[Dooby]

Apologies in advance for rambling.

A 2 year deal at $4M for Stepania is not particularly stupid. It is not reckless. It is not outrageous. It's real impact on this team's salary cap situation is negligible.

The real problem is that Mark has it in his head that he has to get some crazy-ass bargain. I keep going back to Horry and Pippen, two player I didn't even want. But apparently the good ol' Mavs had interest. Each guy signed for an amount equivalent to the MLE. Cuban offered each the Million Dollar exception of $1.5M for 2 years. Now Horry is the better example for my point. Horry signed a 2-year deal with the second being the team's option. SA will not exercise the option. Basically, SA signed Horry for a 1 year deal. The Mavs could have offered the same money, but didn't even try. A 1 year deal has no impact on the future of this club.

At first Cuban tried to use the $4.9M exception to get Malone or Mourning; two players worth more than $4.9M (if Mourning were healthy and if Malone weren't set on getting a ring), but seemed prepared to take that amount. Cuban was right with those two, but ultimately came up empty handed.

Since then, Cuban really has been dicking around. He has offered the MLE to players only a moron would think they might accept-Miller, Nasty, for example. I even toss Kandi on there, though his agent apparently coerced him into taking the MLE to play with his college roommate. Maybe Cuban was trying to initiate a sign and trade or maybe he wasn't.

Or he has offered the small exception to players that were being offered more elsewhere.

We have also, apparently, been offering our junk to other teams for their starters.

Now, none of this is a real problem, except that the Mavs have real deficiencies. Remember that throughout the season, just about everybody on this board agreed that the Mavs needed to: get a real starting small forward; improve low post scoring; add depth to the bench; find a real backup shooting guard; overall improve the defense. Well, hey, I think we decided that Raja can back up Finley. The only other issue addressed is drafting Josh Howard. Howard is not the answer despite the claims of the Mavs PR machine. If Howard puts up Najera-esque numbers, he'll be a smashing success; at the same time, he'll also be of very little help for a "contending team"(particularly when it means that he won't contribute much beyond the loss of production of either Walt or Grif).

So we have all these issues to be addressed, and we have done nothing to address them.

Imagine going to an auction. The auctioneer announces that the bidding will start at $10M. If a guy jumps up and screams "$3M!!!", that guy will look like a fool. Now further imagine, that after the initial offer of $10M, the bidding goes up to $15M, and the same guy is jumping up and down screaming "$5M!!!".

In essence, this is what Cuban is doing.

Now, I have a question. Is that even trying? Skin of "Ben and Skin" was on the Ticket last week and he said that at least the effort was there. Well, is it really? Are you really trying to make a trade when you are only willing to part with TAW, AJ, Esch or Bradley? Are you actually trying to acquire talent when you offer a guy that made the allstar team in 2003 less than he made the year before (Brad Miller)? Are you trying to acquire talent when you offer a guy 1/3 what another team offers when you can offer the same amount (pippen)? Are you trying to acquire talent when you offer a guy less money over 2 years what another team offers for just one year (Horry)? The Mavs have done or are doing all these things. Is that "effort"?