MAVS NEWS: Luka Is Hurt, But is Trudging On | DLive's Mom Passes Away| Maxi OUT

[hakeemfaan]

The problem as I see it is that NBA front offices tend to chase trends and you'll get overpays on positions or skillsets that quickly become regrettable.  Most recently it happened with one dimensional shooters (Bertans, Harris, Robinson) because NBA offense became all about the three.  Oddly enough we bucked that trend with Curry only to trade him away and later end up with one of those horrible contracts.  You can also get the perfect storm of a large salary cap bump and severely average players getting massive paydays off of a career year.  Look at our very own Ian Mahimni and contracts signed around the same time as the perfect example  

With JB, you probably want to err on the side of an overpay for a lot of reasons.  Even if his upside is limited, he's not one dimensional and he always puts the work in to improve and then improves.  And as we saw, the likelihood of a return on our investment in him was slim to none and of course we got none.  Dallas typically has to outbid teams in dollars or years (McGee) to get them here.  

I posted about this before but I'm still not sure what to think of the mid-tier contracts.  I think I'd rather just have max deals (Luka), bargain deals (DFS, Maxi, Bullock) and low end veteran deals (McGee) than I would mid level deals (THJ, Brunson) but that's in an ideal world with options and Mavs usually don't have a lot of those.

Most teams that win titles have two legit studs. So you have to pay accordingly.  If you don’t then you have to hit on studs who got locked in to lesser contracts. 

I have ragged on Cuban for his stinginess.  Honestly that is not who I am as a person.  I have never told another man how to spend his money. Even if it is the owner of my fav team.  He bought the team. He gets to decide how he wants to spend money. My issue is Cuban’s delusion. If he just admitted that he can’t keep up with the Balmers of this world, and ran it like a small market team with a lot of emphasis on scouting, hoarding picks, trading players one year early if they know they don’t want to get into a bidding war, I would fully be on board with it. 

The issue with Cuban though is that he is neither here nor there. He still thinks of himself as a big spender and that is why a neophyte GM was hired purely to recruit another star.  The correct thing would have been to hire a GM who can identify bargains and talent and grind behind the scenes. However that is not appealing to Cuban. So the franchise too is neither here nor there. That’s what has been happening since our title.