MUAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH!!!!!

Hold on. That hasn't happened yet?

 

That countdown is in very low numbers, I'll bet.

 

I think Riley was very strategic in not taking over this team this year. I think if he thought this team was going to win it all, he would have taken over this past season.

If that's the case, this gives him the excuse he's been looking for to take over.

 

It'll speak volumes if he *doesn't* take over.

 

Maybe the Big Three are super tight with the current coach. I don't know...

 

I've rooted for the Mavs for a while now because I love how Cuban paid $$ to make the Mavs the best they could possibly be. Here was an owner willing to fight the best he could for the team. Yeah he's an attention hound who loves the camera and it detracted at times, but you knew he cared.

I'll never forget, must have been at least 5 years ago, some feature where he was showing how he gave his players the best of everything so Dallas would be perceived as a destination point to players around the NBA and they were showing how he even gave the players .....BEST TOWELS. It was to that level of detail.

As for Riley/Spoelstra, I'm not blaming Spoelstra. He had the team playing good defense but how do you get an All-World player who's afraid to come back? I bet Riley did not come back because he was afraid of getting tagged with that. LeBron was so scared he had Barea on him and he still passed the ball.

 

The towels story is great. I remember reading that Dallas has the best visitors locker room because Cuban wanted players on opposing teams to know that if they played for the Mavs, they'd be treated right.

I know Cuban can be a loudmouth, but he is a damn good sports owner.

 

Second-highest payroll won the championship, beating the highest payroll along the way, in a league with a salary cap.

Somewhere, Simon-Cowbell's head just exploded.

 

The Mavs locker room/clubhouse is the best I've ever seen in any sport. No detail was left out when they designed it.

 

Think back to some of the deals Cuban made which mean taking on more and more $$, Haywood for 4 years and $40M(?), Kidd had a huge max deal when the deal with Devin Harris went down and I really thought Kidd was shot; Marion had his max deal when they got him, I think, Butler was on a big one as well. Hell he even gave Diop a big contract at one time. He was doing whatever he could to surround Dirk and give Donnie Nelson whatever ammo was available.

 

There are some pretty damn nice ones now, but they all followed Cuban's lead on that one.

 

I know this sounds like a Cuban-love fest, but I've read his blog for a while now and assuming its true, the story of how he made it shows that hard work pays off, he worked his butt off selling software and fixing software problems even when he did not know much. He was in Texas when Michael Dell started.