IZTOK DIAGNOSES DECLINE OF MAVS OFFENSE

[mavsluvr]

My take is that this is a team effort and Nico is not an island. 

As GM he should be tasked with evaluating and leading a team to effectively address all of the major functions of team management like Cap Space, Player Performance, Player Development, Talent Identification and Acquisition, Backoffice Staffing, etc. To expect him, as an individual, to exhibit top performance skills in these areas is unrealistic, as it would be for any GM candidate. Sure, Nico will get credit or criticism according to results, but his main contribution should be to insuring those responsible for a subject area are skilled and empowered. If an area is underperforming (e.g., Draft evaluations) then the requirements for improving results are his responsibility to address. 

Outside of coaching staff moves, I don't hear much about team staffing changes, so I don't know if anything has been done internally or if it's just swapping Nico's name for Donnie's on the door and business as usual. But I bet most here don't know much about this area either.

The above is a good description of a corporate executive's job. The president doesn't have to be able to outperform his subordinates at their jobs, or in many cases, doesn't even have to be able to do their job. But he has be able to evaluate his subordinates properly, and also has to be good at keeping tabs on both overall performance and subparts of that, and understand the proper adjustments to make along the way. 

There is an aphorism that warns against getting into a business you don't know anything about. The thing is, you have to have a certain amount of knowledge and experience to be able to take on a leadership role. We are so accustomed to the Mavs' dilettante management, that we have seemed to accept the premise that General Manager and Team President are jobs that any good ol' boy can perform. Being an executive at a company that recruits players to sell shoes doesn't give you the knowledge/experience to run a professional basketball team.

There are a number of possibilities as to what is going on. Maybe Nico is actually a closet whiz who will spring his genius on us when the league least expects it. Or, maybe it doesn't matter whether he understands the business as a whole, because Cuban mostly only wants him to handle interfacing with others. Cubes wouldn't be the first business owner to pay someone else to do the people-skills stuff.

Whatever it is, it seems like not handing him the keys to the castle at this point sadly makes some sense.