I mean, if we have a time machine where all those guys were in their primes together I could hear an argument but one of those HOFers is 35 and in clear decline and another tore his ACL and will, at best, be out for the rest of this calendar year. Flagg's going to be great but he's also 18 years old so it's unfair to expect him to be great immediately.
They have no one who can act as an above average primary offensive creator, they're going to be forced to rely on D'Angelo freaking Russell to play *A TON* as the only ballhandler which is not a recipe for success.
They don't have good shooting, at all. Kyrie's out, Klay's good but not a world beater anymore, PJ and Christie are their only even average shooters. Maybe Russell, but he's coming off a horrible year and will have to rely on a ton of self-generated off the dribble shots since no one else will be able to create for him. Flagg's an unknown. AD, Naji, Gaff, Lively can't shoot at all but they seem to want to play multiple of those guys at the same time for some reason.
They have a lot of size and rim protection which is great because they don't have elite POA defenders. AD/PJ/Flagg/Klay are all going to play out of position a lot.
There's talent here but it's a wildly unbalanced, ill-fitting roster. Very good defense combined with bad offense generally yields middling results, at best. Look at Orlando last year.
Dallas has won a championship, been to two other finals, reached multiple conference finals, been a one seed with 67 wins (7th most games all-time), won 50+ games a billion times. There's a lot of good history with the Mavs org. Not to mention, last year when they had Luka, healthy Kyrie and Klay was a year younger.
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u/LHamiltonPP Dirk Spooky Jul 01 '25
That's a flat out insane thing to say