If you want to blame anyone for the Dallas Mavericks’ near historic trash season, take aim at the owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
Mark Cuban has no plans to fire Jason Kidd, let go of Kyrie Irving, and he’s well aware that Luka Doncic is watching all of this.
The owner of the Mavericks chatted with reporters before they hosted the Sacramento Kings on Wednesday night at the American Airlines Center. Cuban covered everything excluding climate change.
He doesn’t blame himself for the departure of guard Jalen Brunson to the New York Knicks in free agency last summer. That’s on Brunson’s dad, Rick.
The rest? The reality is Cuban is about as hands-on of an owner that exists in the NBA, and this team’s personnel decisions are not happening without his blessing. Much like Jerry Jones with the Dallas Cowboys, Cuban bought the Mavs to run the Mavs.
He does not blame the head coach.
“I don’t think it’s Kidd’s problem that we didn’t have an identity,” Cuban said. “The game changed in ways we didn’t expect it to change, so I blew it. It was on me, personally, because the game changed in terms of the take foul and the speed of the game.”
Whatever the specifics, how this has all played out is a pile of burning diapers. One year after reaching the Western Conference finals, the Mavericks figure to miss the playoffs, and the play-in game.
There is still a chance they could make it, but ... why even bother?
Cuban said he wants Irving to stay; Kyrie can be a free agent this summer. He said he believes Doncic will spend his entire NBA career with the Mavs, “but we have to earn that.”
This is a team where seemingly the owner/head coach/GM are on the same page where they would like to shoot most of this roster up to the Dakotas.
You can’t fire the whole team. You can fire the coach. That’s not going to happen.
Responding to the question if he looks forward to returning next season, Kidd said, “Would you guys ask me that last year? (Bleep) no. Why would you ask it now? I’m just asking.”
Generally a coach, who is in his first season with the club, isn’t fired after reaching the Western Conference finals. A coach failing to make the playoffs one year after reaching the Western Conference finals is a different issue.
I asked Kidd if he believes the team is still listening.
“A perfect example is the (most recent) road trip. We put up 122 points against the Heat (a 129-122 loss at Miami on April 1),” Kidd said. “We could have gotten blown out by the Hawks (on April 2) and we took them to overtime. That’s a fair question to ask; are the players listening to the coach?
“That’s a just a small example of them listening to the coach because you have all of the excuses to get your (butt) whipped. We know what’s at stake, and we fought. And we came up short.
“Are they listening? Yeah. Is the ball falling our way? We’ve just had some bad luck with health, not being able to get a rebound. But I think the guys are listening.”
If he’s right, then that closes the door on one issue.
There are so many others, including Mavs guard Tim Hardaway Jr.’s father going off on FS1’s The Carton Show earlier in the day. Hardaway Sr., who is in the Basketball Hall of Fame, openly ripped the trade to add Irving, and made a point to say that neither Doncic nor Kyrie are leaders.
The son reached out to Callie Caplan of The Dallas Morning News and ESPN’s Tim MacMahon to refute his father’s statement; he said he “disagreed with it 1,000%.”
In Kidd’s first season with the team, the Mavs finished 52-30. Entering their game on Wednesday night, they are 37-42.
Defensively, the Mavs are awful. They have no real presence on the inside. They are the worst rebounding team in the NBA.
The NBA is a scoring league, at some point you have to stop someone. The Mavs can’t stop anyone.
That is not like Jason Kidd. He preaches defense and he preaches guarding people, and he does not have the players to do it.
“It happens in sports. Sometimes we fail, and it’s all right to fail. You learn from failure,” Kidd said. “(Michael Jordan) has failed. It drove him to be the best player in the world.
“No one is perfect. You have to learn from your failures. The greatest players in the world have all failed. They will tell you that. That’s what pushes them. If they didn’t fail, they would not have been great.”
If this is the case, then the Mavericks should learn a lot from this season, because it is a giant failure.
