In response to fans and media attacking the Dallas Mavericks and their owner, Mark Cuban, over their lackluster playoff performance in 2012, Cuban blames the newly installed Collective Bargaining Agreement.
This comes in the wake of Oklahoma City’s ugly four game sweep of the reigning champion Mavericks that concluded with a 103-97 loss in Dallas on Friday night.
Cuban has been less than thrilled over the heat he’s catching from Mavs fans and the media, or ‘talking headless’ as he put it.
“I’ve heard some of the talking headless (media), and all I can tell you is, within the collective bargaining agreement we did everything possible to put the best possible team on the court,” he said. “Period. End of story. If someone wants to read it (the CBA) and tell me otherwise, go ahead. But it’s like I said, I think we’ve got a good team. One bounce, one break and we’re talking about we had one bad game like we had in Portland last year and we’re still up 2-1.”
Cuban also has no regrets about letting some pivotal pieces to last season’s championship run walk away. Most notable the newly dubbed Defensive Player of the Year, Tyson Chandler.
“Hell no,” Cuban said. “Nope. Not even a millisecond. Because those who are talking otherwise haven’t read the CBA and are just talking out their (expletive) without any foundation. But that’s what you guys do.
“Given what happened, I think we put together a damn good team. If we had one break, one call, one bounce, we’re having a completely different conversation and you’re thinking how smart we are instead of how stupid we are.”
Cuban did give it a shot after losing Tyson Chandler, J.J. Barea, DeShawn Stevenson and Caron Butler. They landed Vince Carter’s corpse in free agency and bartered what would likely be a late 1st rounder for Lamar Odom’s moody doppelganger.
Cuban still insists the new CBA is to blame.
“If you want to nail me for something, I’ll be the first to admit that it was a huge (expletive) that I didn’t fight for the new (CBA) harder,” Cuban said. “I said it before, I’ll say it again. It put us and other teams in a bad spot, and it was an overnight handshake deal that I should have fought harder. I’m the first to say that.
“That was my mistake, because once that thing passed, our hands were tied in a lot of respects. But within that, we did the best we could. And we’re not out of it yet.”
It’s a tricky situation. A failed experiment with Lamar Odom and losing the dominant defensive presence of Tyson Chandler made for bumpy transitions in Dallas. But maybe Mark has a point.
Original Story:
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May 07, 2012
