2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

Stand your ground Tony Hawk! I see you!

 

Another letter added to the list?

 

I am sorry but this is exactly the kind of stuff that makes your stories unbelievable. I just don't buy that anybody who watched Shaq's career, let alone saw him live in some of his most iconic moments IN THE BUILDING would seriously compare Ayton to him. That's just beyond silly.

I don't want to be mean, but you sound like a teenager who for some reason wants to improve the perception of his posts by others by making up these crazy stories. Just like with your history as an executive, I seriously doubt there is one person on this forum who buys that.

Again, I'm not trying to be mean, but this is getting old. You are providing enough quality to the forum without the necessity to make stuff up.

 

Well...my man Sirronstuff says...it's the internet, and people have the right to be, anyone they want to be...on the internet.

 

what's funny to me is that when he signed with the clippers, there seemed to be some expectation of a complete health/age reversal for some reason. he's been on this trajectory even if the counting stats weren't picking it up. there's a reason phx cratered after that trade.

klay thompson looks like he may have died as well, btw. some were mad that we didn't get le-gm'd into that one, iirc.

gotta be really careful with older players in the modern game, guards in particular. though i guess mike conley and kyle lowry keep hanging on, in their way, lol.

 

That one is one to monitor for train wreck watch. A large part of why he went to Dallas was the role but now he got benched for DLO

 

mavs have had major injury issues (beyond kyrie's expected absence), but they've lost some close ones to bad teams. if they don't turn it around, like, now, they'll have to look VERY hard at a tank. this is the downside to having hands-off owners (there are many upsides). if cuban owned the team, he'd probably be advising harrison to sell off all the vets by the deadline, but harrison is the architect here, and he's not going to just admit defeat. could get really ugly.

 

It depends on AD's health IMO. I caught a few minutes of a couple of their games. Tinkerbell is still a better look at point than Flagg. If they don't get prime AD by December, they might be in some trouble, hard to say right now. Anthony looked like he took the summer off to me.

 

If you're Miami and you're the Zombie Team of the NBA. Do you make a move for AD? Put Bam and AD together in that weak East and let the dice roll on getting to the finals again?

 

The eye surgery could have limited what AD could do this summer with any exertion. Best I could find he had it around July 8.

https://www.google.com/search?q=How+long+after+retinal+re-attachment+surgery+would+strenuous+or+cardio+activity+be+limited?&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari

 

never said that!

 

chicago's always been my AD destination, but they're playing well and wouldn't want to mess with it is my guess, so yeah, miami would be the most sensible option. i think rozier and wiggins gets close but with the mavs in the second apron and miami right there, i'm not sure if there's an easy way. maybe if miami could offload a small salary into an exception elsewhere or something.

i don't think miami would miss wiggins too much, as they have jaquez, larsson, and fontecchio all playable at the sf.

yeah, he was clearly out of shape, and i'm guessing the bilateral achilles tendinopathy plus the added weight set off some alarm bells (and rightly so). i think he can get back into shape and be himself again, but how long is that going to take and how far out of it will you be at that point?

lively being a walking injury case has been a huge issue, too. when he's right, he's one of the league's best centers, but...it's so rare.

 

Unfortunately, I wouldn't be shocked if AD is done as a superstar level player. He's 32 and got traded away from his hand-picked destination where he seemed pretty happy. Rather than coming into the season motivated by the trade, he showed up clearly out of shape. Now he's hurt and playing out of position as a 4 (look at tape of AD in 2020 and him now, he just doesn't move the same anymore) without a great playmaker to get him the ball in the right spots.

He needs to be somewhere he mostly plays the 5 with a strong P&R partner. Maybe Atlanta or Indiana?

 

...any day now Pablo Torre will drop a video revealing that the league forced the Mavs to trade Luka to us and this whole thing will finally make sense.

Until that happens, there is just no reason to make that deal. Especially to make the deal and not get Reaves and another pick. Terrible terrible terrible GM work.

 

If Nico deals with us again, he's going to have to flee the country.

 

I saw this when AD was on the Lakers. I received so much criticism for mentioning that AD was better utilized as a center. Even in today's more big man oriented NBA, AD is still better suited as a 5 than a 4. Imo, if we didn't get Luka, AD was probably still going to get traded. I tried to tell people this, but for some reason, so many AD apologists. Even if AD was supposedly happy here, he was still basically complaining the whole time about wanting to play the 4.

 

Interesting that we would still want another big, considering Ayton and Hayes have played very well. Maybe want to ensure big man depth, considering opposing teams increased emphasis on bigs.

 

Him being a 5 has been obvious for a while. When he first showed up here in 2020, he was basically a guard in a center's body. We would deploy him as a straight-up wing defender sometimes. Now he's a quick, skilled big.

You're probably right about AD getting traded. If we hadn't traded for Luka, I think LeBron might've gone elsewhere this summer. He almost certainly would have moved on next summer. We probably would have tried to bring in Giannis or someone else to play with AD/Reaves, but ultimately it would've become clear that wasn't happening so AD would have been traded.

 

He saw it in your eyes, on the internet!

 

Rather get Max back but no Dallas to LA trade is going to happen for another decade lol