Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has gone public with his quest to acquire LeBron James. In an interview this week posted on CNNMoney.com, Cuban expressed his interest in James as a free agent and said that the NBA star needs to play in a place where he trusts the organization. If James does not reach an agreement with the Cavaliers by July 1, he would become an unrestricted free agent. "Come July 1st, yeah, of course, anybody would be interested in LeBron James, and if he leaves via free agency, then it's going to be tough," Cuban said. "If he does like I'm guessing, hoping he will, which is say, 'I'm not going to leave the Cavs high and dry,' if he decides to leave -- there's still a better chance he stays -- then he'll try to force a sign-and-trade, and that gives us a chance." Cuban's comments could fall under the NBA's tampering rules. In 2008, the league sent a memo to the 30 NBA teams detailing specific guidelines when discussing potential free agents with the media. http://sports.espn.go.com/dallas/nba/news/story?id=5205952
LeBron for Dirk? I don't see much else on the Mavs roster salary-wise that makes sense for the Cavs. That's actually not a bad trade for Cleveland. It's a big step down, but it's probably about as good a player as they are likely to get. Given all the years of under achieving in Dallas, it makes a lot of sense for Dallas too.
lol. I like their odds a lot more with LeBron than I do with Dirk. If King James came to the West Coast, and he has Mark Cuban writing checks to fill out the roster....yikes.
Keep him in the eastern conference, please. Don't really want to have to go through LeBron in his prime years.
Not a $100k fine. The memo read: "If a member of your organization is asked by the media about a potential free agent prior to the July 1 following the last season covered by the player's contract, or about any other person under contract with another NBA team, the only proper response is to decline comment." Penalties outlined in the memo could include suspension, prohibition of the offending team from hiring the person being tampered with, forfeiture of draft picks and individual and/or team fines of up to $5 million.
You're overanalyzing what was a completely off the cuff remark by me ... I didn't read the tampering memo, I was just trying (and failing apparently?) to be funny.
I didn't over analyze anything, I just copy and pasted the next two paragraphs of the article I posted. Your comment was funny, I wasn't trying to take that from you.
so a 100k fine is a potential penalty. and i don't think his quote was tampering anyway. he said that come july 1st, every team is going to be interested in lebron and then said that if lebron decides to leave and wants to do so in a sign and trade, that would give dallas a chance. i don't see anything wrong with that and it's definitely nothing bad enough to get the upper range of the penalties(suspension, loss of draft picks, and millions of dollars in fines).
Honestly, I keep hearing what a great owner Cuban is. Yes, he turned one of the worst franchises into at least a contender, but since then they have consistenly underachieved. He can't keep his mouth shut. Of course he wants James, 30 NBA owners want James, that's a non-story. As far as I can see, he's making the same mistake Paul Allen did, disastrously, early in the decade, solve a problem by throwing more (and more and more and more) money at it. Cuban needs to think more and talk less.
His biggest mistake is believing that he could build a true championship level team around Dirk; when they went down in flames in the first round against the 8th seed Dubs that was the moment to tear it down and rebuild through the draft (and some trades).
I would think the Blazers have a better shot at getting LeBron in a S&T than the Mavs. We have more valuable assets, imo.
I'd say after the year before, when they won Games 1 and 2 of the Finals and then lost 4 in a row should have been a huge wake-up call.
You know I see a lot of folks ripping on Cuban for this years team. Cuban wasn't the one who chose to play JJ Barea over Carone Butler in the playoffs. One is a multiple time all star with size. One is not. You figure it out.
i can't disagree more. his biggest mistake was blowing things up too early with that team. clearly, they were a championship caliber team or else they wouldn't have held a 2-0 lead in the nba finals. they didn't win a championship, but they were about as close as you could get. the next season they won 67 games(another thing that would indicate they were a great team) but ran into the one team that really matched up well against them in the first round. blowing it up immediately after that was an option, but a bad one. what needed to happen was for him to let another season play out and see how the team reacted in the playoffs(my guess is they would have gone deep). it should have been no surprise that a team that just lost in the first round after winning 67 games wasn't going to feel the same sense of urgency in the regular season and would likely have a much worse record. but downgrading from harris to kidd and throwing in 2 first round picks as well really set dallas back.
