DALLAS — Mark Cuban’s spontaneous media availability, unprompted and unscheduled, began on the courtside seats across and to the left of the Mavericks’ home bench at the American Airlines Center, hours before the team beat the Sacramento Kings 123-119 to keep their Play-In Tournament hopes alive. A couple of reporters started talking to him, then a couple more joined, prompting Cuban to repeat some of the same talking points for the sake of the late-arriving press.
Advertisem*nt
“I wanted to come out here and talk, because I haven’t talked much,” Cuban said. “I’ve let (Jason) Kidd and Nico (Harrison) run the show, and I’ve talked to Nico and them when necessary, but it’s a different world with Nico now. I’ve wanted him to be the communicator, but once a year or so, it’s worth coming out to talk to you guys.”
Then Cuban grinned when he added, “Even though it’s a mistake.”
Cuban wandered through and took stances on a dozen different topics in the 30-plus minutes he spoke, touching on everything from the team’s official protest filed after a loss two weeks ago against the Golden State Warriors (“They’ll tell us we’re right, but they won’t replay (the game)”) to his distaste for recent media criticism of Luka Dončić. Some of the more notable things said included:
Cuban adamantly alleged the team never had a chance to re-sign Jalen Brunson.
Although Brunson and his father, Rick, have both said they were open to a midseason extension in the winter months leading up to the 2022 trade deadline, Cuban said it was never available and claimed Rick hijacked the negotiations when the deadline was closer.
“Where it went south was when Rick took over,” Cuban said. “When the parent took over, or the parents took over.”
Cuban also claimed the team was never given any chance to re-sign Brunson this past summer, even telling one reporter it was “bulls—” if he believed they were despite the team holding Brunson’s Bird rights, which allowed them to offer more money and an additional year than any other team when Brunson reached unrestricted free agency.
“We didn’t know what number to bid for,” Cuban said. “The guy did not want to stay. His dad did not want him to stay.”
Cuban said re-signing Kyrie Irving was the team’s top offseason priority, although he stopped short of promising a max contract.
“I’m not going to negotiate with you,” Cuban said when asked about the monetary value it would take to retain Irving. He also cited the changing nature of the league’s collective bargaining agreement, which has yet to be ratified by the league’s owners, as a factor that would impact not only how his team behaved this summer but other teams as well.
Advertisem*nt
“It’s not Kyrie or bust, but we want to re-sign him,” Cuban said. “I’m done giving ultimatums on players like I did last year.”
Cuban backed Kidd as the team’s head coach next season.
Kidd, who was hired in the summer of 2021 after Rick Carlisle’s departure, had been praised for the team’s unexpected success last season but criticized for this year’s downturn.
“I don’t think it’s J-Kidd’s problem that we didn’t have an identity,” Cuban said. “The game changed in ways we didn’t expect it to change, so I blew it. It was on me, personally, because the game changed in terms of the take fouls and the speed of the game and where you need to be defensively. We just didn’t make the right changes that we need to. That we (thought we) would be fine defensively, and we weren’t fine defensively. And that’s where I made a mistake.”
When asked about the impact of the take foul on the league this season, Cuban said, “It’s sped up the game by not being there.” He said the team has performed better against teams that play slower but struggled defensively against faster, more athletic teams.
Dallas’ average number of possessions per game — which is the definition of the stat colloquially known as pace — has increased from about 95.5 possessions last season to about 97 this season. It’s true that, across the league, overall pace has increased on a consistent basis by about seven possessions per game since the 2012-13 season.
But average pace has declined slightly this season (99.1) from its peak in 2019-20 (100.3), which is to say that the take foul’s introduction this year has not meaningfully impacted the league’s overall tempo beyond pre-existing trends.
That said, Cuban took responsibility for this season’s failures. It’s exceedingly clear Kidd will be retained into next season regardless of this season’s disappointment. Shortly after Cuban’s comments, when Kidd himself was asked about Cuban’s backing, he responded:
“Did you guys ask me that question last year?” he said. “F— no. I’m just asking. Why would you ask it now?”
In Wednesday’s win, Dallas now has a clear path to make the Play-In Tournament, albeit one that remains out of its control. Dallas’ final two games come against the Chicago Bulls on Friday, a team that has already forecasted it might rest key starters, and against the tanking San Antonio Spurs on Sunday. If the Mavericks win both games and the Oklahoma City Thunder lose to either the Utah Jazz on Thursday or the Memphis Grizzlies on Sunday, Dallas would be the final Play-In team.
Advertisem*nt
Kidd said he wouldn’t watch Oklahoma City’s game on Thursday. “I’ve got to prep for Chicago,” he said. “We’ll see what the score is.” Dončić said he had dinner planned that night but planned to sneak looks on his phone at how the game was going.
There’s a tricky conversation around the Mavericks right now, one where many fans and media members — ones such as myself, to be completely transparent — do feel like the team’s best hopes for the future involve retaining that top-10-protected pick that’s otherwise owed to the New York Knicks.
“Of course I understand,” Cuban said when asked about that conversation. “We’re four games out of fifth (in the West), but we are where we are.”
Players, of course, compete. It was magnificent to watch Irving hit his typical array of impossibly difficult shots in the fourth quarter against the Kings, who were on the second night of a back-to-back but still played all of their stars. There’s a clear vision of what the Mavericks could be if, as Cuban says, they can re-sign him and build back some sort of defensive identity that helped propel them to last year’s conference finals.
“It would’ve been nice to replace (Brunson heading into the season),” Cuban said. “But now we know we can be great offensively. We know we have to get better defensively, and that’s an easier problem to solve.”
That’s all true. Unexpectedly having a first-round pick this summer would perhaps make that even easier. Re-signing Irving would be required. But there still exists the real possibility that Dallas does none of the that: Not having postseason success, not retaining any draft picks, not re-signing Irving, not knowing what any clear path forward would be.
Wednesday’s win was a temporary salve on a wretched season, but it doesn’t calm any of the pre-existing fears. What lies ahead in the coming months for the Mavericks still feels more important than anything that might happen on the court in the remaining days of this season, and what should have been a joyful victory still feels hollow.
(Photo of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Huerter: Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)
Tim Cato is a staff writer at The Athletic covering the Dallas Mavericks. Previously, he wrote for SB Nation. Follow Tim on Twitter @tim_cato
