All right, the Eastern Conference offseason grades are in the books.

Western Conference coming up next here.

Got a lot of interesting stuff to get to in the One True Conference where the competition level is a lot higher.

Although I will say there were not that many teams in the East that I thought just had terrible off seasons.

Let's find out whether that is true for the Western

Conference, beginning, Danny, with the Dallas Mavericks. And the Mavericks are a good starting

place as a reminder that you and I grade basically, it's a version of on the opportunities that you

have. And so the biggest thing that happened for the Dallas Mavericks

in the offseason was drafting Cooper Flag number one. However, the reason they drafted Cooper Flag

number one is because they won the draft lottery and they get no credit for that. They

congratulations, you did it. It helps. It helps your franchise. But what if it was all part of the

plan? But what if, well, then we have to regrade the Luca trade, but we're not going to do that.

We're only saving that for the Randall Towns trade.

But so, like, you don't get credit for that.

And I actually think this is going to be, I don't know if it would controversial, but it'll be different, is that I'm actually, the Cooper Flag drafting is not because

of him, obviously, but it's going to lead to me downgrading the Mavericks offseason because

to me, Nico Harrison and ownership had an opportunity when you get Cooper Flagg, when he lands in

your lap despite not being that level of bad, to reorient your team. And even if they had done it,

it probably would have taken a long time. There would have been some pain. They have obligations

with the picks and everything like that. But really, to me, when you look at where the Mavericks

offseason ended up, they did basically nothing that looks like it's tailored to or even accounting

for the opportunity that they got to draft Cooper Flag to potentially reorient.

...