Little balls of hate

[kriD]

LITTLE BALLS OF HATE

Is he the playoff whisperer?

By Jennifer Floyd Engel
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says he has nothing to change about his recent behavior, if you exclude last year's NBA Finals, that is.

DALLAS -- Owner Mark Cuban says he is kind of like the T.O. of the Dallas Mavericks, circa his exercise-bike escapades of training camp, of course.

Well, that is not exactly a word-for-word recount of what Cuban said before Friday's game, but I have a decently good reason for my poor translation.

I said I would write it, if only to convey Cuban's point that like with you-know-who, the only people distracted by him and what he says are the ones who do not matter.

By the way, those non-matterers are me. Us. Media types.

Cuban originally brought up T.O. and his slightly overblown bike shenanigans as an answer to a question, a question everybody is asking and he thinks is much ado about nothing.

Is Cuban a distraction to the Mavs?

Or more bluntly put: Does he need to shut up?

"You guys are the ones doing all of the talking, not me," Cuban said, when pressed on this question before Friday's game. "It's not like I'm out there trying to talk about anything. There is nothing to talk about. Things are going great. What is to talk about?"

Great does not do justice to what the Mavs have accomplished this season -- 61 victories and counting, an MVP candidate in Dirk, arguably the best coach in the NBA and a spot in history.

What all of them keep reminding us every day, after every milestone, is none of this matters. Playoffs are what matters. Finishing what was started last Finals is all that matters.

And this is why everybody is talking about Cuban. There is talk, and not simply from media types, from Dirk immediately after last season and Stack and Jason Terry recently in New York, that what Cuban says very much affects his team.

What everybody has been talking about is how he plans to handle himself this playoffs, this Finals, if he will act any differently this go-around, if he will change.

"Why would I?" he asked.

I feel like this is as good of a time as any to mention that I like Cuban, very much. I do not think he is why the Mavs lost in the Finals last season. I do think he has the right to say whatever he wants. I do think he is a good owner.

What he has to realize is, just like with his team, he is going to be judged by how he handles himself in the playoffs.

"I'm not going to change," he said. "I'm not going to do anything different."

So what about the people who say he has to change for his team?

"Change what?" he asked.

How you react, how you respond, what you say about the league and its refs.

"Show me what I've done, how I acted in any game up until the Finals and every game since then," Cuban said. "Seriously. Show me."

He has a point. He has been on pretty good behavior.

Oh, there was the oft-repeated stuff about him almost selling the franchise this off-season, but seriously does that really hurt the Mavs? Hardly, that is just Cuban being Cuban.

The key is that little sliver of an exception he mentioned. The Finals.

He cannot engage in another post-Game 5 meltdown no matter how badly the refs stink or whatever other injustices he feels David Stern has perpetrated against his team.

If Cuban does, he ventures into T.O. circa Finger-gate, an honest-to-goodness distraction rather than a trumped-up media one. What we have now with Cuban is the latter; people talking about him talking when he has not said anything.

Cuban has not been a distraction, no matter what anybody says. So let's hope he keeps his word about not changing for the playoffs.

[left texas]

Is Cuban a distraction to the Mavs?

Or more bluntly put: Does he need to shut up?

"You guys are the ones doing all of the talking, not me," Cuban said, when pressed on this question before Friday's game. "It's not like I'm out there trying to talk about anything. There is nothing to talk about. Things are going great. What is to talk about?"




Thank you owner for caring about your team. You have put your money where your mouth is and I thank you. PS Please don't ever sell the Mavs.

[Bathouse Bear]

Jennifer Engle is an absolute f'n moron.

I can't stand to listen to her voice on the radio. Its the nerdiest voice I have ever heard in my life. She sounds like a female urkel.

I probably disagree with 95% of her opinions on sports.