Tim Hardaway Jr.

[KillerLeft]

Also, there had to be some type of spending mandate too.

I think this is normal. I think every GM in the game, no matter how powerful, must answer to his team governor in terms of financial resources, and I'm sure each and every one of them have had times when they wanted to make a move that stretched the limits of those resources and were denied. That's all fine, to me. 

But, someone else asked (maybe it was you) if Harrison could fire Kidd, or if he could make major roster changes, etc...I submit that to me, it feels like no, absolutely Harrison is not empowered to do those things. I think it's pretty obvious through 20 years of context that Cuban is at least involved in every decision like that. Some people might think that's normal or ok, but I don't. 

Imagine a scenario in which Harrison wanted to fire Kidd (he probably doesn't, this is just a hypothetical). He'd have to go to Cuban and ask about this course of action. When Cuban declined, there would then be a stressful situation in Harrison's mind regarding whether or not Kidd would be informed of this maneuvering. If Kidd finds out, everyone is uncomfortable and there's no more trust (we know this has happened in the past around here). If Cuban is smart enough (at least) to keep it to himself, great, but now the GM knows he might have had other conversations with other voices about him, and that's weird. Easy to see how this dynamic would dissuade multiple people from even being truthful with Cuban about what they think in the first place. 

Someone needs to be in charge, at the end of the day. The reason that person should be the GM and not the Owner is simple: a GM can be held accountable for the results born of his process and fired. An owner cannot. That might seem like a minor distinction, but when one plays out the permutations of how this can all shake out, logically, I think it's easy to reach the conclusion that it's nearly impossible to succeed with an owner who meddles, even if they're almost as smart as they think. 

A GM who can't be fired (so basically an owner trying to play GM) is probably the most common cause of decade-plus losing stretches for franchises in any sport.