(06-22-2021, 06:36 AM)F Gump Wrote: I certainly am not saying that Cuban personally dictated every task to everyone at every point. As I said before, he used the input of others, just like all GMs do. But he's calling the shots, and setting the general direction and limits in what they are doing (or even TRYING), and since every decision is interconnected with the rest (given the nature of the cap and the limits it imposes), his fingerprints have been left on everything.Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Cuban or Donnie pile on. I agree almost fully with what you are saying. The extent to which I can’t continue supporting this rant is that I think the voices he’s talking to will always influence the direction this thing goes in general.
Beyond that, there's this: a GM can't say "It's not my fault" when he is the one hiring, firing, deciding what they will do (based on his own limits of ability), what helpers he has on each project, creates their direction and limits (based on his own limits of ability), and then the results continue to be spotty at best. Do you think the idiocy of Bob trying to be the coach, to dictate things to Rick in games, and even tell Luka what to do, was without Cuban's sign-off? Or Bob getting to overrule scouts and Donnie and others to draft Green over S Bey? Of course not. And who do you think Bob and the rest (and before the current guys, Rosas) have been answering to - to Donnie? C'mon, of course not, it all flows through Cuban.
Cuban thinks he can do it better than the rest of the league, he runs his team with whatever whims suit him at the moment, and feels he has had no need for someone better than him to be the real GM, so they live with being limited by his weaknesses.
Plan Powder flowed from that. It was the approach that "we can't figure out anything good we can do to make a difference this yeat, so let's do things that, if they are bad, won't hurt us later - and then come back next year and hope for better." It was all defensive, because they couldn't spot the unrecognized talent and negotiate for them at bargain prices, so they just tried to do as little as possible. I think they tossed $15-$20M in potential spending room in the dumper in a recent summer because they had no idea how to get value for it. I think it was the disaster summer of having max room for Kemba, whiffing completely there, and then all they can land is Delon. That's some really bad planning, evaluating and negotiating.
I don't think he's learned, and I think we'll see some guy hired who will be an up-and-comer who can learn on the job, with Cuban's guidance. He'll supposedly be creating his own expert GM. So to speak. While the clock is ticking down rapidly on Luka. I sure hope I'm wrong on this part - I know I'm not wrong on the rest.
I fully agree that if Finley or any promote from within or very young name comes in that it puts more likelihood of his ego getting in the way, and the result becomes more of the same. Even still, if that person uses his voice and challenges Mark on things, there is still a likelihood that some of those things get implemented. The chance that those things that are implemented are the same things Donnie would come up with are just shy of 0%. That being said, the landscape of this team is almost assuredly going to change.
Bad news is there is a possibility that landscape looks worse than it does now.
All I’m saying is dealing in absolutes, like you and KL seem to be doing makes little sense to me at this stage of the Mavs process. We won’t know the absolutes for at least a year at this point, maybe even more. We could get plenty of hints as things unfold, but nothing written in stone til we see what kind of influence the new PoBO will have on either Cuban (if he stays as hands on as he has been), or the team as a whole (if some of this backlash hits home for Cuban).