[Thespiralgoeson]

Originally Posted by chumdawg

Oh, if the Mavs win this year, I'll be the first to say mea culpa.

If they lose to Nash again, this time in the WCF, will you say that Cuban was withoiut question the most inept general manager in ALL of sports?

Well, considering that this means the Mavericks will in fact reach the Western Conference Finals which would require us first to defeat the defending champions, I'm going to say, no.

And I really REALLY don't appreciate the "nut sucking" comments.

Chum, read what I said. I said that Cuban may have turned out to be wrong, but his thinking at the time wasn't without logic, and it wasn't.

But remember, Spiral, Nash wasn't traded for Dampier. It was Najera and Laettner and draft picks who were traded for Dampier.

If you are saying that Cuban had to ditch Nash's salary in order to be able to take on Dampier long-term, that is one thing.

That's exactly what I was saying, and I thought everyone already knew that. Cuban let Nash walk because we were already too far over the salary cap to have any kind of flexibility, let alone the kind to sign a center like Damp. I thought that was common knowledge. It seems to me like you're suggesting that he just all of a sudden had a change of heart and just got greedy; that his financial decisions had absolutely nothing to do with helping the team win.

But all that does it put Cuban squarely in the class of most other owners in the league.

Again, I think that decision as well as every other decision he's made as owner was made to help the team win, in the long run or in the short run. He realized that all of his overspending in the past had come back to bite him in the ass by restricting his ability to improve the team in the offseason, so now he thinks the smart thing to do is to try to be a little more rational when it comes to handing out expensive long-term contracts.

Call it "nutsucking" if you want, but if there's anything I think one can say about Cuban is that he will do whatever is in his power to bring a championship to Dallas.

You dispute that because he let Nash walk. So you're saying that letting Nash walk was only about saving money, and that he knowingly sacrificed the greater good of this team for his wallet. I'm telling you that's bullshit. I'm saying he made the decision that he ultimately thought was best for the team. I'm not saying he was right, but merely what his goal was; it was the same as it was before and still is today.