PMOTT3 and Chuck Texas Early Off-Season Review: Dallas Mavericks

[Texas Chuck]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/espn_macmahon/status/626859402381905921[/tweet]

so another body to our pile of guys. I think he's close to 30 years old, so if he's a project....

[HartfordWhalers]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/espn_macmahon/status/626859402381905921[/tweet]

so another body to our pile of guys. I think he's close to 30 years old, so if he's a project....

Best of both worlds, a project in his prime!

[Hawk Eye]

Giving this a bump because i feel like Dallas is a hot topic this off-season.

[Knosh]

Wish Cuban had stuck to what he claimed in the wake of the Jordan signing--without DJ we would tank.

Wish you would get your facts straight, Cuban never said that.

"If we got shut out, we weren't just going to try to fill out the roster," Cuban said on 1310 The Ticket in Dallas. "We literally had the discussions that if we couldn't get a serious free agent, whether it's one of the other guys that are still out there or any of the early ones that went, that it was a time to step back."

http://espn.go.com/blog/dallas/mavericks/post/_/id/4705524/rebuilding-is-now-mavs-reality-not-a-choice

On if the Mavs would have actually tanked: “Tank is all relative, right? Because in the Western Conference, you can really play hard and do your best and still be in the lottery. So the whole concept was, if we didn’t get Wes [Matthews], if we didn’t get a key free agent and D-Will [Deron Williams] in this particular case among others, what would have been the best strategy for us? If you would have asked me last year, I would have said you do whatever you can to make the playoffs no matter what, and that’s the path we’re on now. But had we not gotten these two key guys, I had looked at it and there were fewer teams that were bad. And when there’s fewer teams that are bad, it means you can still strive forward and try to do well and still not win as many games and still be in the hunt for one of those top draft picks. I guess metaphorically speaking, yeah, we would have tanked, but in reality, it would have been a completely different approach than the teams that have been vying for top picks have been doing. It would not have been a race to the bottom.”

http://espn.go.com/blog/dallas-mavericks/post/_/id/4705577/highlights-from-mark-cubans-lowe-post-appearance

edit: bolded the stuff I was getting at

[HartfordWhalers]

Wish Cuban had stuck to what he claimed in the wake of the Jordan signing--without DJ we would tank.

Wish you would get your facts straight, Cuban never said that.

"If we got shut out, we weren't just going to try to fill out the roster," Cuban said on 1310 The Ticket in Dallas. "We literally had the discussions that if we couldn't get a serious free agent, whether it's one of the other guys that are still out there or any of the early ones that went, that it was a time to step back."

http://espn.go.com/blog/dallas/mavericks/post/_/id/4705524/rebuilding-is-now-mavs-reality-not-a-choice

On if the Mavs would have actually tanked: “Tank is all relative, right? Because in the Western Conference, you can really play hard and do your best and still be in the lottery. So the whole concept was, if we didn’t get Wes [Matthews], if we didn’t get a key free agent and D-Will [Deron Williams] in this particular case among others, what would have been the best strategy for us? If you would have asked me last year, I would have said you do whatever you can to make the playoffs no matter what, and that’s the path we’re on now. But had we not gotten these two key guys, I had looked at it and there were fewer teams that were bad. And when there’s fewer teams that are bad, it means you can still strive forward and try to do well and still not win as many games and still be in the hunt for one of those top draft picks. I guess metaphorically speaking, yeah, we would have tanked, but in reality, it would have been a completely different approach than the teams that have been vying for top picks have been doing. It would not have been a race to the bottom.”

http://espn.go.com/blog/dallas-mavericks/post/_/id/4705577/highlights-from-mark-cubans-lowe-post-appearance

It wasn't just that he called for a step back. He seemed pretty explicit about instead being one of the worst teams in the league. Now, he did talk about it as happening because there would be less truly awful teams, but I would still read that as tanking:

I'll be brutally honest. Literally, we wanted to get Wes, he was a target for us all summer and we wanted to get DeAndre as well, but if we got shut out, we weren't going to try and fill the roster. We literally had the discussion that if we couldn't get a serious free agent, whether it was DeAndre or one of the others guys that are still out there or any of the earlier ones that went, that it was time to take a step back. The reason why we thought this year versus other years was simple math. Over the last few years, there was a race to the bottom with six or seven teams trying to have the worst record, but most of those teams have improved themselves significantly through the draft or free agency or both, or just getting better and playing better together like Orlando.

We felt like this year there aren't going to be six teams in the race together, especially in the Western Conference. Utah's significantly better, Sacramento is significantly better, Denver is even going to be significantly better with Gallinari being healthy and etc. ... who was going to be that team that was going to be really, really, really bad no matter what? Because I think there's only going to be two, maybe three teams in that race to the bottom, we said, "OK, this could be our David Robinson year" and we go out and get someone who we think we can develop and who is supposed to be an impact player and we take our lumps, we have lots of cap room and we do lots of trades to add lots of draft picks. Because draft picks, the way the cap is going, is only going to increase in value significantly. Fortunately that didn't happen!

http://www.mavsmoneyball.com/2015/7/3/8891885/mark-cuban-dallas-mavericks-tank-deandre-jordan

[Knosh]

^
Yeah sorry. Should have been more specific or chopped those quotes down.
I'm not disputing the fact that Cuban said that tanking was an option, but rather the "without DJ we would tank" part and the not sticking to what he claimed.

In the first quote (from his interview right after DJ initially committed to Dallas), he says "if we couldn't get a serious free agent, whether it's one of the other guys that are still out there or any of the early ones that went". Clearly he has more than one guy in mind here. Tanking wasn't plan B after DJ, rather plan X after DJ and a bunch of other guys.
In the second quote (from the Lowe Post just a few days ago), he specifies Matthews and Williams as "key free agent[s]" that they were able to get "among others", that made them not pursue the tank idea.

[Laimbeer]

The Matthews signing was a major blunder for me. Him on a max might instantly be the worst contract in the league. They kind of groped around and paid too much for meh free agents. Some things were beyond their control but what they controlled seemed to be pretty bad.