Wow, that was a pretty good read. I bet Duffy likes him even less now. However, I agree with Cuban 100%. That is way too much to pay Steve Nash. It just messes up the whole pay scale for other FA's.
I might start a poll asking "Do you want Mark Cuban to be the owner of your team?" I know he's a very savvy PR person, and he knows how to manipulate the media. However, he is very friendly to the fans, and acts more like a next door neighbor than a multi-billionaire. People here generally dislike Cuban, because he dissed Yao pretty good before and during his NBA career. However, if I were a Mavs fan and a Mavs player, I would love to have Cuban as my owner... Is the flame coming to me?
Well he is the NBA's version of Steinbrenner (sp?)...So if you are a Mavs fans you will most certainly love him.
Mark Cuban is a self-made billionaire and a highy intelligent human being. Likely, smarter than I. But IMHO, Cuban is not above spreading BS. His calculation of what the Suns can offer Nash is based upon the difference between the Suns' committed payroll and a hypothetical $45m cap. He then goes on to say PHX can offer Nash $10m and have a $5m MLE remaining. In order to have the $15m in cap space, PHX would have to have renounce their MLE. IOW, he's not telling the whole story. Or at least not totally accurately. In the scenario, PHX could have had $15m in cap space or $10m in cap space and an MLE. Also, he projects what the Mavs could have paid Nash and uses a 10% escalator ("850k on an $8.5m Yr 1"). The Mavs had Nash's Bird Rights and the escalator is 12.5% not 10%. I guess I'm picky, but after a brief flirtation with Cuban's newness, I eventually came to regard him as a nuevo riche pain in the arse. He hit rock bottom with me last summer when he proclaimed the Mavs lost $20m in 2002-03. I cranked out some quick numbers (even down to the $1m per year American Airlines pays the Mavs for naming rights) and decided he was full of it. An interesting read, but factor in his personal predjudices and ego IMHO.
No way -- Cuban is a self made success, overgrown kid, good guy. Similar to 'The Boss'? Only in willingness to spend, spend, spend. How many front office people have Georgie run out? Cubes? No comparison. How many indictmans for GS? Cubes? Again, no comparison. BTW - DeAleck, most of us appreciate MC -- 'hate' him only 'cause he kills us!
Cuban twists information in his favor (a little) in the blog entry to keep his good guy image in all the business in place. Yeah Mark there are many different aspects that make negotiating a contract difficult particularly with a fan favorite. The bottom line was you weren't going to give an outrageous contract to an injury prone aging PG who is not worth close to the max level. It was easy for Cuban to make the right call on this one ~ honestly what are the Suns thinking? Bill Duffy lead guitar lead agent.
Great read. I never thought Cuban was that concerned about a few million here or there. Either he's bs'ing, or the media portrayal of him has been inaccurate.
Cuban is attention-hungry media w****, who has to be in the spotlight as much as possible. He thinks it's cool to rub elbows with his atheletes, and enjoys playing up the idea that he's a rebel owner.
Damn, that was fascinating to read. There was enough stuff in there about the cap, the luxury tax, league revenues, TV deals and agent manipulation to keep me thinking for a week.
Bah, this comparison doesn't work because the NBA actually has a decent financial system in place to make it possible for all teams to be competitive. Cuban is just a little more willing to spend money than the majority of owners in the league, but it is not because he has so much more revenue than others, he just takes more risks.
That was one of the more interesting things I've read all year. Kudos to Cuban. I don't get why money means so much to these players though. It's like hmm, ok....if I open Door A, I'm a multimillionaire. If I open Door B, I'm a multimillionaire. Is the difference between $50 and $65 million so great? If I'm in Nash's shoes, I can't see that I'd rather play for Colangelo than Cuban - there's no way that he's going to support 3 max-type salaries in the future. So no matter how rosy the picture looks with Joe Johnson and Amare Stoudamire and Shawn Marion right now, it's not going to be so pretty in the future. I suspect that he may have been influenced by his agent, definitely to the Mavs detriment. Duffy is likely to be driven by getting the largest contract possible. I don't know how Steve feels, but I bet Duffy is happy.
I understand your point, for sure, but I think we have to remember that money, for these guys, represents credibility, respect and power. The more they get, the more it demonstrates their credibility as players among players and coaches. Also, when you figure that the average NBA player plays between 5 and 7 years, these guys want to do everything they can to protect themselves and their families. I don't begrudge them that opportunity. You try and make as much as you can where you can. That is just capitalism.
Cuban's speculation about the new TV deal in 4 years being smaller that the current one, causing the cap to go down scares me. The Rockets will have T-mac & Yao already tied up to long-term deals but this could severely hamper getting any FA or just resigning our own players as we could be over the cap. But I also think 4 years is a long time.
Gater, I think you may have misread a couple of things in that article. 1) Cuban didn't say that Phoenix could offer Nash $10M and still have an exception. He was trying to figure out how much the Suns could pay Nash and he backed into that number by estimating the Sun's cap space and then making the assumption that the Suns would want to sign a 2nd player, so they would need to have cap space that was higher than the MLE. That makes perfect sense. Here's the two times he mentions it: So if they wanted to sign a 2nd player other than Steve, and they wanted to be able to offer more than the mid level of 5mm, that would use at least 5.1mm in cap room. So best case, the Suns would be able to offer 10.4mm to Steve in the first year. I then guessed — and this was completely a guess — that the Suns would want some cushion to sign the 2nd player and to protect themselves in case the cap came in lower than expected. So I guessed they would reserve 6mm dollars to get the 2nd player they wanted, and they would put the cap estimate at 44mm 2)Also, the mention of the 10% raise ($850K) is part of his calculation of what Phoenix could offer Nash, not a calculation of what Dallas could pay Nash. So, in that case, Cuban is correct, Phoenix could only offer Nash a 10% raise per year. Go back and re-read the paragraph preceding this one where he mentions the 10%. He had just backed into a the calculation that most likely the most Phoenix could offer Nash was $8.5M for the first season. He then uses that starting salary of $8.5M to calculate the total value of a deal that Phoenix would offer Nash. He calculates the deal as both a 4 and 5 year deal. If you start with 8.5mm and take it out from there with the annual increase allowed of 850k, that means for a 4 year deal the total is 39mm, for a 5 year deal the total would be 51mm. I talked to Donnie, I called some people around the league and asked what they knew and if my logic was sound and my numbers seemed reasonable, low or high. Without exception, all thought it was reasonable and there was no way the Suns went higher dollars or longer than 5 years.
