Does Cuban's Tactics Tarnish the Mavs Championship?

[Apollo]

We all know how exciting it was to watch the Mavs win their way to a Championship last year. I got to thinking though, when was the last time you can recall a Championship team ever tear it down immediately after? I ask this because Cuban's actions clearly point to a man who didn't care about winning this year. He tore it down and juggled it to get cap space to rebuild. So technically you can consider this season year one of the rebuild. How does seeing this make you feel about the reigning(but not for much longer) champs?

[e2thed]

They need some Deron in their life, thats why.

[Hugmenot]

So you blame Mark Cuban for losing three players to free agency?

Tyson Chandler signed received an exorbitant offer from the Knicks. Although I believe he deserves the defensive player of the year as much as anyone else, I don't think he's worth $56M for 4 years.

Caron Butler was offered $24M for years from the Clippers. As Butler missed 53 games the previous season and has a history of injuries, this was a big gamble on the parts of the Clippers and Cuban chose not to match

JJ Barea decided he wanted money more than being part of a contender.

Cuban acquired the services of Lamar Odom, the 2010-11 winner of the 6th man award. Who knew he would suck as much as he did?

I believe Cuban gave his team a chance, albeit quite smaller than the previous year, while preserving flexibility. I cannot ask more of an owner.

[Matt52]

The league is a business.

The Mavs already operate at a loss - even as a champion.

Resigning all the players was no guarantee of a championship again - it only would have allowed them to defend as the same group.

Keeping the same group together would have cost a lot of money.... and a lot more tax. The big issue becomes after the 2012-13 season when that group would have been even older and more expensive and more costly with the new tax system coming in to place.

I don't fault Cuban. If anything I admire his foresight to a changing landscape and a desire to make the team competitive longer than another 2 seasons.

[Apollo]

So you blame Mark Cuban for losing three players to free agency?

Tyson Chandler signed received an exorbitant offer from the Knicks. Although I believe he deserves the defensive player of the year as much as anyone else, I don't think he's worth $56M for 4 years.

Caron Butler was offered $24M for years from the Clippers. As Butler missed 53 games the previous season and has a history of injuries, this was a big gamble on the parts of the Clippers and Cuban chose not to match

JJ Barea decided he wanted money more than being part of a contender.

Cuban acquired the services of Lamar Odom, the 2010-11 winner of the 6th man award. Who knew he would suck as much as he did?

I believe Cuban gave his team a chance, albeit quite smaller than the previous year, while preserving flexibility. I cannot ask more of an owner.

Cuban has never minded paying a huge payroll in the past. He won a title because of his spending ways. He would not have ever won a title otherwise. So yes, I blame him for it. He deviated from his winning tactics. It's on him. Once he has his new build in place he will spend, spend, spend as he see fit. He's a billionaire and is free with his cash when it comes to his toy.

All that said, I never said I felt their Championship was tarnished but asking the question certainly creates good discussion.

[joey_hesketh]

Found some quotes from Mark on the subject:

"The CBA changed. All right, and you can't just look at things the exact same way you did before. Before if you went to the luxury tax, you paid dollar for dollar and there were no competitive issues. Now, you get up there it's a lot more expensive, but more importantly, you're limited on trades, you're limited on ability to add players. There's a lot of different issues. So if you have three stars or two stars and the rest minimum players you can win a championship, remains to be seen."
Source

That's not the way I work. You don't play for an owner, you play for a team and that's the way we kind of present it. But you know what, let me say this, there's a lot of presumptions going on about what we're going to do this summer, but you shouldn't pay attention to anything you've read or heard because that's not the way we approach things. We're the last organization to get one thing in our mind and that's the only thing we're going to do.

So I'm not so sure this is a done deal.

As for whether the Mavs rings are tarnished? Absolutely not.
I can't think of any team in the last whiile, that made the Finals even without being a Tax Paying team. Its part of the sport.
With the new CBA, that is obviously different. But to what extent, we won't know for another couple years.

I don't fault Cuban. If anything I admire his foresight to a changing landscape and a desire to make the team competitive longer than another 2 seasons.

And I fully agree with this.

[slaw]

I wouldn't characterize what happened this year as Cuban blowing the team up. This wasn't the '98 Florida Marlins fire sale. Dallas was still competitive and they are positioned with enough flexibility this offseason to re-tool back into a 55-win team. If Odom hadn't fallen apart, who knows where they would be right now.

The thing about Dallas is that before Cuban got there the franchise was awful. I am pretty sure they hadn't even made the playoffs in about 10 years. Players fled Dallas. The franchise was a joke. Since then, they've won 50+ games a season and been one of the premier organizations in the NBA. It shows exactly what you can do with serious, committed ownership. Given everything Cuban's accomplished there, even if you think he made bad choices this season, he gets a pass...

[Apollo]

This year was the prelude to blowing the team up. All their plays were made to make huge cuts to the roster for this summer. They weren't making plays to defend the title. They didn't care about defending the title.

[joey_hesketh]

They didn't care about defending the title.

Bold statement.
I'll need some more evidence before I let that one go. Haha

[Apollo]

I think it's clear as day in front of us based on their roster moves.

[thead]

Apollo is wrong.

[e2thed]

Cuban might be a genius if he lands Steve Nash and other role player next season who knows can't fault the guy for thinking for future championships rather than back to back championships.

[AJ360]

I think it's clear as day in front of us based on their roster moves.

I think what's clear is that the Mavs' number one priority was not title defence, but cap flexibility, which was largely dictated by the new CBA.

That being said I still think that their roster as assembled was competitive enough to be a title contender, but a lot of the players fell short of expectations.

[Apollo]

I think what's clear is that the Mavs' number one priority was not title defence,

Right. So you agree with what I'm saying.

Apollo is wrong.

And you don't. So you feel all their moves were with a title defense in mind. They let those key guy go because that's what it takes to win a title. You need less talent than the time before.

[joey_hesketh]

I think it's clear as day in front of us based on their roster moves.

I disagree.
I think it could be argued that Lamar Odom, the defending 6th Man of the Year, (whom they acquired for literally nothing I might add) and Vince Carter, are an upgrade over Chandler and Barrea collectively.
Odom was GOOD two years ago with the Lakers. Like REALLY good.

[Miekenstien]

i think that mark did everything he could for the first championship and the monkey was off his back. the window with dirk is closing and he needed to look to the future. i agree that title defense wasn't the main goal this year but they didn't tank it on purpose. i also think they made the right moves for the team in the future and will easily transition into their next era.

[Apollo]

I disagree.
I think it could be argued that Lamar Odom, the defending 6th Man of the Year, (whom they acquired for literally nothing I might add) and Vince Carter, are an upgrade over Chandler and Barrea collectively.
Odom was GOOD two years ago with the Lakers. Like REALLY good.

Come on Joey, Chandler and Barrea were vital cogs to their road to a championship. They were replaced with short term guys who clearly did not fill in the voids caused by Barrea and Chandler leaving. Yeah, Odom and Carter are talented but Odom didn't want to play for Dallas and Carter is washed up. Odom and Carter weren't system needs. They were one year save face moves. They didn't need two veteran wings, they needed a defensive player of the year center and an explosive combo guard who can keep the opposing defense on it's heels. Cuban's roster transactions got lots of publicity and from what I read my opinion is commonly shared with many.

Whether or not they could have defended had they kept everything intact, hard to say but I can say they would have been far more competitive this season. I understand why he did what he did but I'm not going to be swayed into thinking he did it with the intention of seriously contending in the West. The moves were made to be respectable this season with the intent of doing a major overhaul in the summer of 2012.

[Hugmenot]

One can preach financial responsibility for the Raptors while being bitter about the Mavericks showing some financial responsibility.
One also forgets Dirk was so much out of shape he had to take a break to improve his conditioning.

[Apollo]

The Mavs aren't showing financial responsibility. They're showing a cap cutting initiative to go out and land a star player. They'll be back to overspending shortly. Who are we kidding here, look at Cuban's track record. The man will spend whatever he wants as long as he feel it gives him an edge. We're not talking about a corporation trying to make a profit. We're talking about a billionaire who does this as a hobby because he really enjoys basketball. He makes his money elsewhere.

[ezz_bee]

Apollo, I have to call BS on this one. Yes Cuban isn't afraid to spend big dollars, but everything I've read from him this season leads me to believe him when he says, (and I'm paraphrazing) "Yes I effed up. I didn't fight hard enough against the new CBA, and should have fought harder, but anyone who criticizes the way we handled the off season, hasn't read the new CBA, if they want to read it and advise me on how we could have handled it differently go ahead, but the truth is that under the new CBA we did the absolute best that we could have."

I'm not sure I believe him 100%, but that's mostly because I haven't read the new CBA. But since you don't believe him, I think it would be a great experiment to read the cba and tell him where he went wrong. I'm guessing he'd get a kick out of it and depending on how persuasive you are he may even offer you a job!

My personal opinion, is that Barea, although a big reason why they won, just played well at the right time and was not worth the money he got from the wolves. I feel the same way about Chandler. The Odom experiment failed, but he's not someone you bring on when you are in "rebuild" mode, he's a "win now" mode player. Also, if they were in rebuild mode why not trade Jason Kidd? Why bring on VC? Both these guys are win now. IF cuban was attempted to do a "rebuild" he did a shittier job than if he was trying to win it all.