With the recent loss of Finley, I thought I'd post this... Mark Cuban is overrated, and an argument can even be made that he is a BAD owner when it comes to player personnel moves. Everyone wants to congratulate Mark Cuban for how he turned around the horrible Mavbricks, but I think there is an argument to be made that his actions as owner have done little to improve the Mavs on court product. For example, does anyone realize that Dirk Nowitzki, Michael Finley, Steve Nash, and Don Nelson were all already in Dallas BEFORE Cuban became the owner? Those guys right there were the main cornerstones in order to turning around the Mavericks. Now, fast foward 5-6 years, and Mark Cuban has lost Steve Nash and Michael Finley because he's given out rediculous contracts and acted as if his team were in a fantasy league. Cuban gives Raef LaFrentz, Shawn Bradley, Dampier, etc these HUGE deals while trading for overpriced players like Keith Van Horn, Tariq Abdul-Wahad, Nick Van Exel, and Juwon Howard... After making so many deals that the press initially praised, just because he parlayed crappy players into decent players with crappy contracts, I feel that the Mavs are regressing. They lost Finley and Nash for NOTHING basically because of all of the crap contracts they've picked up along the way. I think Mark Cuban will be exposed this season. He is NOT the best owner in the league. Not even close, IMO. Definitely one of the most enthusiastic and fan friendly...But once you scratch the surface and look deeper, you'll realise that all of his hype has been media created. Oh yeah--don't forget the Dennis Rodman fiasco.
Cuban did a great job of putting the Mavs on the NBA map and taking them out of the craphouse they were in back in the day. As much as I hate to admit it, the Mavs were dominating regular seasons for a while, they were the team to beat. There style of play just never got them to the next level in the playoffs, you need to play defense. But I think it clearly shows that money and big names don't mean a championship. He's given out a lot of bad contracts but have been able to move them quite easily when needed. But their window is closing fast. Losing Nash and Finley and replacing them with Terry and Christie is a terrible exchange. Agreed.
Even with all of Mark Cuban's money and enthusiasm......that team has peaked. You have to give the guy credit for bringing some excitement to the team, and for garnering interest in players throughout the league to want to come and play there. But even with all of this.......he has no concept of team chemistry. He has no patience. He's a rich businessman, that bought a sports team and became too involved too quickly. He's used to immediate success via acquisition. A basketball team cannot be shaken up each year and expected to go all the way. The interesting thing about all of this, is that he has tried each season to add marquis players to the roster. Then, when things don't work out as well as he would like (championship) he trades again, and again, and again. Always proclaiming, "This is the best team we've had since I have been here." I thought the best team they put on the floor was the team with Van Exel and Nash in the backcourt, with Finley at the 3 and Dirk playing center. Small ball as they called it. But that year they made it to the West finals was clearly better that this year's Mavs team. Living in Dallas myself, I think the fans are getting a bit tired of his addictive trading. It's downhill from here for a while. I think they will be in rebuilding mode in a few more years.
I am always a fan of Mark Cuban. Of all his brilliant moves last year, the best one was to pry the 2nd best center in the league away from the Golden State with a 70 millions plus contract. Go Mark Cuban! Oh, I almost forgot to say. The decision to let the reigning MVP go to Phoenix was the close second best of his moves the whole year.
One thing about Cuban is he's willing to spend money to make his team better. Many of the big contracts the Mavs of been willing to take on were early attempts to buy a championship by Cuban like the Marlins did in baseball. It hasn't worked out for the Mavs mainly because as mentioned before until last season they never played defense and they've always been soft in the middle. Dampier was suppose to give them a defensive center to control the paint, but he has under achieved thus far because he is just to foul prone. I wish the Astros had an owner like Cuban.
Lates from Cuban's blog: http://www.blogmaverick.com/ Its not just business, its personal Posted Aug 16, 2005, 11:18 AM ET In the NBA when a player is signed to a contract, the business side is downplayed. Everyone is happy. Everyone knows there is an incredible amount of risk taken, but its a time to celebrate and ignore what could go wrong. All is right in the world. When teams have to release a player, the NBA becomes a business and all involved say just that. Its just a business and we all understand that these things happen. But its not true. The NBA is never just a business. Its always business. Its always personal. All good businesses are personal. The best businesses are very personal. Creating a close connection to those you do business with has its many risks, rewards and consequences. There are few things in business i have encountered that are more difficult than firing someone, particularly if that someone has always been, or has become a friend. On the flipside, I have been rewarded with many friends Michael Finley is one of those people I am proud to call my friend. Releasing Fin last night was one of the hardest things I have had to do as owner of the Mavs. (Trading Erik Strickland was probably the hardest. Strick did more to help me my first year than anyone.). Even more difficult than releasing Mike was having the conversations with him about what our options were The model for success in the NBA has changed over the past 6 years I have been in the league. When I first got to the Mavs, there was no luxury tax, revenues from TV and the league went up every year, as did the salary cap. That changed dramatically with the leagues new TV deal and it changed even further with this years new collective bargaining agreement. Rather than an environment where salaries could go up because the cap and revenues were going up, we entered an environment where trades were made almost exclusively for financial reasons and rarely for basketball skill reasons. The Mavs tried to take advantage of the situation. When the annual league revenue increases stopped and a luxury tax loomed, teams adjusted their financial profiles. To get under the tax threshold, they offered good players packaged with horrible contracts. We took them. We hoped the talent would get us a championship before the number of bad contracts we took on in trades caught up with us. It didnt happen Over the past year we have done our best to try to “rebuild” and still be in a position to win a championship. We have always been good at developing young players. We work hard to give them personal attention and skills development. We are working to improve it even further and have completely upgraded our development programs this summer. We are also significantly changing how we scout NBA players. It has become more organized, structured and planned rather than “gut feel ”. We have a coach who is far more systematic in his approach to both More importantly we have gone from just trying to acquire talent to have assets that in turn might be traded for better talent, to making sure we have players that fill a role for Coach Johnson’s vision of the team. Today, and for the future with young players that we can develop to fill those roles on future Mavs teams. Which brings us back to Mike. Under the new CBA, the amount of money we would be able to save by waiving Mike, and invoking the amnesty provision, when combined with some financial clauses in the way his contract was structured and the money that could be returned as part of the NBA set off contract provisions, could put our cash savings in the next 3 years at more than 90mm dollars. Thats a lot of money. Now I would be shocked if we are able to realize all of that and stay under the tax amount, but even saving that much money in essence gives us a “do over” in terms of financial flexibility when it comes to signing new players. It gives me a chance to recover from the mistakes I made. Are we going to get back in the business of taking on bad contracts to get a single player. No. Will we consider trading short term contracts for longer, more expensive players, yes. If it makes basketball sense and doesnt inhibit our future. The difference going forward today vs the past is that Avery and Donnie are putting in programs and structure that will allow us to better evaluate players and choose those that put our team in the best position to succeed. We never did that in the past. We made trades because we thought we knew players. Im embarrased to admit, but this summer was the first time we actually brought in non rookie Free Agents that we were interested in to work out. Before, we just called the agents of guys we liked and tried to work out deals. Avery and Donnie and Joe P have watched more tape in a week of players that we have talked about in trades or Free Agency then we have watched in any summer since I bought the team and maybe in all combined. Its my fault that we got to this point. I never should have authorized deals without asking for far more details. I was guilty of being overly optomistic. I wanted to believe that the next deal was the one that was the difference maker. I found ways to rationalize the business side and how i would only be losing a few more dollars and that if it made the difference it was worth it. I enabled a culture where we always thought that if we had assets to trade we could fix a mistake. I was wrong. We should have done several years ago what the organization is doing now to improve our player evaluation and development. The template for success in the NBA changed from the Portland model of 1999-2000 when I got to the league, to the Detroit, San Antonio, Miami model. The finances and rules of the league evolved. The winning teams were ahead of the curve or evolved as the business of the NBA changed. Today, success seems to come from being a smart organization that can identify and develop young talent and have the financial and or cap flexability to be opportunistic and improve your team in season or during the offseason. Although we have succeeded on the court to the point of 5 straight 50 plus win seasons, we certainly didnt do it “the best way” . We did it the most expensive way. It cost us flexibility and created lots of bad habits. That was my mistake and it ended up costing us Mike. Waiving Mike gave us the opportunity to reclaim financial flexibility. It never should have gotten to this point. My mistakes let it. Which makes it all the more painful. Its business, but it really is personal. Im learning. Our organization is learning. The bright side is that I like the team we have going into the year. Our guys have been working hard to get better this summer. I think having AJ for a full training camp along with 11 returning players will allow us to compensate for losing Mike and hopefully be a better team.
Seattle's version of Moneyball really opened their eyes. If he's willing to accept and learn from his mistakes, then he has the chance to shed the overrated title.
F'king a-hole. Even though I have no sympathy for anyone working for the Mavs, I still hate people who are all "it's all my fault for LETTING my underlings f-up" when you KNOW they're the culprit. These are the worst kind of boss. Can't say I'm surprised that this came from Cuban.
Mark Cuban would be a good MLB team owner. I like the way the salary cap and Bird rights works in the NBA. It keeps the playing field a little more even -- and allows people like Cuban to shoot themselves in the foot.
He's saying it's his fault. Not for letting underlings f**k up, but for just doing things badly in general. I don't like the mavs (hey, they are our rivals ) but the reason Cuban is as liked as he is is because a)he's willing to spend money and b) he's more like one of the 'fans' than any owner before him. What he did to us and with Yao this last year is the perfect example. We hate him because of it, obviously...but imagine you're a Mavs fan. (shudder) How happy are we when we hear JVG filed a complaint about some obvious mistreatment about Yao? Stuff like that is what gets you positive points with Joe Fan.
Mark is only the front man for a lot of the moves that have been made. The actual person behind a lot of the moves is the Nelson's, both father and son. For some reason the Nelson's have convinced Cuban on a lot of bad moves, especially the last couple of years. It will be interesting to see if Cuban continues to listen to the Nelson's in the near future. T_Man
Funny you should bring up the MLB. I think it's kind of funny how nobody complains when teams like the Knicks put together a payroll upwards of $100 million the way they do with the Yankees. I guess the fact that the Knicks are terrible excuses them.
Interesting, Dallas was better than Houston last season and they were younger. How are they in rebuilding mode?
The bottom line for most sports team owners is what the franchise is worth in $. There some exceptions, Bill Davidson doesn't seem to care. The point Mark Cuban can make anytime he wants to, is that the Mavs are worth many times what he paid for them bad contracts and all. In that respect, Mark has made himself a butt-load of money. He is even one of the financial advisors to the NBA if I am not mistaken, and so is Les Alexander who has done no less with his team.
The Mavs team is essentially the same team as last year with the young guys a year older and wiser. The only real difference is Finley gone with Christi replacing him. I know you Rockets fans don't want to hear how overrated Finley really is but Fin is merely an outside shooting, non rebounding, non free throw shooting player with bad handles. He played ok during the Rockets series but went back to his old ways against Phoenix with 1 good game and 5 dissappearing acts. Josh, Devin, and Marquis will be much better this year so I wouldn't get my hopes up too hight that the Mavs have peaked.
