I'm not quite sure why I have the desire to post this. When Cuban first came into the league as owner of the Mavericks, I was sipping the kool-aid that he was the "best owner in the NBA." Over the past couple of years, I've actually taken a critical look at the facts behind his regime as owner of the Mavs and realize that he's nowhere near the great owner people say. I'm tired of hearing that Mark Cuban is the "best owner in the NBA! I wish we had an owner like him!" I'm making this post to show that, while a good owner, he's certainly done nothing special. January 14, 2000: Mark Cuban purchases the Dallas Mavericks from Ross Perot, Jr. At this point, the Dallas Mavericks already had on their roster Michael Finley, Dirk Nowitzki, and Steve Nash. These players were the three cornerstones of the emergence of the Mavs as a powerhouse in the NBA. Don Nelson was the coach and GM who had put together most of these pieces. During Cuban's first season, the Mavericks finished with a respectable record of 40-42, just four games out of the playoffs. What was Mark Cuban's major imprint on the team during this year? The mid-season free agent acquisition of Dennis Rodman. During the twelve game stretch in which Rodman played, he went 3-9, destroying team chemistry before being released. 2000-2001 Season: Mavs finish 53-29, make the playoffs for the first time in the first time in several years, and stage an unlikely upset of the Utah Jazz in the first round. What was Mark Cuban's major deal in this season? Trading Hubert Davis, Christian Laettner, Etan Thomas and spare parts for Juwan Howard and spare parts. 2001-2002 Season: Mavs finish 57-25, make the playoffs, lose in the second round yet again. Cuban's blockbuster deal? Juwan Howard and spare parts for Raef Lafrentz, Nick Van Exel, and spare parts. 2002-2003: Cuban finally leaves the team alone, they finish 60-22, make the Western Conference Finals. 2003-2004: On paper, Cuban makes a couple of trades that look to be good for the Mavericks. Mavs acquire Antaawn Jamison and spare parts for Nick Van Exel and spare parts. Raef Lafrentz is dealt for Antoine Walker. Team chemistry sucks, the Mavs finish 52-30, are eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. 2004-2005: Perhaps the Mavs shining moment as a player on the free agent market and trade block. Mavs make several shrewd moves acquiring Jason Terry, Jerry Stackhouse, and the rights to Devin Harris. At the same time, they acquired Erick Dampier, signed him to a huge deal, and let Steve Nash sign with the Suns. Mark Cuban seems to think that Nash doesn't play enough D, is too old, and doesn't deserve a long term contract at his age. In the middle of this season, Don Nelson, the architect of the Nowitzki/Nash/Finley trio, was let go as coach in favor of Avery Johnson. Mavs are eliminated by the Phoenix Suns, led by Steve Nash, in the second round of the playoffs. 2005-2006: Cuban cuts Michael Finley under the Allan Houston rule. Mavericks have their best season, making the finals. Mavericks lose the NBA Finals after taking a 2-0 lead. 2006-2007: Mavericks steamroll to the best record in the regular season. Lose in a historic upset to the Golden State Warriors. San Antonio Spurs, who acquired Michael Finley after the Mavericks cut him, go on to win NBA championship. 2007-2008: Mavericks in contention for best record in the Western Conference. In the face of recent trades for Pau Gasol by the lakers and Shaquille O'Neal by the Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavs react by trading away Devin Harris and several role players for Jason Kidd. Since trade, Mavericks are 0-9 against winning teams. Mavericks are in danger of missing the playoffs entirely (you can't discount the recent loss of Dirk, but the team was sucking against good teams with him). The humor in the Jason Kidd deal is the fact that Steve Nash is still gunning in Phoenix, has a smaller contract than Kidd, and is actually a little bit younger than Kidd. I'm not saying that Mark Cuban is absolute trash as an owner. He's been good in the sense that fan interest has returned to the Mavericks, they sell out a lot of games, and their fans are loud. At the same time, I'm just tired of hearing how he's the best owner in the NBA. He had three all-star calibur players, two of whom would become MVPs, and a HOF calibur coach when he arrived in Dallas. He's splashed around and made a lot of noise, but he's messed up the team chemistry with his huge trades on a regular basis. For all of the ridiculous contracts he's taken on via trades and free agency, the one guy he lets walk is STEVE NASH! Cuban let Nash walk, in large part, due to a desire to get younger. The Mavs did very well with Devin Harris running the point, then Cuban decides it's time to shake things up and he trades for a guy older than Nash. A history of trades for guys like Juwan Howard, Raef LaFrentz, Nick Van Exel, and Antoine Walker does not make you the best owner in the NBA.
I'd toss in that he openly pulled the Mavs out of the running for Shaq, Kobe and others in the past few years out of an insistence on keeping Dirk. Nowitzki has repaid him by wilting in the worst way in the past 3 postseasons. Allegedly, even Avery was advocating a Dirk trade this past summer. Cuban's not so bad as an owner, he's done worlds as far as marketing the Mavs and making them relevant in Dallas (outside of roster moves). As a pseudo-GM, he's been too prone to making moves without a vision or understanding of what works. Displayed a fantasy league sense of understanding. Evan
he isn't the GM. why are we judging roster moves? roster moves do not reflect the owner since they usually have little bball knowledge in comparison to the pres of bball ops and GM. all you can ask of an owner is to treat the team less like a for-profit business (like the clippers owner who is always tops in profit though the team continues to suffer), and more like a team trying to compete for a championship. les alexander is somewhere in the middle on this. les wants to win but not if it means going over the LT. cuban will go over the LT to win. then you have to look at how the owner treats the players. last i checked cuban was buying special seats for the bench and some sort of super material towels. finally, and probably most importantly, how he treats the fans. didn't he buy the whole stadium airline tickets one year? not the most practical gift, but better than a bobble head. now he is a pretty big cry baby, he is a bit too hands on, and i definitely wouldn't call him the best. however, no one has ever questioned his desire to win, or treatment of players or fans. he is definitely a good owner, one of the best but probably not #1 due to his immaturity and hot-headedness.
I think his biggest detriment, in basketball and in business, is his ego. He's got this sense that everything he does has a touch of gold on it, when it clearly doesn't. He had the market cornered in HD broadcasting, but his ego got in the way, he burned way too many bridges with the major networks, and instead of using HDNet, they got together and formed MOJO, which is absolutely destroying HDNet now. In basketball, with all the trades that he has done, you get the sense that he is just fiddling with the roster almost because he CAN. I will give him this though....he is an absolute marketing genius. The man knows how to sell....that's why the Mavs have become one of the most popular teams in the NBA. He should just stick with the marketing side of things however, and let basketball people make the basketball decisions.
the phrasing was a little light hearted, but the point is serious. a few years ago he baught the team some sort of egyptian towels which are supposed to be softer and more absorbant. he also invested in what he called "much more comfortable" seats for the bench... they might also be taller than the usual seats as well. and though i understand his influence in roster moves is probably greater than any other owner, i still doubt that he is the guy on the phone with other GM's negotiating deals. there are other basketball minds at work for him. sure he may be very specific about what kind of deal he wants but it's still up to the GM to get what he can. even if you want to judge him as a GM... he put them in a possition to win a championship the last two seasons, and only because dirk is such a b!tch did they not win. now, i'm not saying your wrong about him being an overrated owner. he's not the best ever. he's not the best in sports right now...mabye not even the best in the league, but i wouldn't call him average either. he's a very good owner weather we like him or not... which we definitely do not!
Are the Mavericks more profitable now than they were before Cuban took over the team? Ultimately, that's what matters.
OK, I'll stop and take some time to respond to some of your points since you were being serious. First, you indicate that a strong quality of Mark Cuban is his willingess to be a big-spender and go into significant luxury tax territory. History shows us that this is NOT a way to build a championship team. Take a look over the past several years at teams that won the title: 06-07: Spurs spent $2M more in salary than Rockets 05-06: Heat spent $10M less in salary than Rockets 04-05: Spurs spent $13M less in salary than Rockets 03-04: Pistons spent $2M less in salary than Rockets 02-03: Spurs spent $2M more in salary than Rockets 01-02 Lakers spent $4M more in salary than Rockets If anything, a wanton willingness to exceed the salary cap has shown us that a team will most likely NOT succeed in the NBA. This generally indicates a reckless abandon for developing young talent through the draft, signing players to bloated contracts, and trading for mediocre players with long term contracts with a larger dollar value than actual value. Currently, the top four teams in the western conference, by record, are the Hornets, Lakers, Rockets, and Spurs. These teams rank #22, #9, #12, and #11 in payroll for the 2007-08 season. The hallmarks of these teams? Their foundation has been built through the draft (Chris Paul, David West), (Kobe Bryant, Andrew Bynum), (Yao Ming, Carl Landry,), (Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobli) sprinkled with a few no-brainer type trades (Gasol for Kwame), (T-Mac for Stevie, Scola for Greek T-Mac). These are exactly the type of deals that Cuban has failed to make during his time in Dallas. His team was already built by the time he got there. The talent on that team with the coaching was going to make some level of heightened success inevitable. Funny enough, there is a blog post from Mark Cuban himself that directly flies in the face of what you're saying. For some reason, the one time he decided to care about the Luxury Tax was the time he decided to not re-sign Steve Nash. Don't believe me? http://www.blogmaverick.com/2004/07/03/steve-nash-part-1/ Read that blog entry for evidence. You can also read that blog for evidence of how involved he is in making these type of decisions. Also, don't forget that he cut Mike Finley for nothing to save luxury tax money.
Did you even read my post? How much of their success on the court has Cuban even been responsible for? Dirk, Nash, Finley and Nellie were all in place and turning things around by the time Cuban arrived.
I hate Cuban alot. Like alot alot. But he brought a different attitude to a completely hapless organization and got the city and the players excited about Mavericks basketball again. It's not fair to sit there and say he's controlling all of the roster moves behind the scenes and then say that the success of the team has nothing to do with him.
The benefit of Mark Cuban is all of the above. Over about a four year period, because of willingness to essentially eat salary and collect contracts, he turned Hubert Davis, Laettner, and Etan Thomas into Jason Terry, Jerry Stackhouse, and Devin Harris. (those three were acquired by trading Jamison and Walker) Each of the interim moves was a talent upgrade - certainly chemistry got worse, but ultimately the Mavs were collecting talent. When you have a boatload of talent, you can trade it to get the parts you want, and that's what they did. It was a multi-year process that made them one of the NBA's 2 or 3 best teams for a few years and almost brought them a title, except for the collapse against the Heat. On the flipside, now they've gone they other way with the Kidd trade where it looks like they have moved in the wrong direction (or right direction, from our perspective).
I agree with you that they were essentially stockpiling talent in order to make trades for upgrade in talent, but at this point, could you not potentially look back and say a team that kept Nash, Dirk, and Finley while making smaller moves for role players that complimented them on the court would have been the wiser move? The team had one year with a core of Terry/Stack/Harris surrounding Dirk where they achieved more success than the Dirk/Finley/Nash trio. They made the finals and then choked off a big lead. The past three seasons they've lost in the 2nd rd, gone to the finals, and been bounced in the 1st rd. This season they are in danger of missing the playoffs. The three years immediately after Cuban's arrival, the team made it to the 2nd rd twice and the WCF in the third season. The season after the Mavs went to the WCF, Cuban trades for Antoine Walker and Jamison, the team gets bounced in the first round. Mind you, the Mavs were without Dirk for the last 4 games of this series.
Like what yobod said, his ego is just way too big. When I watch the Mavs play another team, the game doesn't matter to me, I rather see him throw hissy fits and put his face in his hands.
Keep in mind though, they still have Dirk, and they only got rid of Finley when he got old. So really, you're talking Nash vs. Terry/Stack/Harris. And at the time of the Nash move, a lot of people thought Phoenix was overpaying, and no one though of Nash the way he's thought of now. He wasn't an MVP candidate or anything like that - just a really good, no-defense point guard, at a time when most people thought that for Dallas to go to the next level, they needed to play more defense. I think all those moves extended the potential timeframe of their being good from a few years (which the window closing as Nash/Finley got older) to a longer term outlook with Harris, and with both Stackhouse and Terry being tradable for younger pieces down the line if needed (similar to Jamison/Walker).
When the team is devoid of talent being a willing trade partner is a great way to eventually get some quality talent on the same team. However at some point you have to turn off the willingness to trade and identify a core of players you are going to go to war with and simply tweak the roster around them. Cuban has never stopped being a horse trader, and it has essentially ruined the current core. The Kidd for Harris trade was flat out stupid. DD
