2018 NBA Draft

[SMC0007]

Originally Posted by Bryan_Wilson

Well one thing is for sure. I refuse to believe that our staff didn't know Motley could help the team win. He never got playing time even when he was with the team. And after watching a few games of his when he finally got PT it's pretty easy to see to me that he would have won a few games for us if he played.

The only issue I really have is how long it took the mavs to admit to themselves they needed to tank. There were plenty of games JJ Barea and crew were closing games out. That stretch where we won 4 games in a row, pretty sure JJ was on the floor to close the game out on 2 of those wins. All those wins were 8 points or less as well. So IMO they just took too long to see they needed to tank. They tried to win close games until the losses piled up enough that they could no longer ignore it. We were 9-25 after losing to the Hawks then like idiots we went and won 4 straight games. It's fine to win some games but we were seriously and in some cases desperately trying to win, not just the players but RC was since jj was closing games. That's my only criticism really. We eventually got it together and maximized our chances for losses by playing players at certain times to ensure they wouldn't close games.

I agree with the majority of this, I'm just not as convinced that they knew Motley would translate so well, at least in terms of wins. I think they clearly saw talent but they had plenty of time to put him in when Noel went on his hot dog hiatus.