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What’s the only issue with Mark Cuban – that he wants to win too much? I don’t know how anyone could possibly be unhappy if Cuban was the owner of his or her favorite team. The man is a rare breed in sports – an extremely passionate fan who has tons of cash to spend. A self-made millionaire, Cuban may make decisions with his heart rather than his head at times – Devin Harris shipped out of town for Jason Kidd may have been one those moves. At the same time, he loves winning and he’s willing to go after it. He continues to floor a competitive unit – turning round what used to be a joke of franchise. The Mavericks organization is now regarded as a top-notch club which any player is willing to sign up with. Since both the media’s and fans’ scope of successful is so small, the public often forgets his team was within minutes of beating the Heat for an NBA championship. Cuban is also refreshing because he lets his thoughts be known, whether they go against the league’s policies or not (although he has been scaling back the last year or so). His Twitter followers are quite happy he signed up, I’m sure. Cuban joined KTCK in Dallas to speak about retaining Kidd this off-season, his recent cuss out of the Mavs, and freeing cap space for the much talked about 2010 free agent class.
On speaking negatively about the Mavericks after a loss to Oklahoma City:
“You know what, it was the first time in 9+ years that I’d ever said anything negative publicly about the team and I just thought it was necessary. I thought it wasn’t so much for the players as it was a message to the fans that we were aware that we were underperforming, and we weren’t meeting our own expectations, and, if we didn’t start to there would have to be changes… I wanted the fans to know that I saw it as much as they saw it and it wasn’t acceptable to me either. It wasn’t like I expected all of the sudden we go out and win 20 games in a row, but it was just a way to communicate a message.”
On whether he’s interested in keeping Jason Kidd on the Mavericks:
“I don’t know yet, it really depends because there’s so many elements and maybe you’re right, that’s what makes it complicated. But, you look at the economy. You look at what choices other teams are going to have to make. You look at where the cap goes, it’ll probably go down. You look at the number of teams that actually have cap space and whether or not they’re willing to spend it and how. And, that just kind of goes into a big old stew and I have no idea how things are going to play out this summer. We obviously would like to keep Jason but the real question isn’t whether or not we want to keep Jason, it’s what kind of pieces can we put around him to put him in a position to succeed.” Mark Cuban on clearing cap space for 2010 and the full interview after the jump.
On planning to clear cap space or preparing for trades in 2010:
“The plan is to do whatever we think is going to put us in the best position to win. If we can make a sign and trade or we can make a trade that gets us a player we think is as good or better than what we’d get in free agency, then yeah we’ll do it.”
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