Mavericks owner Marc Cuban was on the Ben & Skin show today at 103.3 FM ESPN. Here's what he had to say:
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On Dirk's rest: He didn't have the time to prepare. The older you get the more prepared you have [to be], especially when you're Dirk and you have a very definitive process you go through every summer.
On Lamar's struggles: He's going through the exact same thing Dirk is going through. Possibly we'll give Lamar time off, we had a brief discussion about it. Lamar had the shortest training camp of all of them.
On IOC, international ball: It's purely a business thing. You don't pay these guys all this money and then pretend it's something for the glory of your country. The Olympic Committee is making billions of dollars in revenues, who knows how much they're putting in their pockets. The fact that someone else is making a boatload of money and we're taking the risk is just moronic.
On Dodgers: Can't really talk about it, but yeah, I put in a bid.
On big names impacting the worth of a franchise: There are bigger elements of pricing a franchise. Lots of people think, if you get [a particular] free agent, the value goes up. That's so far from the truth, because when you buy a sports team you gotta have a much longer-termed horizon. It's like looking at the Hornets. Is it worth more or less because Chris Paul is there? No! It's about the bigger picture with the franchise itself.
About where the Mavs stand among Western Conference teams: I have no idea! I don't think the regular season reflects anything, because there was no preparation time. Practice matters. Without practice and preparation time, that's negative for us. In the Minnesota game [in example] our offense was stagnant sometimes, because we're not comfortable with all the new guys knowing where everybody needs to be.
On the nixed Hornets trade, that would have sent Chris Paul to the Lakers: It worked the way every other trade works, no difference. There's a ton of trades that get nixed at the last second because an owner gets cold feet. Can't tell you how many guys we would have traded for, that we thought we had deals done, that weren't done deals. The NBA screwed it up only because they could have done a much better job in terms of making a trade, but not in terms of process.
On this: These guys were killing Lamar. They were just blasting him and to me it wasn't true, it wasn't right and uneducated. Lamar is struggling as much as anybody, [but] it's not like he doesn't care, there's nobody that's more upset than he is. He's coming in, he's doing extra work. [Again:] The guy with the least preparation time, we're giving the hardest time. He's just not comfortable yet. Look: I hate the way he's playing, but I also hated the way Dirk was playing before we gave him time off. It takes time to adjust.