Mavericks, Cuban, Standing Pat

It must be hard to be a fan of the Dallas Mavericks right now. After, a postseason in which they escaped the 1st round probably due to injury, and they were quickly ousted in the 2nd round, it appears as if the long-time contending Mavericks are conceding yet another year without an NBA Championship.

Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner, has no problem spending money. He will spend money like it grows off trees—and I’m not convinced that his money doesn’t grow off trees! However, that spending hasn’t added up to much lately. Since the team reached the NBA Finals in 2006, the Mavericks have only made it out of the first round once. Their star player, Dirk Nowitzki, has played well, but his supporting cast comes and goes with the tide.

Despite the glaring reality that Dirk doesn’t even have a #2 guy that starts the game with him (as Jason Terry comes of the bench), the Mavs seem hesitant to bring in a top guy to pair alongside their superstar?

But why?

Like I said, it’s definitely not because of money. If Cuban was concerned about the cost of things, he certainly wouldn’t be running an NBA Franchise in Cowboy territory. The Mavs quest for a #2 guy certainly isn’t hampered by a lack of opportunities. From Loul Deng to Kevin Garnett, the options have been there for the Mavs over the past 3 years, they just haven’t been able to pull the trigger on a worthwhile deal.

So why haven’t they made the move?

I honestly think, that they don’t think that they need to.

Boy, was that confusing or what?

If the Mavs really thought they needed a #2 guy to go along with Dirk Nowitzki, they would have let Josh Howard go and they would have had bigger interests than Jason Kidd and Marcin Gortat. Instead, they went after two mid-level players who will have a marginal effect on the Mavs ability to win a championship in 2010.

This tells me that the Mavs front office doesn’t know what it’s doing. Much like their pro football counterparts, the Mavs owner is a businessman. Cuban knows business—he knows what equals success and what breeds it. But he doesn’t know about is winning.

I know what you’re saying, but Cuban is winning at life—he’s a billionaire!

This may be true, but you don’t have to be a winner in order to be rich. I think Chris Rock put it best when he gave a detailed description of his neighborhood in New Jersey. He pointed out that he had to be a winner in comedy to afford the house he lives in, while the overwhelming majority of people in his neighborhood are just regular people who happen to be rich.

Not to say that Cuban is regular, because he certainly isn’t. But just because he practically invented high-definition television and is a product of the dotcom era, doesn’t mean he knows how to be a competitive winner. In business, there are a lot of winners, and rarely is one company or one individual the one that takes home all the money. Business isn’t like sports. There is no playoff. There is no championship game. There is no Best of 7. There is no “Winner Takes All.”

But perhaps that’s not something the Mavericks understand. While the Celtics are fitting Rasheed Wallace for his green jersey, the Lakers are signing Artest, and while the Cavs ship Shaq’s custom-fitted mattress to downtown Cleveland, the Mavs are virtually standing pat, while resigning an aging point guard and perhaps acquiring their second vastly overrated center of the decade.

Maybe in business, that kind of approach in this NBA market would work—you know, while everyone is investing in risky moves with pricey and/or older players, the Mavs are playing it safe—kind of like what Goldman Sachs did during the sub-prime mortgage run. But even Goldman Sachs ended up taking money from the government when it was all said and done.

Sure, as an NBA team you’d like to avoid being too risky, but you still have to make big moves. Because if you don’t make moves, it’s virtually impossible to have the best team. And unlike in business, in the NBA, championship trophies determine a team’s value, and at the end of every season, only one team makes a profit.

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