mavs but not at all cost.
And with that offer in hand, I don’t think Tyson would come back, unless Cuban and Donnie knows something (or about to do something) that we don’t know.
"The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot."
- Bill Russell
by Marjun Raposon on Dec 8, 2011 11:52 AM CST up reply actions
Hard to disagree with you, about that. I guess the price tag is an unavoidable externality of GMs treating championships as some kind of incomprehensible magic, turning a 10-10 center with a history of injuries into a near-enough-to-max player. As I’ve said before, there’s a difference between exactly what is needed (Chandler for the Mavs) and being a great piece, but not an all-star (Chandler for most other teams0.
Plus, this quote from Ken Berger
KBergCBS Ken Berger
“All 25 teams, if well managed, will have the opportunity to watch five teams take turns winning championships.”
3 hours ago
So much for competitive balance that the league was aiming at...
"The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot."
- Bill Russell
by Marjun Raposon on Dec 8, 2011 12:31 PM CST up reply actions
Id have to do the math, but is this the Knicks way of admitting that they wont get CP3 next year?
I'm a pansy firefly. better?
Fuuck, hell no i don't want billups on thew mavs
Adrian Wojnarowski: Billups’ still in dark on Knicks next move with him: amnesty, trade into cap space…or: Possible sign-and-trade with Dallas for Chandler
hopefully it's just a bad rumor this billups crap
Bill Simmons: Only way this NYK/Chandler rumor happens: if they use their amnesty on Billups. NOBODY is trading for Billups at $14.2m. Can’t see it. about 6 minutes ago
Chandler and JJB aren't worth overpaying for
So goodbye, get your ring and go swim in your money vault
"I don't want no damn welfare pencil!"
Youd think making that dive headfirst woud hurt..
I'm a pansy firefly. better?
by bbob on Dec 8, 2011 1:56 PM CST up reply actions 1 recs
if someone wants to look it up and post there's a family guy episode or american dad
where they try that with funny results…
I feel sorry for his penis
.
"I'm a unitard!" - Ralph Wiggum
by stupidsexyflanders on Dec 8, 2011 2:05 PM CST up reply actions
from mark stein:
“Another telling sign that Chandler’s time in Dallas has come to an end emerged Thursday, when sources close to the situation told ESPN.com that the Mavericks offered Chandler to the Orlando Magic as part of a proposed sign-and-trade deal for All-Star center Dwight Howard.”
This free agency period will be horrible for me
It seems very likely that my last Dwight Howard sighting was last month at his charity game of current Magic players vs. past Magic players :(
"I don't want no damn welfare pencil!"
NO
If anything, I don’t even have a Howard jersey (but I have Hedo’s, lulz). The Magic are going to suck. Great job of getting rid of Rashard Lewis’ big contract and replacing it with Gilbert Arenas’ big contract!
"I don't want no damn welfare pencil!"
I'd rather let Chandler walk
and save cap space for the insane ‘12 FA class. We’ll have enough cap room to add Deron Williams or Paul to replace Kidd.
NYY is stupid for doing this. Melo and Amare are going to be making $20 mil each, so if they add Chandler this offseason there’s no way they could afford to add Paul next offseason.
"I'm a unitard!" - Ralph Wiggum
by stupidsexyflanders on Dec 8, 2011 2:27 PM CST up reply actions
that same aticle, wishful thinking if you ask me except maybe d-will, who i like
Dallas strongly believes that it will be a finalist for all three of those top stars next summer, since none of them — no matter where they are this season — are expected to sign contract extensions, sources close to the situation said. That’s because the new labor deal expected to be ratified Thursday by NBA players and owners makes it more advantageous for Howard, Williams and Paul to opt out of their current contracts in July and then proceed to free agency.
I am really nauseated by all of these rumors involving various teams regarding Chandler, CP3, etc.
so what I’m going to do is wait until something happens.
"The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot."
- Bill Russell
Okay one last...
Caron Butler agrees to terms with Clippers. Three years, 24M.
- David Alfridge
"The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot."
- Bill Russell
wohoo
Marc Stein: One source w/knowledge of Mavs’ thinking adamant Dallas does not want to take back Billups’ expiring deal in Tyson Chandler sign-and-trade
why
He’s a 1 year guy. I think he can co-exist with Kidd. Sounds perfect.
Ugh, this is gonna suck.
They finally broke the glass ceiling to get the title, and now they cant even keep the damned team intact to defend the thing. So, I guess it was fun while it lasted, and its back to the first-round exits. All because the front office, while making a shrewd move to clear cap (I believe cap space is important and all that) but it’s all for the false hope of some free agents that we’re not gonna get anyway.
Meanwhile, everyone else profits from it, the Heat is getting Shane Battier who was a big part of Memphis’ run last year. The champs are getting gutted, meanwhile Miami has two superstars and Bosh and can still buy people, just how much cash was Riley stocking up?
so far it isn't that bad as long as they keep the core intact Dirk, Kidd, Terry, Marion
mavs will be able to compete, but it seems like the best front office for 10 years have turned into
what sarver does in phoenix every year grrr
Yeah, but we had Dirk, Kidd, Terry, and Marion in the 2009 season, and got bounced in the first by San Antonio in the 2010 playoffs.
Granted, we all lived through that, but i was hoping it would be a bit longer before we stare back into that zone, I hope Haywood and Mahimi can deliver full time now, Chandler was the anchor we’ve prayed for and now that looks to be gone. If LA or Miami win it all this year, I’ma be so PISSED!!!
"I'm a unitard!" - Ralph Wiggum
by stupidsexyflanders on Dec 8, 2011 3:50 PM CST up reply actions 1 recs
jeez no wonder why caron left.
i just hope los mavs get inspired by all of this like they did last season.
yo David West where u at!?! ill accept yeah.
I love what they're doing.
They’re not hesitating or going half-ass at it. They offered one-year deals with decent money for most of their free agents, and if they declined, they lived with it and didn’t break down. They’re being realistic at their chances with the same team with a changing environment in the league and looking at the future, and basing their decisions off that.
This season won’t have high hopes for a championship most likely, but the future is coming, and the Mavs management are preparing for it.
The Lakers?? Dammit, dammit, dammit
Ugh, Im’a go clutch my Mavs championship dvd, and cry for three hours, brb.
We'll see
I started out optimistic that we could get Chandler back and clear space to attract CP3 or Deron Williams. Now, I’m coming to accept that we may lose everything.
Thinking about that, it’s not the end of the world. Statistically, Haywood won’t be significantly worse than Chandler if he plays most of the game. We have multiple talented young guys to replace Barea and Butler’s lost production, like Brewer, Roddy, DoJo and Rudy. We’ll likely still make the playoffs with Kidd, Terry, Dirk and Marion as the core, even if we are a low seed and get knocked out in the first round. Cuban is savvy and famously treats his players well, so Dallas will remain an appealing city for free agents.
This superteam thing was disproven to be a lock for success in last year’s finals. While we might not be a lock for marquee free agents, I like the idea of continuing down the path of finding stellar role players with chemistry at a good value. Let’s call it the “Dallas model”, which has already been proven vs. totally gutting teams to attract three stars with nothing else. This year may be lost, and we may lose the D-Will sweepstakes, but I’ll start living in fear at our first under 50 win season we don’t make the playoffs. But having the flexibililty to do what we need to do in our future to attract the right players is more important than feeding greedy champion role players with max contracts to watch their productivity drop when they no longer have a contract year hanging over them.
Let’s look on the bright side and trust Cuban’s savvy. Nobody trusted him last summer when he brought in Chandler or when he built a team centered around a “soft German who couldn’t finish” either.
With dirk at the helm, there's not enough reason to die young.
Go Mavs! The Mavericks shall reign again.
HOPE is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of men.
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