“Dallas—I’m told—they would only be interested in LeBron in a buyout situation.”

- @mcten

(h/t @SwishAccess )

pic.twitter.com/m1PaUdjlV1

— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) July 3, 2025

Guitarsoup said:

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hph6203 said:

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Guitarsoup said:

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How long do you think Bron will be on the Lakers?

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You mean future Dallas Maverick LeBron James? Maybe 6-7 months. Getting the band back together in Dallas.

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Bron isn't going to go to a West team. If anything is true about him and Durant, he's taking the easy way to a ring.

I think he signs with the Knicks with his old coach Mike Brown and take the easy way to the finals

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Joke about one of the worst plausible moves that the Mavericks could make at this point. Would be an abomination of asset maximization to trade for Lebron with the salary matching requirements.

shack009 said:

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zgolfz85 said:

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Ayton to LAL. Damnit, was hoping they'd continue to whiff

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People still think of him as the guy that was on the 20-21 Suns and he is not that anymore.

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It's insane we're talking about someone who should be just entering his prime this way (not that I'm saying it's incorrect, just that it's very sad in an athletic sense).

But maybe for him, it's the ideal situation. If he's managing his money well, he won a long time ago, going from the Bahamas to this.

Dallas Mavericks Summer League Roster has been Announced pic.twitter.com/qtQne0Y4HN

— No Ceilings (@NoCeilingsNBA) July 3, 2025

LAC sending Powell to Miami and is getting John Collins from Utah. Important to the Mavs because John Collins is a Mavs killer.

AD taking too many balls to the face?

Dallas Mavericks All-Star Anthony Davis underwent a procedure to repair a detached retina that he suffered during the season, sources tell ESPN. Davis played through multiple hits to the face last year. He is expected to be healthy for next training camp. pic.twitter.com/Yz8vxBlp06

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 8, 2025

Infection_Ag11 said:

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Our society really needs to address the overuse of "breaking news".

Reporting the surgical repair of a non-soft tissue injury that won't impact his availability in any way weeks after the fact is not breaking news.

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And the Kyrie podcast clip from one month ago that started making the rounds in the last couple days where he basically said there is no definitive return timetable. Any reasonable person understands this, but then people freak out like they've never heard of an ACK injury.

M.C. Swag said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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Our society really needs to address the overuse of "breaking news".

Reporting the surgical repair of a non-soft tissue injury that won't impact his availability in any way weeks after the fact is not breaking news.

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t's another data point that indicates the failures of this Mavs medical staff.

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Not really. He probably wanted to play and he wouldn't be able to play if he had the surgery in season. But it is more fodder for the section of the fan base that just wants to be mad at Nico for every minute thing that happens.

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The whole season from an injury prevention and management outlook was an utter disaster.

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Here's the narrative that will just continue until Nico is gone. Which injury could have been prevented by the medical staff? Gafford had that nasty knee injury and was back before the end of the season. Nobody wants to talk about the successes of the training staff.

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How is this the first time we've heard about this?

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Is it really that important? Are we entitled to know the exact moment that someone has offseason surgery that has no impact on future availability?

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Why wasn't it addressed sooner?

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Do you know when it was addressed? The tweet gives no specifics on timing.

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Did the Mavs even know about it?

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Probably.

The Kyrie injury was because he ran in to a giant Eastern European at an awkward angle. His knee didn't just give out randomly. That would have happened to anybody in that scenario.

All of the injuries I remember were contact injuries.

And yes, my point is people want to be mad because of the McMahon artical and because Casey Smith won the award for NYK. That team has a bunch of players who just don't get injured. Hart and Bridges are known for being marathon men. Bridges hasn't missed a game going back like 7 years. But Brunson played the fewest games this year since the CoVID season. Mitchell Robinson missed more games this year than he ever has.

There isn't anything specific people can point to as direct failures of the training staff or even specifics as to why Casey Smith's team won the award. People just want to be mad because it's bad optics. It's just better to be reasonable than to want to be angry.

M.C. Swag said:

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Oh and another question - if the Mavs knew about the retina detachment, why the hell did they let him play without goggles or eye protection? That seems incredibly reckless if they knew about it and did nothing to prevent further harm.

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Probably the same reason every player doesn't wear goggles to make sure they don't get a detached retina.

shack009 said:

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The Kyrie injury was because he ran in to a giant Eastern European at an awkward angle. His knee didn't just give out randomly. That would have happened to anybody in that scenario.

All of the injuries I remember were contact injuries.

And yes, my point is people want to be mad because of the McMahon artical and because Casey Smith won the award for NYK. That team has a bunch of players who just don't get injured. Hart and Bridges are known for being marathon men. Bridges hasn't missed a game going back like 7 years. But Brunson played the fewest games this year since the CoVID season. Mitchell Robinson missed more games this year than he ever has.

There isn't anything specific people can point to as direct failures of the training staff or even specifics as to why Casey Smith's team won the award. People just want to be mad because it's bad optics. It's just better to be reasonable than to want to be angry.

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I don't want to argue this insane conversation because the easiest way to demonstrate my opinion on the matter and give you something 'specific' to point to is this:

Point 1: Nico dismissed Casey Smith who went on to validate his competence in a different organization and was rewarded for it. Whether you think Smith had nothing to do with the health of all those 'Iron Men' in Tom Thibodeaux's system, the FACT remains that the league decided his team did something worthy of note.

Point 2: Conversely, the people (or at least the the Performance Director) he chose to replace Casey and his team were literally fired. I'll gladly set aside any narrative you think is just 'fans wanting to be mad' and point out that the guy in charge of making hiring and firing decisions, decided the team would be better without those 2 individuals.

Pretty sure this happened before he was even traded. Guy was constantly getting poked in the eye with the Lakers in the fall.

Look Out Below said:

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Pretty sure this happened before he was even traded. Guy was constantly getting poked in the eye with the Lakers in the fall.

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Lots of people are pointing to April 2 when Gafford elbowed him in the eye and he was bleeding from somewhere around his eye.

M.C. Swag said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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Our society really needs to address the overuse of "breaking news".

Reporting the surgical repair of a non-soft tissue injury that won't impact his availability in any way weeks after the fact is not breaking news.

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Whether it's 'breaking news' worthy or not, the fact that AD is having corrective surgery to fix something that happened during the season is at least worthy of note in the context of the overarching Mavs ineptitude narrative. Ie - it's another data point that indicates the failures of this Mavs medical staff.

AD suffering a detached retina during the season and playing pretty terribly is probably no coincidence. The whole season from an injury prevention and management outlook was an utter disaster. How is this the first time we've heard about this? Why wasn't it addressed sooner? Did the Mavs even know about it?

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That's a massive stretch

Spurs trading for Kelly Olynyk. Just acquiring good basketball players, and seems like Olynyk always pops against the Mavs.

shack009 said:

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Spurs trading for Kelly Olynyk. Just acquiring good basketball players, and seems like Olynyk always pops against the Mavs.

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Yeah, but we had to give up OKC's 2026 2nd round pick. That could be good.

Just listened to a Ticket segment from yesterday where Bob said the Mavs Vegas o/u is 38.5.

The team is not that bad even if Kyrie is out 90% of the year. It may just be a commentary on the difficulty of the West. Even without Kyrie, there are too many good players on the team.

If Kyrie Irving is back by around the all star break then this team should get close to 45 wins.

Wow hammer the over if so

I wonder if there will be any movement after people watch Flagg against semi NBA competition in SL.

If he's a top 100 player immediately then maybe the team could be looking at 40ish wins, but what if he's a top 50ish player immediately?

The Mavs could just be last year's rockets where you're always wondering about the offense but the defense and size are so strong that it can carry you.

I was planning on hammering the under because I thought it would be set at 45-46. Now I'm a little gunshy that it's set at 38.5.

I think people are severely underestimating how important playmakers are, especially playmaking guards who can create for themselves and others. We have none of those. And as I mentioned before, I think people are severely overestimating how good the defense will be.

Will be interesting to see how they fare. I can't really think of a team who has had a ton of frontcourt talent and absolutely no backcourt talent in the recent years.

Look at last year's Rockets team. Not a ton of playmaking and their guards were FVV and Green. Not super inspiring, and they dumped one of them. They also only had 2 players in their top 12 minutes leaders who were even above average at 3s (Sengun and Thompson were terrible from 3). They won 52 games because they were the 5th best defense. BTW I'm not saying the Mavs should win 52 games or close to that lol.

Mavs probably don't have any individual defenders as good as Thompson, Brooks, or Eason, but our rim protection is way better. It's not like Green, FVV, and Sengun are known as defensive stalwarts, and those were 3 of their 4 leading minutes.

Timberwolves and Warriors were the 6th and 7th best defenses last year. I think the Mavs can be as good or better than those teams were.

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I think people are severely underestimating how important playmakers are, especially playmaking guards who can create for themselves and others. We have none of those. And as I mentioned before, I think people are severely overestimating how good the defense will be.

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If AD is on the court (and motivated), he can carry a team on both ends. The first half of his first game with Mavs shows what he is capable of when 'on'.

His consistency of that type of play has always been his issue (when available -- his other issue).

AD still had a defensive rating of 110 on the Mavs, which would have been top 5 in the league last year. It's also the worst of his career.

He didn't play against many good teams, but he was also clearly dealing with the abdominal injury and wanted to play through it.

I'm not saying we'll be the '85 Bears of the NBA, but we should be pushing for top 5 in the league with serious upside, assuming a modicum of health.

UPDATE: Both Phil Handy and Popeye Jones have agreed to join Jason Kidd’s coaching staff in Dallas, league sources tell @TheSteinLine and @DLLS_Sports.

Handy and Jones will join Jay Triano as newcomers … with Mavs coaching consultant Frank Vogel now Kidd’s associate head coach. https://t.co/CbIuc4Af8c

— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) July 9, 2025

Good stuff to fill out the staff after the departures. Handy is close with Kyrie and has a good reputation around the league.

nm

Handy and Vogel both spent plenty of time with AD in LA

We get to watch Cooper Flagg play in a Mavericks* uniform tonight boys.

shack009 said:

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We get to watch Cooper Flagg play in a Mavericks* uniform tonight boys.

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This photo brought me the LOLz.

Anyone watch?

NoahAg said:

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Anyone watch?

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You know it lol.

Flagg did a pretty nice job handling the ball, didn't have a turnover other than one time when he slipped in the lane. The Mavs put the ball in his hands all game and he was pressured all game, so did a pretty nice job with that. The Lakers did a pretty nice job defending him and had Bazely guarding him most of the time. Not sure how Bazely is even allowed at summer league lol. Took a lot of fading 5-10 footers that were all pretty well contested. I think he finished 5-20 overall and 0-4 from 3.

He should have had 3-4 more assists if guys just made easy layups/dunks. I think he had a solid game overall. He'll figure out how to create more space and get to his spots better.

He won the game with a weak side block and then ran the floor and found Nembhard for 3.

Speaking of Nembhard… Guy is just a baller. He'll be on the real team at some point this year. Was enough of a pest on defense and was just awesome running offense and getting to his midrange game.