Yahoo Sports senior NBA reporter Vincent Goodwill is joined by Howard Beck on the latest episode of “Good Word with Goodwill” on the Ball Don’t Lie podcast to discuss Dallas’ woes with its new backcourt since the trade deadline. Subscribe to Ball Don't Lie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

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- As hard as I've been on Kyrie Irving, I cannot pin much, if any or all, of the Dallas Mavericks' struggles since they've gotten him to him. They were fourth when they traded for Kyrie. Now they sit 11th. They lost again. He doesn't seem happy. What do we make of everything that the Dallas Mavericks have done since being fourth in the West, since coming off of that Western Conference Finals appearance last year? This was not expected at all. And now they have a free agent decision to make with Kyrie Irving regardless of how all this plays.

- This is one of the bigger disasters I can recall in season.

- I understood why you make the trade.

- All right. So state the case for making the trade, because I think I get it. But I'm going to-- because I didn't agree with it at the time. But you tell me why you make the trade.

- You make the trade because you don't know when the next time you'll be able to acquire a second star. They had a very hard time acquiring a second star for Dirk Nowitzki, the most stable of stable franchise players this league has ever seen-- 20 years with a franchise, was never going to leave. After Steve Nash, they had one all-star. I think it was Josh Howard in 2007. One all-star for Dirk Nowitzki the entire time he was there after Steve Nash left in 2004.

You think about the same thing coming up with Luka Doncic, who might be a little more itchy than Dirk Nowitzki. You're thinking that, hey, we're going to get a player who can create his own shot, that can take pressure off of Luka to feel like he has to do everything. Jason Kidd literally said to me, man, I hope Luka doesn't die out there on the floor. You know what I mean? Because he's playing so much and playing so hard, and the usage is so high. He knew it wasn't sustainable.

So you get Kyrie Irving with the hope and belief that you'll be able to pay him more than anybody else, which is basically the only way that you feel like you can keep a player as if he's in-house, and you can fill in the blanks for everything that you've lost in the offseason, but that you will have enough scoring talent to make up for it in the meantime to keep you afloat. There's a lot of teams that's playing bad defense but still winning basketball. It's just that Dallas isn't one of them.