July 7, 2004

inside the mind of a owner

since i love basketball so much, i once in a while wonder if i would like to own a team if i were ever rich enough to do so. sure, you now have the team and get to be part of the action, but there’s so much responsibility to do well, to get the right players, and make all the right decisions to get a good team out there while you’re forking out millions of dollars a year. sure, you love shaq, but are you going to fork out $34 million a year to one guy? sure, of course. oh yeah, what about the rest of your team?

and so the owner of the dallas mavericks, mark cuban, has his own blog. mostly he rants about how the mavs were in some way cheated, like the refereeing wasn’t consistent, or how the rules should be changed in general, or more egotistical stuff like his new reality tv show “the benefactor” or how he made his money. cash in on the dot.com boom and make billions 101, right?

but the mavs just lost one of their main stars, steve nash, to the phoenix suns through free agency, and he just wrote this great entry about what happened from his perspective, his reasoning for how much he was willing to pay, how the negotiations went, and why he just couldn’t match even though he loves the guy.

There was risk of Steve getting hurt. His contract being unmovable. I was going past the length of the TV deal and into the new CBA. But this was for Steve Nash. I would have preferred to stick to 4 years, but Duffy had been telling some people that he wanted more than 4 years and I thought this might be an ego point for the agent, so I offered the 5th year with the terms.

Donnie wanted me to offer 10mm a year for 4 years straight up. Both were fair offers. Both had lots of risk. I knew that I was going to let Steve see if he could get another offer, and I knew that Steve would give me the chance to match, and I would if I thought it was reasonable.

if you don’t know basketball it doesn’t make much sense, but it was pretty fascinating…

Posted at July 7, 2004 2:45 AM
Comments

there must be a basketball strategy game where you are the team owner/coach and have to make picks based on high school stats and go through the course of a season dealing with injuries, arrests and such while playing the team members you feel will make the best team effort to win the championship, no?

Posted by: jason at July 7, 2004 12:15 PM

well, that’s the basis of most serious basketball video games, like nba live etc., (except for maybe the arrests: i think the nbapa won’t allow that and let you use real players). it’s probably for this reason i don’t have a playstation 2, because i’d seriously *never* leave the house. ever. it’s bad enough i think so much about real basketball, do i really need to isolate myself due to ficticious sports sagas?

Posted by: e at July 7, 2004 3:52 PM

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