The Bill Simmons Podcast - Giannis Stays! Plus: Mark Cuban on Luka’s Ceiling, NBA Bubble Lessons, and Dirk as Dallas’s Sports GOAT.

Episode Date: December 15, 2020

The Ringer's Bill Simmons shares his thoughts on Giannis's signing the supermax contract to stay in Milwaukee, and all the winners (there's more than you'd think) that result (2:30). Then, he talks to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban about the NBA season starting in just a week, lessons learned from the NBA bubble's success, changing NBA policy, taking over the Mavericks in 2000, adopting advanced metrics, Dirk Nowitzki's career as a lifelong Maverick, Luka Doncic, and more (21:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're going to be talking about Giannis re-signing with the Milwaukee Bucks. And we're going to talk to our old BS podcast friend, Mark Cuban, about everything that's changed in the NBA these last 20 years. It's brought to you by TheRinger.com and The Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find a podcast called The Rewatchables, where we did one that I knew was going to cause probably a riot with The Rewatchables fans. We did Country Strong. It's the worst movie we've ever done in The Rewatchables. It's ende with the rewatchables fans. We did country strong. It's the worst movie

we've ever done in the rewatchables. It's endearingly rewatchable. It has a kind of strangely huge audience. And, uh, we put it up last night. It was the all time example of a one for us. Um, I'll be making it up to you with a major movie on the rewatchables next Monday night. Also one more podcast note for me, book of Basketball, the final episode of the first half of season three will be going up Wednesday night. It's Chris Weber. That's who we're talking about. Stay tuned for that.

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details. You must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem called Win 100 Gambler or visit rg-help.com. All right, Mark Cubans coming up in one second. Wanted to talk about Giannis signing the Supermax extension today. This was unexpected. There were a lot of indications that people were starting to get worried about this. He had gone a little bit radio silent the last week and a half, basically since the Bogdanovich trade fell through for them. And there was this feeling like, holy shit, if they gave away all those picks and the pick swaps for Drew Holiday, and then they don't make the finals this year, then Giannis just leaves in the summer of 2021. This is one of the all-time disasters for a small market team. Nope. Giannis signed the Supermax for

$228 million. It doesn't mean he's going to be in Milwaukee for the five years after the extension, when it kicks in, you know, he could demand a trade two, three years from now, like a lot of these guys do, but it's a really good sign. And instead of doing winners and losers, I'm just doing winners. Cause this is a rare case where I feel like everybody is a winner in Yana signing the super max, for instance, Milwaukee. I know this is hard to believe. I think this is the greatest Bucks moment in 49 years. They won the title in 1971. They swept the bullets. They had one of the greatest start to finish seasons in the history of the NBA. They're never player talent standpoint, maybe not as strong as some of the other great teams and the competitions they've had, but they had Kareem early at his apex.

Just awesome that year, Oscar Robertson. And that was in 1971. I was a year and a half, 18 months old, something like that. So since then, here are the other possibilities for greatest Bucks moment since they won that title. Making the 1974 finals and winning the double overtime game in Boston Garden. Sending the finals back to Milwaukee for a game seven, which they promptly lost.

That's in the discussion. They swept the 1983 Celtics. The only time a Larry Bird team has gotten swept in a playoff series. So they have that. They fleeced the Clippers on the Terry Cummings trade. They traded Terry Cummings or they got Terry Cummings. The Clippers got Marcus Johnson. Marcus Johnson got hurt shortly after, and that was an awesome trade.

So that's one of their biggest wins. The fear, the deer season, whatever year that was when Andrew Bogut was, was really good. Can't like 2010 range, uh, fear the deer became a thing. It was, it used the internet a little bit. That was fun. I wrote an ESPN magazine column, I think in 2007 or 2008, volunteering my services to be the Bucks GM, because at that point they were pretty beaten down. And I did it as like a part parody column. And a lot of Bucks fans were actually like fired up by the idea and tried to gain momentum. And it became a thing on local radio. And a lot of Bucks fans were actually like fired up by the idea and tried to gain momentum.

And it became a thing on local radio. And, uh, I count that as my personal highlight with the Milwaukee Bucks. It's both a highlight and a low light for them as a franchise. They almost beat the 1987 Celtics. And I went to game seven and really they should have won. It was a game that Kevin McHale and I broke down on NBA TV.

They were up, I think eight was six minutes left. Sidney Moncrief, Paul Pressey, John Lucas. The Celtics are really banged up. McHale's on the broken foot by then. Parrish has a sprained ankle. DJ has a sprained ankle. They came really close and we got some awesome calls in that game. And Larry Bird was at the peak of his powers and pulling it out. But just being there, coming that close to beating the 87 Celtics when they had a center rotation of

Jack Sigma, when he had his crazy blonde permafro thing, Paul McKeskey, one of my all-time favorite bench guys and an unintentional comedy leader back at the time, because he also had the perm thing. And then Randy Brewer, who looked like Kevin McHale's Frankenstein brother. Those were the three centers they used in that series. And they almost beat the Larry Bird Celtics and made the Eastern Finals. So you have that.

And then I would say the number one greatest moment they've had in the last 49 years is a tie between almost making the 2019 finals and losing to Toronto. That wasn't even really anything memorable for them. They had a two nothing lead. They blew it. But then getting robbed, I repeat, getting robbed in the 2001 Eastern Finals, where unlike in the 2019 Eastern Finals, I think Toronto is a better team.

2001, Milwaukee is a better team. 2001, Milwaukee's a better team. And I dove into this in my book and mentioned it a little bit in the Iverson podcast too. This was during a really weird stretch for the league, which we're going to talk to Mark Cuban about in a second. 99 to 03, where it was like the result the league wanted over and over again, just became the result in the playoffs.

This is a classic example that Milwaukee was better than Philly. They had a more interesting team. They had Ray Allen, who went toe-to-toe with Allen Iverson in that series and actually played a little bit better than Iverson did. They had Glenn Robinson, Tim Thomas during a season when he actually cared, which was exciting. They had Sam Cassell, and it was the best team in the East. And they lost partly because

Philly shot, I think like 80 more free throws than them. You bring this up to any Bucks fan, they can go on for five minutes about it. And I'm telling you, losing that series and getting screwed over and being kind of the 2002 Kings with worst PR was probably their greatest moment of the past 49 years, other than picking Giannis in the 2013 draft, which by the way, they had no idea they struck oil with that Giannis pick. So them convincing Giannis to sign a super max, um, they know he's there for the next few years. It's a huge victory, both for the franchise, for the owners, for rolling the dice with that drew holiday, holiday trade. And if they had lost Giannis a year from now, after a protracted nine-month,

is he going to stay, is he going to leave, is he going to stay, is he going to leave? Seven months, I guess. And then he leaves. That's even more devastating than what happened to Oklahoma City with Durant. Because at least when Durant left Oklahoma City, they still had Westbrook,

and they could at least had somebody. In this case, they would have drew holiday and Chris Middleton and they, you know, 42 wins and no draft picks. So, um, what a bullet dodged. Uh, so Milwaukee biggest winner, second biggest winner Giannis, he just made $228 billion. He gets to stay in a city that he really likes. And he has the chance to have a Dirk Nowitzki type career where he stays in the same place. And if he ever wins a title there, it's just going to mean more to those people than if it was a hired gun title. Another thing we talk about with Mark Cuban in a second, he has now opened the door for that possibility. And look, it's always meaningful to win a title

wherever you win. It doesn't really matter what city it is. But I guarantee LeBron feels like the 2016 Cavs title, winning a title for the team that drafted him, even though he left and came back. I promise that was the most meaningful of the three titles for him. It means more when you have real DNA and real roots in the city. And he does. And they took a chance on him when he was a 6'9", kid from Greece. And the draft videos looked like he was playing against YMCA kids.

He grew three inches. He became this improbable, can't believe it, oh my God, this guy looks like he might be a potential franchise guy within about 18 months. And now we're here. And now he is the guy who stayed, which is just heartwarming. Another winner, the NBA, because this, at least for now, kills the narrative that the NBA is turning into the Premier League, which Chris Ryan laid out on his Friday Ringer NBA show podcast on his new podcast, The Answer, where basically this is in soccer now.

Players just change teams all the time. You have transfer fees, all that stuff. The NBA can at least point to this and hopefully Luca in two years as another guy who stays in and wants to stay longterm has like, Hey, some guys leave. That's why we have free agency. Other guys want to stay. And this isn't like the end of the world. And this isn't going to just turn into NBA two K.

So that's good for them. Um, another one who's a winner. isn't going to just turn into NBA 2K. So that's good for them. Another one who's a winner, this is going to sound weird. The other 29 NBA teams, except for Dallas, because I felt like if Giannis was going to leave, he was going to go to Dallas and he was going to play Luka Doncic and they would just be the guaranteed, mark those guys in the finals for the next 10 years. Oh my God, is this the greatest duo of all time? That would have sucked for the rest of the league. It would have been really cool if you were a Dallas fan, it would have been really cool if you loved Luka and Giannis. And I think as a combo, they would have complimented each other

in so many ways. We'll never know. But I think it's great for the rest of the league that we have Luka on one franchise and Giannis on another versus them on the same team. Adam Silver, I think, is a winner because this at least pushes off the player empowerment. What do we do? How do we fix this conversation? Because he can just point to Giannis. Here, big winners here, Mark, Lazary, Wes Edens,

the guys who bought Milwaukee, I think, five, six years ago. They bought him for $550 million. As part of it, they agreed to keep the team if the state helped buy an NBA arena, which is always amazing to me when billionaires convince the cities to pay for their own arena, or at least most of it. Now Giannis is locked in. NBA values have skyrocketed over the last five years, although that might have cooled off with the pandemic. We'll see if that bounces back. But they now, as long as Giannis is there, this is one of the seven or eight best teams to own.

We saw this with LeBron in Cleveland. When LeBron was there, they were one of the top five most valued franchises. As soon as he left, the value got cut in half. With Giannis, everyone's going to want to own a team that, uh, that has Giannis that has a chance to be in the finals every year. So these guys wanted to flip their $550 million investment for three times as much money or four, actually be more than that. Um, they had the option. I know which guy's getting richer, who cares, but way better than owning the team that lost Giannis.

And now it's like, fuck, do we move to Seattle? Um, mentioned Giannis, the possibility of him becoming the next Dirk, which I think Dirk Nowitzki somehow wins in this because Dirk is now the comparison of the guy who stays two solid decades,

foreign player, um, shows up almost like a baby on ice skates, gradually morphs into this awesome superstar kind of a unicorn and puts his roots down there and really decides like I want to live here I want to make a difference which it seems like

what Giannis is doing and as you'll hear when we have Cuban on in a second that was a good decision for Dirk Nowitzki I think the the feelings for him in Texas are, you could only compare it to a couple cities and a couple players. I think the ultimate example of this

is when Kobe passed away tragically in January. And I think the entire world really got a feel for the first time of how important Kobe was to Laker fans and to the city of Los Angeles. There's only a few players that have that kind of impact. And Giannis has a chance to have that kind of impact in Wisconsin. It could be him and Aaron Rodgers, you know, and then a drop off Brett Favre and then everybody else. Another winner, fans. Why fans? Because we another winner fans why fans because we just got saved a hundred thousand hours of where is yannis going programming and um and people going well miami's really starting to feel like they can get him uh oh toronto messiah o'geary is super confident that yannis might come we don't have

to hear any of that we don't have to hear the 20 minute first take monologues with Max Kellerman and Stephen A. You don't have to listen to my podcast as I do my 10th variation of if Giannis leaves, the NBA is going to fall apart completely. We just avoid all of it. It's great. It's wonderful. Another winner, Victor Oladipo, Rudy Gobert, Kawhi Leonard, and Blake Griffin. Well, why is that? Because this suddenly vaunted 2021 free agent class is now about as exciting as the 2020 free agent class was. And that led to Gordon Hayward, a guy with a metal rod in his ankle who hasn't been healthy in three years,

who can't really guard anybody anymore and doesn't go to the free throw line anymore, signing for 30 million a year with Charlotte because there just weren't a lot of good swingman free agents and he lucked out. Now we're in a situation where you have somebody like Victor Oladipo, who's in the last year of his contract with Indiana and middling trade value compared to probably what his ceiling is. If he shows anything in Indiana, if he's 90% of what he was two years ago, he's going to make money if he's 100%.

Look out. I mean, he's looking at like a legit max. Rudy Gobert, who goes from in March, he is kind of the lightning rod for the pandemic hitting the NBA and games getting canceled and all that stuff. And now by July 2021, will be one of the marquee free agents. Blake Griffin's another one. If he shows anything this year, it seems like Blake Griffin's not going to make $30 million

again. Well, you would have said that about Gordon Hayward about six months ago. Guess what happened? Gordon Hayward made $30 million again. And then Kawhi would be the big one. I am personally dubious that Kawhi would leave LA. This, this was a three-year odyssey for him to get to LA, to be in San Diego, to live in California, to play for the Clippers. And even though he has a shorter contract thing, um, I think that's more to do with leverage against the Clippers than anything. We just saw Paul George sign a max extension. So my guess is Kawhi will end up signing. So we've already crossed off LeBron, Paul George, Anthony Davis, now Giannis and probably Kawhi too. So that free agent class is going to suck. And then our last winner of this Giannis

thing, I would say Knicks fans. Well, why Knicks fans? Because Knicks fans have been dicked around really for the last 20 plus years since James Dolan bought the team, always convincing themselves that the next savior was coming, that they were going to get the next awesome free agent. My friend Brian Koppelman, his son Sammy laid out this awesome thread on Twitter that Brian was delighted about comparing, as morbid as this sounds, Trump's handling of the pandemic to James Dolan's handling of the New York Knicks, where it was like, the vaccine's coming.

It's going to be great. We're almost there. We got this. And it was the same thing where how Dolan, what he would do with free agents, he wouldn't do it publicly, but it was always insinuated. Oh, they're looking at LeBron. 2010,

here comes LeBron. Oh, Durant might have a chance at him. And it's just this carrot getting dangled in front of the noses of Knicks fans. I think after 20 years, now that they have Leon Rose and Worldwide West, and for the first time, they didn't shoot their wad in free agency and lock themselves down with

contracts. They just grabbed a bunch of Kentucky guys. It feels like the Knicks and their fans have hit kind of a new reality of this whole thing. That, guess what? Giannis wasn't coming. He wasn't. It was never happening. He was never considering it.

The Knicks fans knew it. James Dolan knew it. Everyone knew it. And they have to now build this from the ground floor. They have to find their own Giannis, whether that happens through the draft or some lucky free agent, whatever. But the days of Knicks fans and in general, people thinking, oh, New York, that's an option. It's dead. And I am actually relieved for the Knicks fans that I know in my life that they, I know they would have talked themselves into the possibility of Giannis at some point between January and March that, well, you know,

you know, if you win a, win an NBA title in New York, that's the best thing you can do in sports right now. He might care. He might say it might have the right part. Now he's not coming. And, uh, and the Knicks are going to have to do this the old fashioned way. They're going to have to stop trading away all of their picks. They're going to have to stop keeping their fingers crossed that the next awesome phrase is coming. Cause he won't and try to build this from the ground floor. So in a weird way, the honest thing is good for them because it removes, it removes that like pint of ice cream in the fridge that you know you shouldn't eat.

It's just better to throw the ice cream out because guess what? You're going to eat it. And with Giannis, the longer he stayed in the fridge as a possibility, the longer the Knicks fans are going to think that's somebody who might, we might, you never know. And then you just do the same thing.

It's like watching addicts so anyway they were the last winners for me good luck to the Knicks fans I say that I say that with love in my heart because I don't consider your rival because you've won two titles in 70 years there's no

Celtics Knicks rivalry there's just not but I do have a lot of Knicks fans in my life that I like. And for some reason, they become fixated when these superstar free agents become available. Maybe now they know. The 2020s. This will be the time when you have to build the team

the old-fashioned way. Good luck to them. Good luck to Giannis. Congrats to Milwaukee. Congrats to my college roommate, Chip Kane, who's been telling me this whole time that Giannis was staying. It's a weirdly good day for the NBA.

It's nice to have somebody who's awesome on the same team for more than five years. I'm excited. We'll be back in one second, talking to Mark Cuban. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey.

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All right, Mark Cuban is here. We're taping this late Tuesday morning Pacific time. Haven't talked to him in a while. There's so much shit going on. I don't even really know where to start, but let's just start here. The season is starting on December 22nd. Do you feel good about the season starting on December 22nd?

Is there anything we should be worried about? Well, I mean, other than the obvious, I feel good about it. I mean, there's obviously the risk of COVID and the impact, but you know, our first road trip for spring preseason going to Milwaukee guys were very, very attuned to all the issues and, and safety risks and really stuck to the, stuck to the script. So that that's really encouraging. Do you feel like, you know, I think the NFL and you've been critical of the NFL over the years. I know I have probably two critical attempts, but the NFL's attitude has basically been we're plowing

ahead. You know, this is, this is the league we have. If you've COVID your three running backs go out, put the four string guy and we don't care. I would say diplomatically, not as player friendly, maybe as the national basketball association, you guys are really player friendly. You, you talk to your players constantly. You're always getting input on them. What happens if a couple of your better guys look at this and go, hey, I don't feel comfortable playing. What do you do? Wish them the best and say, you know, safety first.

Right. You have the conversation and explain why. Like this morning, I was at the practice facility and we were talking about the vaccines, you know. And, you know, KP, you know, you know kp you know from latvia which has a lot of you know russia's you know has a lot of russian history yeah it's like well is it the russian vaccine or the american and so you know everybody's curious about it and you know but we have those conversations and what would happen if guys get sick the same thing as if they got hurt, you know, um, you, you try to put them in the best position to recover or do whatever they need to do.

If they're afraid of coming back for whatever reason, or even getting started, you know, you give them the information and from there, it's up to them. The bubble, uh, the whole playoff thing. I'm sure you were at least a little bit involved as one of the influential owners. Um, it was, I look back at it now, the basketball was so good. It was so much better than I think I ever expected. Like removing the fans, all that you probably didn't end up going, but are you were there for round one, right? No, I couldn't go. I had, we had a death in the family. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go. Um, but the basketball was just out of control and it was like, like a combo of like AAU and college without fans.

The benches are going nuts. There was a real energy to it. Was there anything we could have learned from that going forward for future seasons? Well, yeah, we learned a lot in terms of travel impact on guys, right? The ability to just go to your own bed every single night and get sleep and, you know, have all the facilities available to you for recovery was incredible. You know, you saw performances that are going to be very difficult to replicate in a travel-based environment, which is typical for the NBA. And so I think that was the greatest takeaway in terms of players' health. I also think that we'll adapt our schedules. We're testing some things here this season. So like when we go to LA to play on Christmas Day, we'll adapt our schedules. We're testing some things here this season. So like when we go to LA

to play on Christmas day, we'll stay there just like we did in Milwaukee for preseason. And that'll help that, you know, that road trip be even better rather than having to try to balance everything out and get from this city to that city. We'll have more back to backs, but they'll be in the same city. You know, there'll be, the logistics will be easier on players for sleep and health reasons. It's funny. You and I have known each other for a while. And I think even though we're a lot different in a lot of different ways, I think we look at basketball and the NBA the same way. And we have forever.

Like, kind of questioning, why do they do it this way? Oh, I remember I wrote a blog post, you know, about something you said like 15 years ago, 17 years ago. Say, this guy's got it right. Absolutely. Well, that was the officiating was the big thing back then where we're all kind of looking at each other. And, you know, I think whether it's sports or business, anything, you always get in trouble

when your answer to why you're doing something that clearly isn't working is, well, that's how we do it. That's how we've always done it. And you were really the first owner who was like, well, wait a second. We shouldn't be doing it this way. And the travel thing to me seems like an obvious one where it's like, yeah, we always talked about schedule losses, you know, the fourth game and five nights,

the gambling lines would be five points different on that fourth road game and five nights and all of these different things. It's like, well, why don't we fix this? Now they're fixing it. I used to race, holy hell. So one day, and I won't throw out any names, but we had a very specific way of how we did scheduling pre-atom, right? And one day I said, do you guys use algorithms? And he's like, yeah, we use algorithms. And I'm like, explain to me what algorithms you use to minimize the impact on guys. And then I never heard back from them again. Right. And so I kept on pressing and pressing and pressing because we would just put together a schedule the way it was always done. And they just because people didn't understand in the league with the algorithms or how algorithms truly worked at the time that they just ignored it you know and that's when we were having you know four games and five

nights continuously right and here all of a sudden you know just poof out of thin air we don't have those four games and five nights anymore and the number of back-to-backs were reduced in an 82 game schedule and you know even though it's perfect, it got a whole lot better because we introduced technology. And I'm not saying it was because of me, but oh my God, just to your point. I remember saying to David Stern, MBA, nothing but attorneys.

Why do we have attorneys in the top five positions? That's not how great businesses are run. Right. Well, you think back, there's some reasons they did travel this way, right? Like I just did a book of basketball podcasts

about Rick Barry and one of the little nuggets in there was about the 1975 finals, which had to go to a 1-2-2-1-1 schedule because they couldn't start it. They couldn't have game three

in Oakland because they had like a circus and then they couldn't do in the backup place because there was a rodeo. And they were just like, Hey, we're out of, we're out of arenas. That's it. It was only like two years ago, three years ago in one of our meetings, I'm like, can we finally say that basketball is a priority? That we're not second-class citizens to a concert. Yeah.

We make money on concerts. And I understand that if you own an arena or part of an arena like I do, that that concert revenue was really good revenue and really profitable more often than not. But still, right? This is the MBA. And shouldn't we be the primary tenant

that gets the benefit in terms of scheduling? Oh, okay. Why don't we start doing that? I mean, it was great. Oh my God. Well, the other thing, so there are two lessons and I had heard about both of these as we were leaving the bubble and the travel thing came out pretty quickly.

I talked about both of them on the pod. One was they're going to change travel. They have, the players are giving them feedback. The reason we're playing so much better is partly because we're not flying. We're not landing at four in the morning. We're not sleeping different beds. The other one was the marijuana thing. And the players were pretty open about, Hey, this helped us. This was a really good thing. And then kind of subtly last week, all of a sudden it goes out. We're not, we're not testing for marijuana anymore. That was interesting about that. Not the yes or no about it, but younger kids are not smoking as

much as the older guys, right? The younger kids coming into the league i mean gen z yeah a lot less okay this is how i relax or do this or that they just have a different gestalt just a different mindset you know they're more self-aware they're more you know self-care aware yeah and older generations were and so you know where smoking pot was like a big deal when you hit it and this and that, and guys who smoked a lot, those are like, you know, the 20s, you know, millennials still, but Gen Z is not nearly as into it as the older generations. And it's when you came in into the league, you bought the team in 2000. The pot thing was an issue. I mean, it was clearly actually affecting performance of some of the guys and you

could see it on the court in some cases. And not just pot, but yeah, I mean, it was certainly an issue. And, you know, it also was part of the branding of the league as well, because you know, the way media really came across it was, okay, if this guy's not performing well and we have any inkling that his, you know, he's, he smokes, then it must, you put two and two together and correlation must be causation. And it was incorrect and it was unfair to a lot of guys. But at the same time, that was the

perception. Now, 20 years later, the perception of pot is completely different. I mean, there's a bill passed in the House of Representatives that tried to legalize it nationally. So just where we are on it and how informed we are and obviously the legalization night and day. And the CBD and the creams, all that stuff. Like, yeah, there's a lot of good stuff. Most of that's nonsense. You know, there's some science there, but everybody makes their own decisions there.

And then gambling is another thing that I think you were on the forefront of, Hey, this is revenue for us. What are we doing? And it took an extra 10 years before it started happening. Now it's happening. Yeah. Now, I mean, I get no credit for it. It's just pretty obvious, right? You know, it was just, to me, people make choices.

They're gambling anyways. It's not like, you know, if you've got a group of 10 guys who are in a fantasy football league, you know, five of them have got bookies that they're placing real bets with them. So it wasn't like it was anything, know that was really not happening anyways do you feel what do you think the reasons were i mean there's a huge difference between the stern administration and the sober administration even it overlaps a little adam has a lot of control i think more control than people thought the last two years. But why do you think Stern was so resistant in general to all of this stuff? Was it an old school thing?

What were the demons with some of these things that he was afraid of? You know, I give David a lot of credit and I really miss him because he was so good at what he did. There's transitory things. The NBA was in different places in its life cycle. Right. When I got in 2000, you know, we just had a strike and, you know, a year and a half earlier, you know, there was we were considered to be a hip hop league, you know, and, you know, social media was not even social, but the Internet was really just taking off. So there were a lot of changes that were going on in society and in terms of online and media, and it was new to him. And so it wasn't so much that he was still trying to hold on. He was trying to learn and trying to figure it out. So I think it was him just trying to be adaptive. And he also, I think it was less David than a lot of the old school owners. You know, the guys that were in their 70s back in 2000 that are you know long gone now um were really insistent and they're you know we were david's boss they

were insistent that we not take these steps forward you had older owners that you know couldn't relate to a young black player couldn't relate to hip-hop couldn't relate to the culture at all and saw tattoos as being like the worst thing ever. And I mean, I remember being in meetings where, you know, it was just guys just couldn't relate to it. And David had to create that balance. And to his credit, he was able to do it. And to his credit, he brought in, he let me come in, and he brought in a lot younger blood. He brought in Michael Jordan, you know, where he, Michael Jordan earned his way in. He wasn't brought in a lot younger blood. He brought in Michael Jordan, you know, where he, Michael Jordan earned his way in. He wasn't brought in. He earned his way there, you know? And so I think David had a lot to handle and he had a lot to balance. And I think, you know, overall,

he did a good job. But by the time Adam came in, a lot of those old school guys were long gone. Yeah, we did. I did an Allen Iverson podcast like four weeks ago on Book of Basketball. And a big theme of it was this is a guy in the moment was considered a certain way and was threatening to, you know, older fans, to some of the owners, even to Stern to some degree. And now you think 20 years later, he's one of the most beloved ex-players. I think that's out there. And you look at him now as this iconoclast, this guy who led this revolution. We did not feel that way when you bought the Mavs in 2000. It was the opposite. I mean, back then, we could have had a Colin Kaepernick moment, right, where we excluded somebody.

I remember right at the start of the Iraqi war, Steve Nash came out against the war. And it was, you know, oh shit, right? This is a problem, right? Josh Howard at one point said something about the national anthem and I wrote a blog post featuring all the hate mail and this and that and this, right? You know, and I think that was like 2005 or, you know, right around there. And so just, it was different than it really, and you don't want to think that 1520 years ago was that long ago that culture and society were that different.

But we were I mean, and I remember posting a lot of those really ignorant emails that I got, and then getting the flood of emails from the people who emailed him to me saying, I'm gonna get fired if you don't take this down. And so it was a different era back then. And unfortunately, Alan and Cliff Robinson, rest in peace, right? Guys who really were pushing forward on, hey, we smoke, deal with it, right? And that just was inconceivable for a lot of the old school owners and a lot of society. Well, you think about it. Black Lives Matter. I mean, it's not like it went completely away in society, right, where we stood up. Any racism is not politics. It's not politics at all. It's an American ideal, you know, with liberty and justice for all. And yet people tried to make it seem like it was political. It wasn't,

you know, and hopefully we had an impact on pushing society forward to realize that. Did you see when you buy the team 20 years ago, 20 years of Cuban, did you foresee a world in which NBA players were agents of social change? Like what happened this year? Because it was inconceivable to me until recently. Yeah. I mean, social media changed everything.

Changed everything 180 degrees. So the answer to your question is no. You know, I just wanted to come in and win basketball games and have fun and be able to go out on the court and shoot baskets and just a quick moment, right? And then over time, as social media became more and more impactful, players became brands. And they're brands before they even get to the NBA in a lot of cases. And so how they act and how they present themselves and how they use their platform has evolved as well. And they're a lot more, you know, when Luca comes in, when Zion Williamson comes in, they're just, you know, you go down the list,

they're just a lot more socially aware of what's happening around them and what's happening in the country than 20 years ago. 20 years ago, excuse me, guys were just here to play basketball and they really didn't have as much of a platform. Well, think about 20 years is not a long time, right? That's basically the entire lifespan of the Internet minus about five years. You made your money on the Internet that bought the Mavs you think like, eh, that's not that long a time, but then you look at the NBA and you're like, wow, everything is different except the Knicks were terrible the entire time. That's probably the only constant, sorry, Knicks fans. Uh, but with you, you have these players that are wired a certain way when they come in, but now the young guys come in

and I'm fascinated by how, I don't know, polished they are compared to like what probably even you and I were like when we were 21, 22. I don't understand it. What is your theory on this? Social media, a hundred percent. Everything you do, like I have kids that are 11, 14 and 17. They're very aware of how they're seen and what's on their social media, what they can do, who they can't talk to, what's on, you know, okay, and what's off limits, how they present themselves. And they're not really in the spotlight at all. So imagine a kid who's been in the spotlight, you know, and you've been ranked as a player since you were in sixth grade, or fourth grade, you know, just crazy shit, right?

And here, all of a sudden, you know, you get to high school, and to high school and you've got 100,000 or 200,000 followers. There's various kids I followed on social media just because I wanted to get a feel. When they were in junior high and they were putting up highlights of themselves in high school that really never went anywhere, but they developed followings. And I had a couple of them. One in particular reached out to me about their own clothing line. And this is like a junior in high school, you know, and it's just the whole perspective is completely different. they've succeeded and whether there's a lot of work left. Well, I don't want to get you in trouble. I don't get you fine. But it was a shit show when you showed up and, you know, there was a stretch from 99 to 2003, which I was writing about at the time on page two on ESPN, where it was just like, it just feels these games don't feel a hundred percent on the level.

Sometimes it feels like they want certain teams to win. Everything culminated with the Oh six finals. And I wrote about that finals before the finals. Well, and I said, this is going to be a possible referendum on the officiating thing because Miami is the hardest team in the league to officiate. Wade goes barreling in the basket. Nobody knows what to do with Shaq. And my fear is that the officials are going to decide these games. You know what happened next. You were doing a lot of work behind the scenes and then publicly to try to fix this, change this. So now we're 14 years later.

Have we succeeded? How close are we? What needs to happen? We're closer. We're better. But it's only been within the last two to three years that we've made it about 60% of the way. My whole point for the whole 20 years was we didn't have professional trainers training officials, right? We had former officials that got promoted into management because they were former officials, right? You've been around publishers, editors, you know, just because

you were a reporter or a writer doesn't mean you have the skill set to go into management. And it's taken me a long time to convey that. I'll give you one perfect example, the G League, right? This is my hotspot the last two years. If you're not getting trained properly in the G League, what can we expect to really happen when you leave the G League to come to the NBA? We effectively did on-the-job training. We had one person, basically, maybe we had some with some help, right? That was in charge of all the officiating training up until a few years ago. And I just raised, holy hell, it was just like, how can this be? You know, if they're not good in the G League, and the G League is easier to officiate, but if they're not good in the G League and they're not getting all of our full attention, right, in the G League, isn't it too late by the time they get to the NBA?

And I'm like, why do we have Bennett Salvatore and Joey Crawford and all the rest, all dressed up in pretty suits at NBA games, if they're our best training people, send them down, send them to Maine with the Red Claws, send them to Plano with the Texas Legends and let them be there working with the staff because that's where we need them. Because if they're good in the G League and we can really make them good in the G League, the officiating over time is going to get better in the NBA. And so that's just like one of the latest things. And again, I'm still a big believer that we need to bring in the best, the people who know how, who are professional trainers that know how to implement and support them with people who understand

officiating rather than just presuming that somebody who was a peer to, you know, Bill Spooner, a senior ref, you know, and worked on the court with them, now all of a sudden is going to be their boss. To me, that just doesn't work very well. Well, just so you know, you've had this title, I think, for 20 straight years. You're the most fun owner if there's some sort of controversial call or moment against your team like it happened with kp in the in the bubble playoffs where he gets thrown out i'm still not sure why he got the second foul and everybody's like i can't believe that happened and then there's a beat and they're like oh my god ty cuban down oh my god i was going nuts

what happened afterwards right you know um because then you got to deal with the NBA and their analysis of it. And it's just, you know, if it's consistent, it's one thing, but it never is. You know, it's always just in the moment. But, hey, that's just part of the challenge. We just have to get better. Well, I like how they have the announcer who's the former referee.

And they go to like Steve Javie. And then every time it's like, yeah, I thought that was a good call. It's like, oh, I'm sure you did. One out of 10 times he'll disagree. But it was marginal. It was hard to tell. That's the hardest call in the game. Oh, my God.

But, you know, technology is going to have an impact going forward. We're starting to put these things called volumetric cameras in the arenas, which allow you like this. There was a company called 3D, F-R-E-E-D, that I invested in like eight years ago with the whole idea that with these volumetric cameras, you can come in and look from any angle. You could recreate any angle and it can tell you if a ball is out of bounds. You know, when you watch an NFL game, they do the twirl thing where they roll it around and everything. Those are volumetric cameras. And now they're just starting to get to the point where they'll be able to recreate any angle because you've got 38 cameras in the arena and they can see everything basically. And so reusing the technology, they'll be able to say in high, you know, in 8K resolution or 5K, I guess it is, resolution,

whether the ball was inbounds or out of bounds, whether there was, you know, the ball was touching his finger, you know, when the shot clock expired. And all these things should be able to happen very, very quickly. We're not here immediately, but within the next three years, we will be. I have a new topic for you to devote your time to with the NBA, because you're basically, you're like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank, where he's writing the letter every week for more library books. And then he gets books. He's like, now I'm going to write two letters every week. The gameplay and the delays that we have for instant replay, where we have to spend five minutes with three minutes left in the fourth quarter of an awesome game.

And we have to take a five minute break to decide whether it was a block or a charge. And this guy was moving 1% to the right and we got to see a hundred replays of it. I don't understand how they've screwed this up so badly. To me, instant replay should just be like, was his foot on the line for a three? Did that shot come before or after the buzzer? And then anything else should just happen

during timeouts. Why can't they solve this? They will, for all the reasons I just told you, they will. But here's a fun fact, right? Let's jump a little bit. If you look at, for time sports only, so leave out baseball. If you look at the sports with the highest ratings, right? They're the sports with the least amount of gameplay. The less actual gameplay you have all across sports, the more, the higher your ratings are. So I don't know that people, so think about how much actual action is there in a football game?

Like 60 minutes, maybe even less because a lot of it's huddling. The play action, right? Yeah. It's like negligible, right? Because when you're watching a football game, there's only a little bit of football to watch. And then you go to the NBA, you know, college football, actually, then the NBA and college basketball, which is a little bit shorter, right? And, you know, the ratings follow that path and it's crazy. So I don't think it's so much the slowdown as it is,

we've got 48 actual minutes of gameplay, right? And I think it may be time for us to look at changing that to 40 minutes. And Adam's even saying that, and I'm not saying we have to do this tomorrow, obviously, but I think it's a conversation we need to have because we live in a short attention span world right now. And kids, you know, a 30 second TikTok is too long. A 15 second TikTok is better. So, you know, for our future fans, it's something we have to consider. I don't like the 40 minute thing.

I'm going, I'm old school. I like the, I like the old records. Oh yeah, look, I get the record side of it, but I'd rather have 60 minutes of basketball because I love basketball that much. But the reality is that's just not the way the business is anymore. And our ratings literally would go up just the way the math works. Our ratings would go up if we shorten the game.

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It's on Prime. You know, another thing that's happened over these last 20 years is the player empowerment thing, which we've spent a lot of time talking about on this podcast. And people have tried to turn it into, you're either pro players and you want them to control their destiny. Or if you feel the opposite, then you're pro owners. And I don't feel like I'm in either camp. I'm,

I'm almost pro fan. And I think I said this last week, talking about this on my pod to meet Dirk's 2011 title, um, was one of the last pure titles we're probably ever going to have. This is a guy who gets drafted at 98. He goes through all these ebbs and flows. He hits rock bottom, you know, in the late two thousands and, and everybody kind of gives up on him as a title guy. And then he flips the script, beats Wade and LeBron. And, and it meant so much to the Dallas fans.

It meant more than just the typical, we want a title with some hired guns thing. Like what the Lakers just had no offense to the LeBron Davis, but those guys had had whole careers on other teams when it, when it's your own guy, it just resonates differently. And I don't want to lose that. What do you think?

Cause you've had it with Dirk and now you're going to have a Luca. Like, where do you stand on that issue? I agree. I mean, look, hopefully we can build a team organically. It's not like we won't take a player from another team and we make trades and, you know, I'm not opposed to us being a, you know, a superstar team. But at the same time, when you build it organically with your picks and your guy um like we did with Dirk and hopefully like we'll continue to do with Luka it's rewarding your fans get to grow up with them I mean I can't tell you how many you know Dirk's played 21 years you know the kids you know it cracks him

up right where it's like yeah I grew up watching you you know, I grew up a Mavs fan because of you, you know, or, you know, Dallas and Dirk are intertwined and that'll never change. And there's a lot to be said to that. And now what's even crazier because of the science and the technology, if a kid like Luca really, really takes care of himself, you know, and we use the science and medicine like we know we can, he can play 25 years, you know, and we use the science and medicine like we know we can, he can play 25 years, you know, and so it's really going to be different. Because, you know, you come into the league at 18 or 19 and to play 25 to go to 44, look at Tom Brady, you know, and so there's really going to be that opportunity. And so I think there's a lot to be said for that. You know, like you mentioned, Giannis just signed again today. I hope he stays there forever.

You know, I think, I think it's great for the NBA. I think it's great for Milwaukee. Um, and you hope that continues. Yeah, that was one of those moments. I rarely fear this way about a signing, especially he's in my conference, my favorite teams, the Celtics. So, you know, as a Celtic fan, you're like, man, I wouldn't mind if he went West, but it's a good thing that he stayed. And I just, because if he's leaving Milwaukee and then the next guy you'd have to worry about would be Luca, who I'm sure you're going to do everything possible to keep him forever.

But you know, if we get into this mode where everybody is just four or five years to go, the next team now, Chris Ryan laid out this case in the ringer NBA show last Friday that then you're turning into the premier league in soccer and just hired guns and transfers. Yeah. Baseball has become that way.

And other than a quarterback football has become a lot like that as well, you know, but, but at the same time, the economics in the world has changed with COVID, you know, and it's, you don't know where the economics are going to go right now. Plus with television as well versus streaming,

you know, we have a lot of decisions to make as a league and I'm not saying anything out of turn, they've been widely discussed. And so, you know, there is going to be a financial benefit for staying with your, the incumbent team, with the home team. And I think, you know, I think we'll work through all the economic challenges and the COVID challenges. But, you know, over the next couple of years, I think that safety factor will also make a big difference. Is there a way to use the salary cap as something of an asset for teams that keep their guys longer? Where, like, let's say you keep Dirk for 21 years, right? You could maybe in year 15, cause he's been there for 15 years, even though you're paying him 35

million, maybe you get a discount because he stayed for so long. That's a little bit of a competitive advantage for Dirk to want to stay. Does that make sense? Like, could you come up with something like that or no? So if you look at 10 year vets, right, there are $2.6 million in payment to them from the team, but it's only 1.8 against the salary cap. And so, yeah, you could do something like that. Like now, if you stay with the same team on the same contract for our contracts for eight years, then you get the default no trade clause. Right. And so you could do something like that where not only do you get the default no trade clause but you get an extra x percent you know um or the your your count against the cap is a little bit lower which gives more flexibility to reward that player for staying because you can put

together a better team right because i think all these guys ultimately are they know the money's going to be there they're all driven by winning And it would seem if you could give them a couple of tiny competitive carrots to stay where they are. I mean, like when we did the last, um, negotiation, no, I guess it's the one before, um, that whole four, the $4 million cap, um, exception, you know, if you're under the cap, you get that, that was me pushing that the entire time. I'm like, look, we want teams to be able to get under the cap and get better and keep their players right. You want to reward guys for staying and reward teams for keeping their players. And so let's give them an exception, as opposed to only rewarding teams that go above the cap, you know, and so that's where the $4 million exception came from. So yeah, there's a variety of ways that we can do it. You know, it's just, you know, players want that flexibility, but things ebb and flow, right? Things go in cycles.

You know, we saw the super team with Miami. We saw, you know, what happened with the Lakers here recently. We'll, you know, but guys kind of react in the opposite direction. They don't want to be the third or fourth or fifth, you know, player to try to do what somebody else has done. Well, and the flip side of it, and you know, this is the case for players being able to do whatever they want, whenever they want is, you know, there's, there's cold hearted trades every month, every two months.

I'm not arguing with the player's desire to do that or right to do it. Right. Yeah. I mean, you worked your way to be, you know, to get through that first contract, whether it's a rookie contract or your second contract, you've earned the right to make your own decision about your career, period, end of story. Right now we can create incentives as the NBA because there's value that we find, but it's still up to the players to make that final decision. Yeah. It's, it's weird because like when you joined the league in 2000 and it's the height of

the seven year max contract that 75% of the teams would regret the contract within two, three years, you were in a position where sometimes you had the contract. Other times you're trading for the contract because it's like, ah, that you're right. That is too expensive, but we're trying to win a title. We're trying to help Dirk. We'll take it. Oh yeah. I mean, back then, I mean, you talk about a bad start. I bought draft picks to number one picks in the 2000 draft, which was probably the worst draft ever. Right. Ever. I didn't, who knew? Right. Um, but yeah, I would take bad contracts all the time. And, you know, because to get a competitive advantage, you don't see it as much now because the ownerships are completely different than they were back then.

You know, it wasn't there are very few singular teams owned by one individual. Right. They're typically owned by ownership groups now. And so that's changed completely because those ownership groups don't have quite the financial pressures that guys back in the day did. And plus now selling out, you know, we're a lot more, we're a lot better at selling now than we were back then. You know, there were times when, you know, just attendance was awful, which, you know, to answer your question, gave me a lot of opportunities. I mean, think about it. I remember one of my first big trades was bringing in Jawan Howard. Jawan Howard had a $19.1 million contract in 2001. 19.1 would still be a big number today, right? The max for this year coming off a rookie contract is like 25 or 27. I forget exactly, right? So, I mean, if someone this summer signed a $19.1 million contract,

we're saying that's pretty damn good, right? And so the economics were completely different back then. Yeah, it's funny. Now you think of it, the shorter contracts have probably led to a lot of the turnover that we're seeing year to year, but then you don't want to go longer contracts because then now you're in the same spot you're in the 2000s. So I don't even know

if there's a way to solve it. Yeah, guys get hurt and you want to keep a guy and it's still early in his career. You don't really know how he's going to turn out or whether he'll be good enough to play on a championship team. But to your point on the flip side of it, I've got to work hard to keep Luca and KP and all of our guys happy. Right. You can't take any of it for granted. Always going to stay for more. No, you know, that doesn't mean turn them into the general manager. But at the same time, you've got to make sure that, you know, and not just with your best players, but all your players that you're putting them in a position to succeed and keeping them happy. But that's the same in any company, right?

If you've, you know, you've been a free agent, you've gone to a different company before and you understand it's the exact same way. Yeah, you, the MBA owners now, you're almost like the spouse who has to stay in awesome shape and still look really good. Yeah, yeah, you do, right? You gotta stay at the top of your game. And honestly, you know, when I'm 40 years old when i buy the mavs at 41 it was a whole lot easier you know there were there were players

that were my age or within a year or two and it was it was a lot easier to relate now you know 20 years later it's obviously more it's different right but the good news is kids again gen z they're kind of age ignorant they don't look at that at all you know um because again it's just less impactful they're they're expecting to play longer if they're able to they're you know back in 20 years ago playing to 30 was considered a challenge we made the mistake with steve nash because we thought our doctors were telling us he was going to have issues and he was 29 no he, he, I forget exactly how, but he was in his early thirties. Right. And 29. Yeah. And so it was like, that was considered old and that's just not the case anymore.

Um, well, at least it didn't come back to haunt you. It all worked out though. You won the title anyway. Made it to the finals two years later, but I screwed up. The 2000, when you come in, one of the things you did immediately seems really simple and basic and stupid now that people weren't doing it back then. You were like, hey, let's have a nicer locker room.

Yeah. Let's have a first-class training facility. And people were like, Whoa, look at this guy. I know money because I put TV screens in there. Now with the phones, it doesn't matter, but I'll tell you what pissed off everybody. So when I got there, we spent more money on fixing computers and training people for computer software than we did on player development. And I'm like, wait, do you guys know what business we're in, you know, in terms of our players and trying to win championships? And so I'm like,

let's go get all of our former players who want to get back into the NBA. You know, he brought back Kiki Vandewaay, who said he didn't want to play in Dallas, but had a connection to the Nelsons. And I'm like, yes, anybody who wants to be a Mavs development coach, bring in 15 of them. We need some big man coaches. We want to give every player personal attention. Now that's considered a given, right? You're going to do player development. You know, every team will decide how many, you know, but you have a shooting coach.

We have Sham Sham God, who's, you know, ball handling and player development, other player development aspects. You know, every, you know, we've got interns now that are there just to rebound so guys can shoot all the time. We have an internal analytics person who tracks when you're just shooting and when we're scrimmaging to see how well you're doing there so we can track progress. And so back then, though, I got so much shit. The Mavs have more coaches than players. How stupid is that?

When I started coaching, you know, there were three of us. And there was me, an assistant coach, and the trainer. But he kind of helped, too, you know? Well, it was like, yeah, and the assistant coach, he was also the trainer. Yeah. So he would take – yeah, you got in early in the stat stuff. The problem was in the two thousands, the stats weren't that good yet. And they've good enough for us to get an advantage. Oh, it was great. Um, the quick story there. So

when I went to Indiana university, I am snuck into the MBA program, literally snuck in. And the first class I snuck in and took because back then it was cards to sign up for a class it wasn't digital so I just stood in line for introductory statistics in the MBA program and my teacher was a guy named Wayne Winston now fast forward you know 20 years later um and I'm in I'm watching Jeopardy and there's Wayne Winston. And I'm like, oh, that was my stats prof. Okay, that's great. Fast forward a few months later, I'm in Indianapolis for the first time

we played a Pacers since I buy the Mavs. And I hear Mark, Mark, Mark. And it's Wayne Winston. And I swear I wouldn't have recognized him had he not been on Jeopardy. We start talking and I'm like, would you be our stats guy, right? You understand stats as well as anybody.

You and Jeff Sagarin were doing the predictions for college football this time. So he came in and started working really advanced, advanced plus minus APM. And where it really played off for us is we knew what the good lineups were and the bad lineups were for ourselves and for other teams. And so we were able to sucker other teams into their bad lineups using one of our decent lineups, if not our best lineups, because we knew how they would do matchups. And that helped us. And in the 2005 playoffs, we went down to Houston 2-0 at home. And, you know, everybody's thinking we're toast. We get to Houston and there's people with brooms outside our bus at the hotel. Wayne suggested we put Keith Van Horn, I forget who we replaced. And the rest is history. We came back and beat Van in, we lost our advantage. And now analytics has become an efficient market for traditional analytics. And now the push is in work, how can you use AI?

How can you use computer vision? How can you use volumetrics to be able to extract data and simulate what you're trying to do, which just blows away anything that came out of play-by-play data and maybe some other things you tagged. I think the stuff that the teams can track now is incredible. And it's been fun watching you guys. I know you hired Haral Bob, who's involved in your whole team,

but trying to figure out you have this generational superstar in Luka at the early stages of his career. Who are the right players to play with this person? you have this generational superstar in Luka at the early stages of his career. Who are the right players to play with this person? Luka's a play with anybody, right? It's just who are the best players that we can get to put around him. Yeah, and some of the decisions you made, which I think last year, you know, like Seth Curry,

it's like, oh, that's interesting. 8 million a year for Seth Curry, that seems high. And then you watch him, Luka's like, oh, that makes sense. And now some of the moves you made this year and you added a little more defense, stuff like that. But do you have that? You have this toy in Luca who in some ways is like, you know, John Havlicek where he could play forward or guard. So you can fit different guys around him. It doesn't even have to necessarily be the same types of guys. He makes everybody better. He can have the ball

a ton or he can have the ball. Not that much, depending on who's out there with him. And he is literally, if you were drawing up from scratch, who would you want in the 2020s as an offensive player? You would pick somebody with his skillset. How the fuck did you do this twice? You had, you, you get Dirk, you come to the league with Dirk and now it happens again. Look, you don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Right. I mean, obviously we, we were really sold on Luca, really sold on Dirk and, and hope they would be great. But you know, when Dirk came here, I was a fan and everybody was calling just another big white stiff that the Nelsons drafted. Right. When Luca got here, there were people saying the same thing. You know, there's the Mavericks, you know, over-emphasizing foreign players and this and that. I mean,

and so we had to take a chance. And I'm not going to lie and say we knew he'd be this good this fast. No chance, right? But that's just the, you never really know the chemistry and the mental wiring of a player until they're in those circumstances. And Luca just has that mental wiring. He wants to be the best and he will work his ass off to get there. And he's demanding of people around him and he's demanding of himself. And when you get that combination along with skill and talent, then that's when special things happen. And plus with the game changing more to shooters and like if if we were in that elbow pick and roll right or pick and pop era like we were dirk and jason

terry it'd be a little bit different right it'd be it'd be a little harder it's not that steve nash and others weren't great but it you know this plays more to lucas spent because by spacing all that space with shooters all around him, he's so strong. He can get to the rim and he was one of the top three finishers in the NBA last year, you know, and now as he becomes a better shooter with good shooters and defenders around him, we'll go as far as Luka takes us in terms of his improvements. I think you're being too diplomatic. You guys knew he was going to be this good. There were some of us, I include myself, because I was...

I would take credit in a heartbeat. I would take credit in a heartbeat. I'm telling you the truth. We had every inkling he was going to be amazing. You know why? Because we had a whole season where he was 17 and 18 playing against fucking adults and was dominating them. I still can't believe it.

I will never get over him going to third in the draft. It's unbelievable. It was just like, I remember watching that and it wasn't so much watching the video. It was watching the players that he played with defer to him, deferring. I mean, grown man who had been in those leagues and the NBA for years, wanting the ball in his hands. That's all I needed to see, you know, because their self-interest was, no, give it to me if that's going to win us the game and, you know, get me paid more. But nope, they deferred to Luka. That was incredible to me.

Well, he did. Nothing else either. I mean, Luka's his own guy. You can't say, okay, this is the pattern. He's this, this, this, and this, and this this luke is his own guy setting his own path well it's interesting that if you were starting a franchise from scratch right now and you could have any player the two guy you could you have anybody for the next 12 years the two guys would be luke and janice for me it would be in that order so maybe a couple people would have janice ahead but neither neither of them are american players and both had these atypical experiences that make me wonder, like, is that a fluke? Or is there something we can learn from that?

With Giannis, I remember watching the two videotapes we had of him in the Greek League. And we had a plan because we were still trying to maximize Dirk. It was two years after we won. And so we had to get down to the 18th spot to have enough cap room to sign a guy that we ended up not getting. And talking to our guys, they're like, he's the real deal. He will be the real deal.

I'm like, here we are at 13. If no one sees him and knows him just after these two videotapes, he'll be there at 18. If we had gotten Giannis, we wouldn't have Luca. Well, here's the thing. You didn't know Giannis was going to grow three inches either. I mean, you know, that's a case where that took some real luck. And it was a nice pick by Milwaukee, but at the same time,

the Luca thing, it was crazy as it was happening because it was clearly, I think the thing that's changed the most, even in the last 20 years since you've been in the league, you come into the league and the mindset is you got to build around a center. If you could have anything in the league, you want a center and you want the next big guy. You want to find the next Shaq. And now to me, it's like, I want the next creator. I want the next Harden slash Luka type guy. Not just a creator, but if you look at Kawhi, Luka, LeBron, Giannis, bringing up the ball, they're all 6'7 and above. They're all super strong.

And they all have enormous basketball IQs. So they can bring the ball up, control the tempo of the game, create shots for themselves, get to the basket, create shots for other people as well, and see over. They're not the little water scooter bug like we talked about AI who doesn't have the same passing lanes when you're five guys out. Right. And so that's just, I think the game is evolving where, you know, being able to have that big guy who can see the court and get to the rim and create and pass is really, you know, where you're going to start building your teams. Well, and also if, if, if you're saying the ceiling for Lucas, can he be one of the best seven or eight players ever, which I actually think is conceivable. Especially if you look at his first two years, he had the best second year of anyone probably ever. But you look at Jordan and LeBron specifically. Physically, they figured out how to carry the load of doing 95 to a hundred games a year and keep going. LeBron's the ultimate example of that.

He's like an alien and that's where Luca has to get to physically. He is strong enough. I don't, you know better than me about the conditioning and how he's going to treat his body, all that stuff. No, he respects his body. He knows he only goes as far as his body. And I mean, I talk to him almost every day or text him almost every day. And, you know, he was a little bit off this year simply because we didn't know the schedule of coming back and

guys have the routines to get back in shape. And Slovenia was on lockdown. Also, he didn't have access to a whole lot of stuff. And so, you know, he's not where he wanted to be coming in, but he's getting there very quickly. You know, he's got the discipline to do it. Do you look at the weirdest part of this is that he shows up during Dirk's farewell season, basically, and they cross paths? You're talking about, this could be 40 years of Mavericks and they end up like crossing paths for one year.

It's just bizarre. Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy the way it turned out. I think it was great for Luca. I think it took a lot of pressure off of him because it was Dirk's farewell tour everywhere. And he didn't have to come in on a less than stellar team and all of a sudden prove that he's got to be great. There was no pressure on him from that perspective. We wanted to win more games, but we didn't have to win a lot of games. There was no playoff pressure because, you know,

we were featuring Dirk. We wanted Dirk to have fun. We owed it to him. And I think that really helped Luka. And even, you know, in his last year, Dirk was, you know, a man of habit and precision in everything he did. So I think it really wore out, you know, really showed Luka the way to go. Did you ever stop 100% believing in Dirk at any point there in the two thousands? No, of course not. I mean, I felt horrible, but the way I looked at it, Dirk's skillset was, you know, undeniable is it was me, you know, that screwed up by not putting the right pieces around. And, you know, we, we, you know, there's happenstance involved, you know, you go up, you know,

we have the best record. We went 67 games, Dirk wins the MVP. And, you know, you go up, you know, we have the best record. We win 67 games. Dirk wins the MVP. And, you know, you talk about refereeing because of a refereeing thing. You know, I don't know if I've ever told you the story where that year where Golden State just snuck into the playoffs by one game, right? There was a game with Donahue where they played the Chicago Bulls. And it's, count that, there's like 12 seconds to go in the game and you see Donahue at the baseline and what's his name Ben Gordon is dribbling the ball for the Bulls and getting ready to take the last shot Tim Donahue instead of calling defensive three seconds pushes Andrus Biedrans out of the way out of the paint because he was standing in the paint too long. And instead of sending Ben Gordon to the free throw line to take a game-winning free throw and then get the ball back and just run out the clock or hit free throws hopefully, Golden State wins in overtime.

They make the play. The one coach that they have, Don Nelson, who was our coach for all those years and who had been playing great towards the end of the season, and we upset. And so, you know, you just never know how all the pieces work out, but you know, it's just, yeah, you know, I felt bad. I felt awful because I felt like I owed Dirk more. And to Dirk's credit, he didn't complain about anything. Most of the, well, I take that back. Dirk complains about everything, but he didn't criticize me

on that particular set of circumstances. Well, plus you have schmucks like me on the internet going, Dirk can't win it. He doesn't have what it takes. He's not a true superstar. I never doubted him. And then he shoved it under everybody's face in like the greatest way possible.

It was unbelievable. Yeah, you know, and again, the happenstance is everything. Luck, people don't realize how much luck. So to get Tyson Chandler, so this is the year, LeBron, right, going to Miami. And so we had Eric Dampier in a non-guaranteed contract that was big enough plus cap space that it would allow us, if LeBron wanted to do it or we could do it as a sign and trade. Actually, it was as a sign and trade because back then you could do 175 percent in a trade and so we could have given him draft picks and all this stuff obviously did not work out but charlotte ended up trying to trade tyson chandler to oklahoma city

and the surgeon who did the work on tyson's toe or foot or whatever, even though he was the doctor for Oklahoma City, he wouldn't approve the trade. So he goes back to Oklahoma City with one year left on his contract. We trade Eric Dampier for him. Because the doctor who did surgery on Tyson decided that you, the thunder should not take that chance. It is crazy. How many titles get decided by a story like that? Like even the old Celtics, McHale could have just said,

all right, cool. I'll take this Andrew Bynum, Lamar wrote a package for KG and that's it. And then we trade Paul Pierce and we're in the abyss again. Yep. You know, you just never know. You know, you just never know.

You know, you've heard the story, Monte Ellis or Steph Curry, take your pick. Right. What, what's the closest you ever came to signing a free agent that we don't totally know about and it didn't happen,

but you thought you were going to get them. Not, not counting Deandre Jordan the first time. Um, like, were you in on LeBron? Was that conceivable in 2010? Yeah. I never really thought that was likely. That was the longest of long shots. Um, like, were you in on LeBron? Was that conceivable in 2010? Yeah, I never really thought that was likely. That was the longest of long shots. Um, you know, we really didn't have cap room for years. It wasn't until 2000, it wasn't until after we won the championship that we ever had cap room because I'd spent up the entire time and we tried to just take bad contracts to get people to come to the Mavs. And so that was how we did it.

That's how, you know, we had to trade for Jason Kidd. We signed Sean Marion with our mid-level. And then we got Tyson, the way I explained. And we got Deshaun Stevenson and Brendan Haywood and Karan Butler. And, you know, just take all of our money type trade with Washington. Hey, there's a reason FanDuel is America's number one sportsbook.

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800 bets off in Iowa. 809 with it in Indiana. 800 gambler in Jersey pennsylvania illinois 800-889-9789 and tendency 1800 gambler.net in west virginia couple quick quick things for you so as we head into the 2020s and the nba is going to take a huge revenue hit this year that I don't think people fully understand, um, how little money the teams are making this season. And also like how important stuff like season ticket renewals are and, you know, teams losing 50, 60% of C because people are just like, yeah, fuck it. I'm not going to keep my tickets if we're not going to have a season. So all this money you get to hold for eight, nine months,

you don't have on top of the no attendance. And you talked, you said publicly you thought you might lose a hundred million dollars this year with the amount of revenue, the league last year, right? With the amount of revenue, the league's going to lose this year. One of my theories that I feel pretty strongly about, cause I know it's been discussed is could you replace it with expansion money? Could you bring two teams in and replace that money? Are you for or against it? I'm for it, but I don't think it's the right time for it yet because you couldn't get momentum in those places. But there will come a time where

it'll be discussed. So here's the math of it, right? So I voted against the Charlotte expansion. And the reason I voted against it is the $300 million we took as an expansion fee, now all of a sudden Charlotte gets one 30th of all of the shared revenue, right? And so if that was $30 million, just to pick a number out of the air, and they're getting $30 million every year, well, in 10 years, they get all their money back. So all it was was a loan to us. And I tried to explain that to some of the old school owners that were involved, and it just didn't resonate with them. They just didn't understand it. And now that $300 million looks like the bargain of all time.

And so when we do something, let's just say it's $3 billion, where it seems like crazy. Well, they'll get one 31st of whatever income that we have coming in. And let's just say that that's $50 million. Okay, is it worth it to take a $3 billion loan and that we have to pay back over 60 years, right? So $3 billion divided by $50 million. Okay, maybe you can make that argument that it is, but it always comes down to, is there some incremental value? Like having somebody in Vegas,

having a team in Seattle as an example, will we increase the pie big enough to more than compensate the money that we're giving them? Well, but here's the thing. So let's say Seattle, you have some rich guy there and there's plenty of them. Let's say Bezos is just like, hey, I'm so bored with all my money.

For 3 billion, can you just give me a team? I'll give you 3 billion right now and I won't take any media stuff for five years. And then somebody in Vegas says, and here's our 2 billion. Now we have 5 billion for those two cities. 3 billion is our low point, no matter what. Right. Well, especially for Seattle. Well, for any market. So you get 5 billion total. All right, let's say six.

Five, six, and they agree we won't take media for five years. And you have a bunch of teams right now that are struggling. Why wouldn't they say, Hey, we should do that. It's just a loan, right? So you can go to a bank and borrow money for a lot less. In other words, if I went out and the league decided to borrow $3 billion and we paid 4% interest on it, we get to keep all of our revenue, never have to share it over that period of time. And we're ahead of the game.

That's why. I still think it's possible. No, I'm not saying it's not possible. I kind of like the idea at a lot of levels, right? Because I think Seattle would add incremental value in different ways. I think Las Vegas, so it's not just a financial or math-based decision.

If we think it would increase the pie, you know, where it would come in, I think, is if there is a period of time, you know, where we have to make up for revenue from traditional linear TV and moving to streaming and direct-to-consumer, I think trying to fill that gap, then it would make sense, right? Because then you don't have, you're not giving up a set percent amount of revenue to the team. It's not truly a loan. Then it makes sense. So now you're bringing in $6 billion from two teams and that allows, gives you the leeway to now say, okay, now's the time for us

to not be so dependent on traditional TV contracts, but take a little bit less from linear TV so that we can simulcast and stream at the same time, then it makes sense. Well, it would seem like the smartest thing you guys could do is basically create your own version of Disney Plus and you own every single piece. But it just depends. Right now, if Disney Plus says, you know what, we're going to pay you more than you got paid on ESPN and ABC because this is direct consumer for us. And now we have a $19 streaming option

that has all of our games. Great. All of our national games. You know, and to a certain extent we do because you can get Sling TV and some of the others already, right? And you're getting all those national games.

The real challenge comes with your local TV, right? Because that, that's, you know, there's 30 teams that have to address that issue. Second thing, G League, you mentioned it earlier. Isn't this the biggest growth area for the league potentially? Like, like when you think about the ability to incubate referees, to put potential second round projects, to take kids who just don't want to spend a year in college, you know, making one scholarship and nothing else.

Isn't this the biggest way to get better as an overall corporation? I think it's a component of it, but I think we have to go to a whole academy-based environment where we completely preempt AAU and a lot of those comparable programs, right? So we can really do things that emphasize education, emphasize personal growth and development, emphasize basketball education, right? And basketball IQ, things that don't have all these ridiculous inhibitors like

the NCAA and hours you can practice together or high school, you know, and things where we put the interest of the player who may be 14 in an academy or 18, you know, coming out of high school and put their interests first. I think the G League can be one of the destinations that work well. I think the bigger question that goes along with that, that we haven't really discussed, no one's discussed publicly, is what happens to overseas teams now that, you know, we see the impact economically on the NBA, you know, is far worse for a lot of the international teams who just don't have the resources. Now, some are owned by rich people, you know, some are owned by corporations, and they're doing okay, but there are a lot of teams, particularly in smaller countries or medium-sized countries, that are having issues. Do we expand that whole concept globally? And for the quality of the game, but also we want to be an ambassador globally so that we, you know, we can catch up to soccer globally.

And, you know, and then if we do that, how do we deal with FIBA? Because I've been a big proponent for 20 years of saying we need an NBA World Cup where we have all of our players competing just like they do with soccer, right? And limit our players in the Olympics to 21 and under, you know, and create our own World Cup. Because now, especially when we need revenue, but you've got that push-pull of FIBA and international teams and the country unions, the basketball unions that are there. So you think NBA EuroLeague is conceivable in the next 10 years? I wouldn't say necessarily NBA EuroLeague as it is maybe investments in those leagues initially. And then maybe a branded version. Yes. What would you do with the draft if you were in charge? If Adam said to you,

I want to change the draft. I'm going to do whatever you say. Tell me what to do. What would you do? At least four, if not five rounds. Yeah, why wouldn't they do that? Put it over like three days. I mean, not so much to try to recreate the NFL from a TV perspective, but if you look now,

let's just say you have a first round pick and now you've got picks in the 50s and 60s. You have your second round picks in the 50s right you really don't know whether that's a roster player or not and so chances are they're going to be an exhibit 10 or they're going to be a two-way player and so but you've got to fill two two-way slots so let's say your first round pick is set to be on your roster your 15 person roster? And then you've got two-way slots to fill two of them, right? And so you get the person you draft in the second round most likely, if you have a second-round pick.

And then you've got to fill out your G League team. Well, you're competing with all these guys like it's free agency to get up for those two-way slots, particularly if you don't have a second-round pick, and now you're trying to fill out your G League team. That's not the way it should be. If we had four rounds, then we can say okay if you're drafted first round this is the economics you're drafted second round you know instead of it being open-ended because you know like to cite um ty ty row who we really like with number 31 right we use part of our mid-level

exception you know and so and with ty T-Bay, because he was, because we had him set to be a two-way, it's a completely different type of contract. And then, you know, G League is a completely different beast. You have these, you know, Rule 10 contracts, and trying to fill out a G League team is a hassle. It really, really is. And so if you get guys that you can draft four or five rounds,

you fill out your two-way players, you have hopefully better, more reasonable contracts for both sides, and then you can fill out your G League team. That's what I would do. Terrell Terry was my guy. The Celtics passed on him twice, and I almost had a heart attack. And then you took him, which made it worse. It was like,

I know a smart team is going to take them. And then the smart team took them. The thing, the thing with the draft, I've, I've been saying this for a couple of years. I would have the lottery just be its own night on ABC Thursday night, 14 picks,

15 minutes between, between picks or 12 minutes. Really? Cause as somebody who's actually, you cannot do it to the players. Why? Could you imagine? I mean, here you are not sure if you're going to be a lottery pick and you end up having to wait another night. Come back, come back the next day. It's fine. There would be moms and granddads and grandmas stroking out.

Well, there would be, cause I, I having announced it two years in a row, it's so crazy how fast it goes and you don't even have time to talk about the picks and there's so much to dive into. There's trades. I'd add another minute or two because there are a lot of trades that you think are going to happen that you run out of time. Right. So then if you did your four round thing, if you had like the lottery is day one and then day two is just this five hour extravaganza. Well,

you can stretch out and you can stretch out the first round and put it just day one. Right. And then you have two through four or five on day two, where you can be quick. Cause they're not going to be as many trades. Then I think that works. And I think it's better for the league.

And I've told the NBA that they just, they got to work with the union on it and there's just higher, bigger priorities. And you love the play in tournament. You were pretty early on enjoying some form of that idea. Yeah. I would have extended it further. I think it's good for the NBA for sure.

Who's your favorite new owner of the last 10 years? Actually the new Utah guy coming in is pretty cool. I've known him for a while um and who else i like lazary and mill they've got a good guys it's just different now like i said it's not one guy who just writes a check other than balmer right it's typically a group where um you have to deal with a bunch of minority partners and And that's just because the pricing's gone so high, so it's natural. So Balmer's a little bit on your corner.

He's as the wacky billionaire who tries stuff and thinks outside the box and is in court side. You get along though, right? It's not like two dogs that resent each other. I've known Steve for years, right? We were both in the PC industry going back 35 years. And so, yeah, Steve has been crazy, just like I've been crazy forever. And he wears his heart on his sleeve and he wants to win. I mean, that's just the way it works. And, you know,

what people don't realize, and Steve's as good an example as I am, it's not the winning, right? It's really easy to win. It's really hard to lose. You know, as painful as it is, when I was just a fan following the Mavs and we suck, I got over, you know, the losses, right? You walk out of the arena and it's done. When you own a team, it's so hard because, not the economic side of it, but just because you can only do so much. You know, you have to trust people. You have to include your own judgment.

You have to make these decisions. Again, put aside that they're $100 million plus decisions, you know, that people don't realize, you know, this contract is $150 million, you have $700 million in obligations that you just signed this offseason. Put that aside. Every time a play happens, every single possession, you're thinking to yourself, here's what I thought was going to happen. And now I'm seeing what exactly is going to happen. Here's the way I thought this guy could play. Here's the way I thought this guy could coach. Here's the way I thought this guy or this team would be competing with other teams.

And the minute that ball goes up, you have zero impact. Going from somebody who's run businesses, been successful financially, and had all these accomplishments to being in a situation where you walked in thinking, okay, maybe I have an edge because I've been able to accomplish A, B, and C, and then that ball goes up, you have zero impact. I can yell all I want. The most impact I ever have in a game is yelling, he's in the lane, he's in the lane, and getting a three-second call or an offensive three-second call and feeling proud because I picked this up a point. That's the greatest impact I can have. And we learned with the bubble schedule going against NFL that we don't want to do that again

with the NBA. Yeah, it wasn't even so much against the NFL because the first part of our season traditionally is always up against the NFL. And, you know, we have Sunday night. I just think being in season is a big difference. You know, when you just get that mindset that your college basketball is on, the NBA is on, you know, once Super Bowl is over, it's our time. You know, baseball sneaks in some a little bit come April,

but it's still pretty much our time. And I think that the NHL is obviously there, but it's a little bit different fan base. And so, yeah, I think just being back here in December and kicking off and it being basketball league. Right. And we're talking, we're watching college basketball and watching NBA basketball just feels normal. Right. You're staying inside. You're not going outside and, Oh, I missed the game. You know, it's, Oh, it's cold outside. I ain't going outside. It's COVID outside. I ain't leaving the house and the NBA games are on. Yeah. It screwed up everybody's schedule, body clock, basically.

Like, wait a second. It's August, but there's games on. I mean, there was just every sport was on, which made it even tougher. Last question. Make the case that Dirk is the greatest Dallas athlete of all time. Dirk's the greatest athlete of all time. There's nothing more needs to be said. You know, he stayed here. He's been an MVP.

He's been at the top of his game, won championships. He's still here. What he did in the community. Dirk was the MVP in 2007 on the court, a champion in 2011. But that's what he does in the community dwarfs all that. And so that goes into the decision process. Dirk's just amazing. And we've had some amazing athletes here and some amazing players. But what Dirk did, does for North Texas, you can't even gauge how much he does.

And he doesn't have credit. It's not like Dirk goes places where the cameras are not. And that's what people don't really realize. And he ended up being one of the 20 best players of all time. So the case, because I've had this argument, the counter would be Dallas is a football town. Dallas is the Cowboys. The greatest Dallas athlete of all time can't not be a Cowboy. So then my,

my argument back would be like, all right, who's the Cowboy? Roger Staubach. He played for nine years. Dirk was paid for 21. When the title basically is the only superstar in the team. Like how is he not?

But some people are just, I don't know. It has to be a Cowboy. No, that's fine. Whatever. I mean, you know, we can argue all day. That's all it will be.

You know, all we really need is some beer and some chips, and then it's worth it. Has Jerry ever asked you for advice? Because you've won a lot more playoff games than he has the last 20 years. Yeah, Jerry and I talk more often than people think. You know, if there's something, probably not advice from um a football perspective i talked to him once about anything related to football and that was like 10 years ago

um just in terms of coaching because the hardest thing in professional sports is picking a head coach that is the hardest thing in sports no no exception, because every coach in an interview has first date face. Every first date is perfect because everybody's on their feet to choose and they know a little bit about you and you know a little bit about them and they know exactly change ever. The grass is rarely, if ever greener on the other side. You know, what you have to do is work with your coaches and develop a relationship and try to figure out what's wrong and what's right and get them the help that they need. All right. It was good seeing you. I'm glad we did all this. I haven't talked to you since you got Luca.

I mean, I feel like just every time I see you, it's like you won the lottery just every day for the next 15 years. On you. I come on anytime. Every time you ask me to come on, I come on. All right. I'll make you a regular. Good to see you. Thank you.

Take care, buddy. Thank you. That's it for today's podcast. Coming back with one more on Thursday. Don't forget about the rewatchables. Country Strong. The most polarizing movie we've done in 2020. New book of basketball podcast with Chris Webber is coming out Wednesday night.

Also on Wednesday night, Dave Jacobi and I in the Ringer Dish podcast, we will be doing our 25-minute recap of episode two of The Challenge on MTV, The Challenge Double Agents. So go check that one out. See you Thursday. So stay, I can't speak. Stay safe. On the wayside On the first sun Never lost it I don't have to ever forget