Change has to come from Cuban

[Scott41theMavs]

While I agree that it will likely cost Cuban to get the final pieces of a championship contender, equating Brunson's walking to an MBT failure is a red herring.


Brunson had established himself as a good backup, then co-starter to Luka during the regular season, where he was considered trade bait early on. He was basically JAG until the opening playoff series against UTA where he had 3 excellent games against a defense that apparently couldn't stop anyone. Failure to sign a mid-season contract followed by his father getting the Knicks spot combined with the spurt of success in the playoffs and all of a sudden he's a near-max starting-caliber NBA point guard who is now too good to listen to Cuban's offer? He wanted a starting spot away from Luka's spotlight so he ran to the comfort zone of NYK's and protection of his fathers buddies. Good luck to him, but letting JB walk isn't what's wrong with DAL. It may even be positive in the longer run.

Setting aside the terrible rookie contract that didn't allow the Mavs to make Brunson an RFA, their biggest mistake in the entire process (depending on the reality of the facts - more on that in a second) was not doing the extension he was eligible for. Knowing who he was, and seeing how he played, over his first three and a half years here, the MBT would have had to have been the worst basketball ability evaluators on the planet to not believe that that extension would have been worth it even without his February-through-playoffs explosion. Now, Brunson's camp claims he would have signed that deal. Are they saying that to throw shade on the MBT, and it's untrue? If so, then obviously there's nothing the Mavs could have done differently following the bad Donnie contract. If it's true, then that move is many times worse and damnable than choosing not to pay Brunson Knicks money last summer (if they really did have the chance). 

Of course, the inverse of that is that if Brunson signs that deal, he perhaps isn't nearly as motivated in his play the rest of the way. Perhaps we did as well as we did afterwards because he was playing for that Knicks contract.