[j0Shi]

Great stuff from Zach Lowe as always.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/16...ba-free-agency

But the Mavs have mishandled most of the things they do control. They traded down in drafts to save money, traded out of them and whiffed on most of the picks they did make. Donnie Nelson, the team's GM, begged Cuban to draft Giannis Antetokounmpo at No. 13 in 2013, but the Mavs instead traded down five spots to open up a few hundred thousand bucks in extra cap space for Dwight Howard. They ended up drafting Shane Larkin at No. 18 as part of a deal that sent away their first-round pick from the year before.

Fewer teams had cap room then, but the Mavs could have picked 13th and found other ways to dump money in a pinch.

Team building is hard, and it requires major luck somewhere along the way. Most picks below the lottery yield back-of-the-rotation guys or total busts. But to sustain success, you eventually have to hit on a few of them. Roddy Beaubois, the No. 25 pick in 2009, might have turned into a hit had foot injuries not ruined his career. Justin Anderson, the 21st pick last year, looks like a hoppy and versatile wing perfect for the modern NBA. The hits don't have to be Kawhi Leonard at No. 15, or Draymond Green in the second round. One or two Jae Crowders will do.

The Mavs had the real Jae Crowder, and included him (plus this year's pick) in their ill-fated gamble for Rajon Rondo. Boston got Brandan Wright in that deal, too. Crowder and Wright will earn $12 million combined next season, about 60 percent of Kent Bazemore's likely salary. Dallas was brilliant to snag Al-Farouq Aminu on a minimum salary in 2014-15, but then let him walk to Portland to carve out max cap space for DeAndre Jordan.

Dallas sacrificed a lot of good under-27 players in the pursuit of great ones, and the odds got worse when the cap boom gave everyone space. Chandler Parsons is the latest such casualty. He went from bro-in-chief to outcast in record time, and no one will say exactly why. His knee issues certainly frustrated the Mavs, especially given the timing of flare-ups; Parsons appeared in just one of Dallas' 10 playoff games over the past two seasons.

The Mavs' decision that Parsons is no longer a max player offended him, and the market has proved Parsons right; Memphis has offered him a max contract pending a physical that promises to be one of the most suspenseful moments of this free-agency period.

Parsons didn't find a groove in Dallas until January, and he's a minus defender. But he's a high-IQ guy who shot 39 percent from deep in Dallas and can shoot, pass and dribble across both forward spots. He's never made an All-Star team, and he's not a foundational piece. No one knows how his right knee will hold up going forward

But Parsons is good, and the Mavs can't afford to let good 27-year-olds walk away without a Plan B. Their Plan A appears to have been a double-barreled signing of Mike Conley and Hassan Whiteside, but that left them once again at the mercy of variables they cannot control. Stud free agents want to see players with whom they can grow, but the Mavs have mostly punted on such players to pursue stud free agents.