[Charlie Brown]

I have to post this just so i can defend myself as it "appears" that the last six posts were aimed at me. Not sure. Hard to tell with these message boards.

First, I agreed it was not embarrassing for Cuban, but I do think he was too glazed by the pipedreams of Rashard that he put other key FA's on the backburner.

Second, by other key FA's, I'm referring to guys like Donyell Marshall and Keon Clark. I don't think guys like Byron Russell, Walt Williams, and Popeye Jones were worth waiting for. However, I do think Marshall and Clark would have been cheap valuable additions.

Third, anyone who looks at Marshall and Clark versus Lewis individually would undoubtedly come to the conclusion that Lewis is the bigger talent and has more potential. But in the Maverick's case, we're not in rebuilding mode and should not be necessarily looking for the best talent out there. I do think Lewis is an IDEAL small forward. BUT I do not think he is the ideal small forward for the Mavericks as it places Dirk at the power forward spot and Raef at the center spot. As a Mav fan for the past 15 years, I desperately want the Mavericks to win a championship. And over the last 4 years, I've been distressed by all these layups and dunks that the Mavs continuously give up. YET, Nelson wants to get another shooter, so that we can outscore the other team. That is such a bogus decision IMO. Fans who keep touting the fact that Lewis will keep Finley at the 2 spot and will help us with our rebounding don't realize that Finley did play a LOT of 2 last year while Najera started at the 3 or 4 (not sure which). BUT this didn't really give us an advantage over other teams. However, replace Najera with Lewis, and you get a guy who will be more focused on offense than getting offensive rebounds and hustling on defense, which will hurt our team. Furthermore, there's a reason why past championship teams do well offensively with just two stars and 3 role players. It's because you just concentrate all your offense to your most efficient and best scorers on the team. Add another scorer you will dilute each player's scoring opportunities and are just betting on the fact that each player gets his rhythm down with less shots. It's a good thing we're run-and-gun with this team, since each player gets more shots, but with the addition of Lewis, the lack of rhythm is a huge problem.

Fourth, looking at all this, I think Lewis is too big of a risk to wait on while we could have added guys like Marshall and Clark who would have AT LEAST solidified our bench and don't mind being role players while Lewis would command a starting spot for as long as he would have been with the Mavs.

I just don't want another playoff series where the media and fans get angry because the Mavs lost due to one of the Mavs' stars not getting on fire or because we had terrible bench play and our interior defense was porous. There's a reason why the Mavs played really well when Finley got injured. It's because Nash and Nowitzki got more shots, which meant they got into more of a rhythm, and had the hot hands during this period. The Mavs played some of their best ball during this time. This goes to show that the Mavs don't necessarily need a lot of scorers on their team to be a strong offensive team.

We should focus more signing guys like Marshall and Clark to shore up our bench and then try to trade for a starting frontcourt player than to sign Lewis IMO. If we had signed Lewis, it would have hindered us for at least another year of trying to trade for a starting banger type as there would have been no room with Nash-Fin-Lewis-Dirk-Raef.

But since Lewis signed with Seattle, this is a moot point now. I was just responding to the other posters' remarks and trying to show that while Cuban has nothing to be embarrassed about, I felt he and Nellie could have made smarter GM moves during this offseason.