The Dallas Mavericks turned heads Tuesday night when they were part of a four-team trade that gave them the rights to Sergio de Larrea, the 25th overall pick.
De Larrea currently plays for ACB Valencia in Spain and his team just won the Liga ACBC title on Wednesday with a 108-84 victory in the deciding Game 4 against Barcelona for just the second league title in team history.
It’s unclear if De Larrea will play in Summer League early next month after having contributed to a championship so recently,
and there’s been speculation over whether Dallas will bring him over to the States this year or use a strategy often used on foreign prospects: draft and stash.
In these scenarios, teams draft players and retain their playing rights but allow them to continue to play in their home countries. This can happen because the team has no roster spots or simply because they see potential in a player but they don’t think they’re ready to compete at the NBA level just yet.
Marc Stein reported Wednesday that all options are “being worked through” regarding De Larrea’s future.
*Insert Future voice* whatever that f*cking means.
I don’t think it’s always wrong to draft and stash a player, and I think there are even situations — like Oklahoma City — where draft and stashing makes sense. You don’t want to mess with what you have now but you know you’ll need young players to add to your talent as your core gets older.
But in Dallas’ situation, I see no upside to keeping him overseas and only a downside by not bringing him on board immediately.
We have one of the league’s best young players in recent history in Cooper Flagg, and we need to start building the team that’s going to be around him for the next decade. Do I think de Larrea is going to be an All-Star on day 1? Probably not, but I have no idea, but if you’re going to draft a guy with a first-round pick, I argue you should get him on the court with the future of your franchise as soon as possible.
It’s like Jalen Brunson with Luka Dončić after the 2018 draft. Did we know Brunson was going to be a star one day after we drafted him in the second round? Of course not, but we brought him to the team immediately and he and Dončić built chemistry together that led them to the conference finals just four years later.
(Small side note: ouch, that sucked writing that paragraph knowing what we know now.)
The point is this: de Larrea may not be Jalen Brunson, de Larrea could end up being an MVP. Regardless, we need to see who he is (or who he isn’t) immediately. His lighting up the Euroleague next season does nothing for the Mavericks, and if he comes to the NBA and sucks, he’s another late first-round pick that didn’t pan out — AKA most of them.
Bring the kid over, and let’s see what he can do with the team. He may just be the start of something special in Dallas.
