Mavericks should trade everyone on the roster but these three players

The Dallas Mavericks have to face the music. Their current roster as assembled by Nico Harrison is not working. They need to trade everyone and get as much back as they can to rebuild the roster around Cooper Flagg -- everyone but just three players.

Nico Harrison is gone, hoisted with his own petard and finally put out of his misery when Mavericks owner Patrick Dumont fired him on Tuesday. What he leaves behind is a roster of ill-fitting parts, too many bigs and not enough ball-handlers or shooters. They have fallen flat on their face to start the season at 3-9, in 14th-place in the 15-team Western Conference.

This roster is not going anywhere. Nico's vision of a massive defensive collection of players was not insane, but it was never practical; certainly not with Kyrie Irving out for a few more months recovering from a torn ACL and Anthony Davis the equivalent of a papier-mache basketball player. D'Angelo Russell was supposed to solve everything as their lone free agency addition of note.

Cooper Flagg is the future of the Mavericks, and he now needs to be their present as well. The Mavericks can't honestly believe this group can figure it out, and this season is the only one in the next five where the Mavericks control their own draft pick. They need to bite the bullet and trade the entire roster.

Tanking this season -- which they have already begun doing despite trying to win -- puts them in lottery position to land another young star in a loaded draft to pair with Cooper Flagg. They can then work on getting their 2027 first-round pick back from the Charlotte Hornets, some way, somehow. If there is a player on the roster worth something to another team, they should pick up the phone and find the best deal out there.

That means trading Anthony Davis, sooner rather than later, before he suffers an even greater injury. That means trading Kyrie Irving, even before he is back on the court, to a team that needs a veteran guard. Daniel Gafford. Naji Marshall. D'Angelo Russell. Klay Thompson, if anyone in the league could possibly still see value in the declining sharpshooter.

The Mavericks should only keep three players

In fact, there are only three players on the entire roster they shouldn't take trade calls on this season. The obvious one is Flagg, a generational superstar who can be the foundation of the next great Dallas team. He is untradeable for anyone not named "Wembanyama."

Alongside Flagg, Dereck Lively II should be off the table. He is a defensive monster and rebounding machine with great hands and touch around the rim. His combination of size and athleticism is special and he makes for a great frontcourt partner for his fellow Duke Blue Devil in Flagg.

There is one more player the Mavericks shouldn't trade this season, and that's merely because they cannot -- P.J. Washington is untradeable on his new contract. He is a solid two-way forward who will have real trade value next summer, but he should be on the team this year. That should be the starting frontcourt, primarily because every other viable option should be traded.

The interim front office shouldn't trade their players for nothing, of course, but they need to be aggressive in searching out good value deals for all of their players outside of that trio. Their time horizon has shifted, and they can use picks and cap space moving forward to build a new team around Cooper Flagg -- on his timeline, not Nico Harrison's.

Even some of the younger players on the team should be auctioned off. Max Christie and Brandon Williams are young enough to keep around, but that also gives them value to teams around the league who aren't in a win-now mode - opening the number of suitors and driving up their trade value.

That means trading everything not nailed down -- it's time for a full-on fire sale to burn away the Nico Harrison era and find a new path forward.