Mark Cuban calls Harden MVP, insults Rockets in same breath

Remember when Rick Carlisle said he didn't think Mark Cuban was going to talk much during this Mavericks Rockets series? I couldn't tell if he was joking. I really hope he was joking. It's been two days and we already have this Cuban gem.

"There's no more predictable team than the Rockets," Cuban told Kirk Goldsberry. "You know exactly what they're gonna do. But James Harden is so good. That's what analytics have begot. Right? Predictability. If you know what the percentages are, in the playoffs, you have time to counter them. Whether you're good enough to do it is another question. Because they are very talented, and James Harden, I think, is the MVP. Because that's not a very good team over there."

This was part of a big, excellent Grantland feature on Cubes. To be fair, Cuban literally called James Harden the MVP. To be fair, this is part of what was probably an hour-long interview, and we're pulling out a single paragraph, because everyone is pulling out this single paragraph. To be fair, Cuban could have been referring to the Rockets this season, which included Dwight Howard missing 41 games and a bevy of other injuries. To be fair, this is the exact analysis most writers (and even some Rocket fans) have been using to push Harden for MVP.

But Cuban, you literally said the Rockets are "not a very good team" and you know that's what people are going to read from that!

Hey, it's the Cuban way. Anything that adds to this wonderful Mavericks and Rockets rivalry is fine by me. At least he didn't call NASA a muddy, ugly-ass center for space junk or something.