Mark Cuban has been one of the best owners in the entire NBA throughout 13 years with the Dallas Mavericks. Paying attention to both the fan and player experience turned the Mavericks from also-rans to a legitimate force and NBA Champions.
Even with all of that quality at the top, the road since the 2011 title has been incredibly difficult. Cuban and the rest of his front office had to make hard decisions and he did an excellent job justifying their choices about two weeks ago on his blog. Unfortunately, Dallas and their fans have spent the last few years learning just how hard it can be to bring in high-level talent even when your organization has the respect and attention of the league’s players. The process thus far can teach all of us a few important lessons about building a team under the new CBA.
If you ain’t first, you’re last
While a truism in drafts throughout professional sports says that it only takes one team to fall in love with a player, a very different logic comes into focus for players choosing where to sign as a free agent. In those cases, Ricky Bobby morality actually comes pretty close to the truth. While there can always be a chance that the best suitors do not have the ability to make a proper bid (something that happened more frequently when the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks were both reliably capped out and the Los Angeles Clippers were the Los Angeles Clippers), the challenge comes from having to be the single best option rather than in the final conversation.
In basketball, the big media markets have a huge advantage for top players since they have additional money-making opportunities and their basketball salary gets artificially capped at the individual maximum. This means the max actually helps big market teams and makes it much more difficult for teams outside that narrow group to woo the biggest difference-makers.
While clearly not impossible (look at Dwight Howard going to Houston), non-major market teams have to have at least two and ideally more of the following advantages over those bidders:
- Better talent on the floor
- More desirable system / coaching
- Hometown (either as a pro or earlier in life)
- Greater chance at a championship
- Better ownership / organization
- Opportunity to play with a special player
- Lower to no state income tax
Houston benefitted from dealing with an individual who had less interest in playing in Los Angeles and a surprising amount of these advantages because of an aging Lakers core and the unfortunate passing of legendary owner Jerry Buss. Dallas and Mark Cuban have the ownership card on nearly every other team, but did not have enough talent beyond Dirk Nowitzki over the last two summers to draw any of the big free agents. That comparative lack of talent both in the short and long terms took out a few of those potential advantage categories, providing a crucial lesson to non-major market teams around the league.
Building an asset base
The Draft
Even teams with limited cap flexibility can improve their teams through the draft. The San Antonio Spurs have done so for years and many teams including Dallas have spent to acquire picks as a way to improve the talent largely outside the confines of the cap and tax.
2009- Moved down from 22 to 24 and then swapped with the Oklahoma City Thunder to end up with Rodrigue Beaubois, who was not tendered a qualifying offer and will not be back with the team. Also traded a 2010 second round pick to acquire Nick Calathes, who never played for the Mavericks and whose rights just got traded to Memphis for cash.
2010- Purchased the 25th overall pick and drafted Dominique Jones, whose fourth year option was declined in 2012 and was waived in March of this year.
2011- Traded the 26th and 57th overall picks for Rudy Fernandez and Petteri Koponen and then traded Fernandez along with Corey Brewer for a future second rounder from Denver before the season started. Included in the next five picks: Norris Cole, Cory Joseph and Jimmy Butler.
2012- Traded the 17th overall pick for No. 24 (Jared Cunningham), No. 33 (Bernard James) and No. 34 (Jae Crowder). Dallas dumped Jared Cunningham a year later in a trade where they moved down two spots.
From these four drafts, all the Mavericks have left are two second round picks from 2012 and the draft rights to a few guys who have not yet played in the NBA.
Generally, there are only three ways to have players at salaries meaningfully below their value: max guys worth more than that, players on rookie scale deals, and those who take the minimum despite being better than that. Whiffing consistently on draft picks makes a huge difference under the current CBA because max players are hard to get and usually players take pay cuts to play on elite teams, a situation where the cart cannot be put before the horse.
Cap Space / Spending
If your owner is willing to spend, use that against everyone else.
Daryl Morey and the Rockets wielded their owner’s desire to spend and the minutiae of the CBA in order to add both Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik without giving any compensation whatsoever to their previous teams. Compare that to the New Orleans Pelicans giving up Greivis Vasquez in order to overpay Tyreke Evans in a sign-and-trade with the Sacramento Kings this summer. Spending intelligently and aggressively creates a competitive advantage that can be used in markets big and small to shift the free agent factors discussed above. Having a D-League affiliate to identify and develop talent has helped the Golden State Warriors and a few other teams numerous times over the years in a way that has not affected their cap flexibility at all.
Buying first round picks using cash works in this way as well, but has been substantially curtailed by the new CBA’s restriction on how much money teams can send out per season. Taking on contracts still works (as Golden State did in 2012 with Richard Jefferson and Utah did in 2013 with Jefferson again) and we saw Malcolm Lee’s small contract move twice for largely financial reasons during the 2013 Draft.
Even ownership only willing to spend to the cap line can take advantage of desperate teams and add players like Thomas Robinson, Royce White and Robin Lopez who all were moved for relatively small returns this summer. The Portland Trail Blazers rebuilt their bench with cap space, two draft picks, and the draft rights to a few Euros not in the league yet despite selling the #40 pick to Oklahoma City for cash.
The Biggest Lesson: If you are not in a Major Market, your ducks have to be in a row first
Dirk Nowitzki turned 34 shortly before Dallas tried to woo last year’s class of free agents. While still a great player, potential Mavericks could look to the future and express concern about where the team would be even three years down the road. With O.J. Mayo and Darren Collison headed to other franchises this summer, only Brandan Wright and Jae Crowder will return to Dallas as players under the age of 30 who started games for the Mavericks last season. Shawn Marion and Vince Carter may have gas in the tank, but are both free agents in 2014 and are unlikely to provide much value beyond that point. As such, Dallas looks like a tabula rasa in terms of long-term talent at this juncture.
Going back to the factors discussed above, that leaves only system/coaching, organization and potentially hometown as reasons to choose the Mavericks over some larger market. In a world where teams in Los Angeles and New York were consistently over the cap and thus not a factor in many free agency decisions, this may not be as big of a deal. However, franchises in each of those cities as well as places like Miami and the San Francisco Bay Area have realized that being in desirable locales means that cap space can be more useful in their hands and thus are less willing to lose it for sub-optimal players. The Lakers have diligently maintained cap space for 2014 while the Knicks will be players in 2015 even after all their spending over the last few years.
As such, smaller market teams need to follow Houston’s lead and make sure to build assets leading up to a crest at a time they have space so that they have a strong enough sales pitch to become a legitimate candidate for the "yes" rather than one of the last teams to hear a "no". Fortunately, properly managed cap space can renew each year as long as management does not waste it and assets can be used to bring in new talent rather than just being enticements for free agents. While limitations on sign-and-trade contracts made it easier for small market teams to retain their best talents, they also made it substantially more difficult for non-major market franchises to add them from other teams since they cannot offer a better financial package and thus have to make an even stronger sales pitch. Those incentives have created a system where building with a combination of patience, proactivity, and well-timed aggression stands as the only way snag the big fish other than drafting him.
The rules of the game have changed and now we have to wait and see which organizations figure it out before they change again in 2017.
