NEWS: Dirk Joining the Mavs Front Office as a Special Advisor

[Kammrath]

What I just can't wrap my head around is WHY people who didn't like him think that things are about to be BETTER.

I'll do my best to try to explain my view.

It all starts and ends with Cuban to me. The buck obviously stops with him and he makes all the final calls. However, this is NOT "doom and gloom" because repeatedly the reporting has been that even though Cuban makes the final call, he is doing what he is being ADVISED to do. Cuban isn't just going rogue, trusting his own basketball instincts. He is trusting someone who has his ear and has convinced him that a particular direction is the best. 

We all know the Mavs have been "amateur hour" in a lot of ways for the last ten years. I am starting to think that this is NOT because Cuban has been ignoring RC and Donnie, but because he HAS been listening to them. If Cuban had been ignoring them for ten straight years this would NOT have all come to a head right now. This has come to a head in the last couple years as Cuban started to listen to other voices instead of RC and Donnie. 

Cuban is results oriented. He did NOT like the results of listening to RC and Donnie, but he still wanted them around and still respected their takes to some extent. So he brings in other guys like Voulgaris to try to get beyond both the failed GM decisions from Donnie and the failed coaching decisions from RC. He wants to use the data of someone like Voulgaris to INFORM both the decisions of Donnie and RC. Obviously Donnie and RC tried to make this work and could not handle it. Hence the blow up. 

So the way forward is BETTER voices. A GM who is better at his job than Donnie. A coach who is better with players than RC. I think both of those objectives are fairly easy to accomplish. By far the great loss will be RC's X's and O's, but beyond that I am struggling to see how things won't be at least a little better if not MUCH better very quickly. 

So in summary: I am hopeful because I think upgrading Donnie will be easy and getting a more player friendly coach will be easy. The two biggest pieces are already in place:

1) A generational talent in Luka....CHECK.

2) An owner who gives a shit and wants to win.....CHECK. 

Hence, I am very hopeful and believe very strongly things WILL get better.