By now, the entire NBA world knows that Kyrie Irving is a Dallas Maverick now since his trade to Dallas became official on Monday. Now, what has to be talked about, unless something else happens before the trade deadline on Feb. 9, is who the Brooklyn Nets received in the Irving trade.
On Monday, Brooklyn traded Irving and Markieff Morris to the Mavericks for Spencer Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith, and draft picks. Dinwiddie, a former Net, is expected to be a big part of the Nets rotation moving forward, if not a starter from the outset.
It’s no secret that the Ben Simmons experiment has not gone as well as the team hoped. Even though Simmons has shown flashes of his past self, there are still too many times, like in Tuesday’s 116-112 loss to the Phoenix Suns, when Simmons does not try to contribute on offense with scoring. Acquiring Dinwiddie hopefully will allow Simmons to play more like a big so that the team can have a guard who plays, well, like a modern NBA guard is supposed to. Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn spoke after the game about how he sees Dinwiddie fitting on this current Nets team barring any other changes:
“Yeah, Brian (Lewis of the New York Post), that was part of my conversation with Spencer (Dinwiddie). Just kind of seeing how we can make this thing work. I think Spencer has the ability to play on and off the ball, we’ve seen that before. The good thing is, we want to play fast. And so, kicking the ball ahead, you could kick the ball head to Ben (Simmons) and he can attack. You can kick the ball ahead to Spencer and we have a thrust to the rim for our group. So, we’re going to try to use utilize both of those guys. I think we can take advantage of it without it being a negative for the group.”
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