DALLAS — Mark Cuban says the reason he seldom speaks publicly about his team these days is because the Mavericks are in a “new world” under second-year general manager Nico Harrison and he generally prefers that Harrison be the franchise’s communicator.
“But once a year or so it’s worth me coming out to talk to you about things,” Cuban said.
The Mavericks’ world was almost idyllic last season as they advanced to the Western Conference finals for the first time since the 2010-11 championship season.
This season? Not so much. The Mavericks were 38-42 heading into Friday, and with two games remaining, fighting for the West’s final play-in tournament berth.
Before Wednesday night’s home victory over Sacramento, Cuban decided that an impromptu state-of-the-franchise discussion was in order. Initially he spoke to two reporters, but by the time he finished 45 minutes later, roughly 10 reporters were listening.
By now you know what Cuban said about the circumstances of Jalen Brunson’s summer departure to the Knicks, but Cuban addressed numerous topics, including the Mavericks’ chances of keeping Kyrie Irving, the performance and future of coach Jason Kidd, Luka Doncic’s short- and long-term happiness; and the Mavericks’ personnel shortcomings, for which Cuban takes sole blame.
“I blew it,” he said. “It was on me, personally, because the game changed in terms of the take fouls and the speed of the game and where you need to be defensively.”
Here are some of the questions and Cuban’s answers, lightly edited for clarity and brevity:
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— Outside of wins and losses, how would you evaluate Kyrie Irving’s two months here?
— Cuban: “He’s been great. He’s open. He’s honest. He communicates. He works well with everybody. It’s been nothing but positive. Other than the obvious, it’s been great.”
— Why do you think his presence hasn’t translated into more wins? (Dallas was 7-16 since Irving was acquired, heading into Friday.)
— Cuban: “The whole season, even before the trade, we were treading water. I just don’t think we ever established an identity of who we are, particularly on the defensive side. Because last year we got into a groove defensively. And our identity kind of was, ‘We knew we could score, but we had a defensive identity.’ And this year we just weren’t able to do it.
“And then after we got Kyrie, our offense got better and our defense just stayed bad. We just weren’t able to get stops when we needed them or a bucket when we needed it. Yet with all that, here we are [two] games left, and we’re four games out of fifth. Unfortunately, there’s only [two] games left, but it’s been a weird year.
“It’s not an excuse. It’s just it is what it is. We just never were able to establish an identity. And without that identity, it really made it hard to put together the right lineups.”
— What do the results tell you about what you need to do in the offseason?
— Cuban: “We need to get better defensively. The game has sped up. There’s more scoring. It’s more open. And so we needed better rim-protection and just more ability to stop the point of attack.
“Just look at the numbers. Guys are putting up 40 points a night left and right. Teams are scoring more. A couple years ago it was like, ‘Hey, we had the all-time best offensive rating.’ Now that would be like 20th or something ridiculous. We went to the Western Conference finals and other than JB [Brunson] we kept it mostly together, and it just didn’t translate as well as we had hoped. And we weren’t able to create an identity.”
— When you made the trade, did you feel that you were making it for a playoff run?
— Cuban: “I thought it would help us more and it didn’t turn out that way, but it was more for the long-term. You don’t give up a first-round pick just for one run at a playoffs.”
— Well, actually that was my next question. You don’t do a move like that without some confidence in being able to keep Irving, correct?
— Cuban: “Look, we want to keep Kyrie. We think he’s a positive. The offensive numbers when he and Luka are on the court are through the roof. And it’s not them we’d ever counted on to play defense.
“It’s what we were doing with everything else. And again, I don’t think it was any individual player. We just couldn’t put all the pieces together. Like Luka talked about chemistry. And when you don’t have an identity, there’s uncertainty about roles. And when guys aren’t certain about their roles, then things don’t gel and there are chemistry issues. I think we just lost that compared to last year. That identity was big.”
— Jason Kidd is not very popular on Twitter...
— Cuban: “Yeah, but Twitter is not real world.”
— You’re happy with the job Jason has done?
— Cuban: “The identity doesn’t come fully from a coach. We didn’t have the roster to adapt to how the league changed.
“What we were last year, getting to the Western Conference finals, we were a drive-and-kick team that could defend at the perimeter. And when things were faster, we would foul — and that foul now is a take foul.
“That’s just the way it goes. We weren’t the only team that happened to. In all these close games, we’re like 4-18. There are things we could have done better to close out games, but we haven’t lost a game by 10 points since Boston in January.
“Again, we’re four games out of fifth place and five games out of homecourt advantage. I didn’t expect us to be here, but it’s where we are. I’m not happy, no. There’s nothing to be happy about. We’re not out of it yet, but I think that’s really what it came down to.
“We couldn’t carry over identity from last year because it didn’t work. The game got faster. And when we didn’t have that, we couldn’t find the right lineups that work together. I mean, these guys [the Kings] have had the same starting lineup for like 60 games, right? We were lucky to have the same starting lineup for 16 minutes.”
— Staying on the subject of Jason, the offensive and defensive systems and culture...
— Cuban: “I don’t think it’s the systems or culture. It’s the personnel.
“We didn’t — I didn’t — expect the change that would happen from the take foul and other things. We didn’t have the right personnel. It wasn’t any one player. There were just different things that were needed this season from last season. We didn’t have problems scoring. And we’ve got less problems scoring with Kai. He’s been great. But we just didn’t have that identity. Towards the end of the year we just tried to change to, ‘We’ll just outscore them.’ But we just couldn’t get that stop when we needed it.”
— You have determined you want to keep Irving here?
— Cuban: “I’d love to have Kyrie. I want him to stay, for sure, and I think we have a good shot. I think he’s happy here. He tells me he’s happy here and I get along great with him.
“All I can tell you is everything I thought I knew about Kyrie because of everything I read is 100 percent wrong. He’s nothing like what [I’ve read]. I get emails from people all the time and I’m like, ‘Do you know the guy?’ Once you get to know the guy, I like him. He’s different, not like every guy, not like every athlete and to me that’s a positive.”
— Will you be outbid?
— Cuban: “I don’t know. I guess there’s always too high a price, depending, but now with the new CBA [Collective Bargaining Agreement] it’s a different world.”
— As it relates to fans who reasonably look at your situation and think the best thing for the team would be to retain the draft pick, what’s your...
— Cuban: “Players don’t want to do that. Players aren’t gonna do that.”
— But do you at least understand?
— Cuban: “Oh, yeah, of course I understand. Look, we’re four games out of fifth and we’re three games out of the sixth position. When we put this system together I said to Adam [Silver], ‘What if everybody finishes 41-41 or close to it. It’d be a clusterf---.’ And we’re pretty damn close to that, but it’s been entertaining. . . We are where we are. We’ll just have to adapt and correct the mistakes that we made this year.”
— Do you really believe that rule changes are the biggest reason for increased scoring around the league and your team’s struggles?
— Cuban: “I didn’t expect it to change the way the game is played, so I blew it. It was on me, personally, because the game changed in terms of the take fouls and the speed of the game and where you need to be defensively. We just didn’t make the right changes that we need to. We thought we would be fine offensively, that we would be fine defensively and we weren’t fine defensively. And that’s where I made a mistake.
“It’s not like we were the only one that had challenges defensively. I mean the whole league got stronger offensively. And when we brought Kai in, now we’ve got the best offensive rating when those guys play together, or right up there at the top. We just could not find a way to get stops in close games. I don’t think that you can point to any one thing, but we’ll have to make changes, obviously, to be able to get better defensively.”
— Was overtaxing Luka early in the season part of the problem?
— Cuban: “I think it was part of not having an identity and not being able to find the right lineups. We would look at the numbers; we would look at all the lineups and try all the different combinations. We just couldn’t find the right lineups that we stuck with. And I think when you don’t want to have that uncertainty on lineups, you go back to your best players.
“But now we’re having completely different conversations than we were in January before the trade deadline. Now it’s not like Luka’s got to carry all the load. Now we know we could be great offensively. Now we have to figure out how to get better defensively. And that’s an easier problem to solve than what we had earlier in the season.”
— But when you talk lineups, how much of that is personnel? Is that something that you view as a mistake, or could have done more, basically to replace Brunson?
— Cuban: “Would it have been nice to replace him? Yeah, but we were still able to score more. But if we would have been better defensively, we wouldn’t have needed to score as much. It was what we gave up on defense that forced us to be better on offense. We just couldn’t get stops.
“We had streaks last year. We had what nine, 10 games under 100 points? I don’t know if we ever had a game at all this year, maybe five games of under 100. That changes what you have to do offensively. And then we got to the point where we couldn’t stop anybody, and if our offense wasn’t clicking, sometimes even if it was, so that’s what we have to fix.
“I’d rather be in the position of having our two guys [Doncic and Irving] and figuring out how to build a defensive squad around them than the other way around.”
— If you guys keep your pick, but you’re not jumping up to the top, is that pick more valuable as a trade asset or a player?
— Cuban: “We’ll see what’s there, what’s available. We’ll see what’s on the board. Hopefully we don’t know and we’re shocking the world, but if we end up being in the lottery, so be it.”
— Is this the most disappointing season since you bought the club?
— Cuban: “No, not even close. If we were 30 games out of the playoff race, if we were just way, way different than everybody else? When we traded for Harrison [Barnes] and Andrew Bogut, that was up there with most disappointing because I thought we were gonna be good. And we ended up blowing that up that team to get Luka.
“The 2008-09 season, I remember having to go into the locker room and give a speech asking everybody if they were getting their checks on time. You know, because no one was playing hard. And this doesn’t even come close.”
