By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
The Mavs are still fighting for a spot in the play-ins, there’s frustration in the team and also on a personal level as Luka Doncic recently admit and Mark Cuban knows what needs to be done.
The owner of Dallas talked to the press and he admitted that while he expects Doncic to stay in the long run in Dallas, the team must deliver for him: “Look, players don’t talk like that, just like, ‘Hey, I’m here for the next 17 years.’ He’d like to be here the whole time, but we’ve got to earn that.”
And it’s simply how you earn this: “Win championships. It’s amazing how that cures all. I mean, before Giannis [Antetokounmpo] won, everybody was like, ‘Where’s he going? Where’s he going? He’s not staying. He’s not staying.’ [Nikola] Jokic, while they haven’t won, da, da, da, da, da. Dirk [Nowitzki] before [the Mavs won the 2010-11 title], right?
“There’s no great player, no superstar, where they don’t question, ‘What are you gonna do if you haven’t won yet?”
Meanwhile, Cuban said that Dallas wants to keep Kyrie Irving, even if so far his co-existence with Doncic doesn’t have spectacular results and just an 8-15 record.
As Cuban explained: “I’d love to have him stay for sure. I’d love to have him. I want him to stay for sure, and I think we have a good shot. I think he’s happy here. He tells me he’s happy here, and I get along great with him. I think he’s a good guy. All I can tell you is everything I thought I knew about Kyrie because of everything I read was 100% wrong.”
Still Cuban was reluctant when he asked if Dallas will give Kyrie the maximum of $272 million over five years, more than any other team due to possessing his Bird rights: “I don’t know. I guess there’s always too high a price, depending, but now with the new CBA, it’s a different world.”
Meanwhile, with Doncic also admitting that the team misses Jalen Brunson, Cuban explained that Dallas couldn’t do much to keep him away from the Knicks: “We didn’t know what the bid was. They never gave us a number. Knowing the numbers now, I would’ve paid it in a heartbeat, but he wouldn’t have come anyway. There’s just no possible way that it was about money”.