Dallas Mavericks Offseason Review: Providence And Squalor

On the bounds of accountability and sympathy for Flagg

Photo by Michael Hart on Unsplash

TL;DR DALLAS MAVERICKS

• Drafted Cooper Flagg

• Re-signed Kyrie Irving (3-years, $119 million)

• Signed D’Angelo Russell (2-years, $12 million, player-option second year)

• Less than 30 percent chance they will have Kyrie this season

• Built a win-now defensive grit team with little shooting and little creation, and drafted a potentially transcendent omega forward in the latest attempt to fail at the two timelines approach.

ADDITIONS

• I feel genuinely bad for Flagg.

  • It’s not good when talented players wind up on rudderless, lost organizations with bad culture like the lottery dregs, and the Mavericks are not that. They have purpose, and veterans, and legitimate aims towards contention.

  • But there’s also ego and a structure within a structure here. This is AD’s team. They need to win now, to validate The Trade, to validate AD’s career.¹

  • I don’t think Flagg would be better off with the Wizards.² I just think he would be better off with a team that has a young core developing towards something. Having 2-3 veterans, one starter, who can help guide you while also playing organized basketball³ helps. Having Anthony Davis looking to get his while D’Angelo Russell D’Angelo Russells and PJ Washington is in a contract year? Not as helpful.

  • Flagg having to run point will teach him things. There’s precedent here with how Kidd threw Giannis into the point guard fire. But those teams didn’t have the expectations Dallas does, nor did Giannis at the time have the expectations Flagg has.

    • And in the meantime, a point guard’s job is often to get things organized, which you cannot expect a rookie to do with this group of veterans.

    • But don’t worry! That’s why they brought in… D’Angelo Russell…?…!

  • I think there will be times Flagg will get lost. He’ll have great games; he’s too talented not to. He’ll learn great things from Davis and the veterans. But he doesn’t have the room to make the mistakes he needs, especially given his archetype. LeBron didn’t make the playoffs his first season, for God’s sake.

• The Russell move leaves a bad taste, but is probably not harmful.

  • I don’t pretend to understand the hows or whys of this, but…

    

    Via PBPStats.com

  • Davis and Russell really worked together. Davis, Russell, and LeBron did not. Again, this is probably noise at 250 minutes or less. But it’s interesting.

  • Russell will have some games where he hits a bunch of threes to help win the game. He’ll have a bunch of games where he does nothing meaningful, is inefficient, and gets lost. He’s a stopgap until Kyrie returns.

LOSSES

• It was absolutely bizarre to me that anyone suggested that Kyrie would return this season.

  • Your typical recovery time is 10 months, which would mean January. OK, cool, that would make sense.

  • Kyrie is not your typical recovery athlete at this stage in his career. He’s 33, 34 next March. He has a history of various maladies and is smart enough to understand the long-term benefits to him financially from making sure he’s right before returning. I have my criticisms of Kyrie Irving. His being dumb is not one of them.

  • He’s also not going to be under any pressure; the organization loves and adores him first and most above all. They loved him over Luka Doncic, for fuck’s sake. There will be no awkwardness about rushing him back.

  • He said not to hold your breath on his Instagram. Sure, maybe the body recovers faster. I do not anticipate that. They will be without Kyrie this season. As such, I’m factoring in his impact as a loss this season.

• I will note that the idea of Kyrie Irving having this much free time to search through his Instagram reels should be frightening for Mavericks fans.⁴

• Spencer Dinwiddie is a fine point guard. Is Russell better? Maybe by a touch? But I wouldn’t have minded their having a steadier, calmer hand to look to.