I know my level of Heat-hate is at an all-time high right now, and I'm a fan of big-market teams that don't have the same financial problems of a team like the Kings, who frequently hover around the salary cap minimum. But as Reinsdorf is stingy as it comes to the Bulls, despite frequently being at the top of the league in revenue behind the Knicks and Celtics, I feel like I can relate a little to watching a team that doesn't spend as much as possible to win games. And it bothers me that he could, but chooses not to. That being said, I don't know what it's like to root for team that doesn't pay players because it can't.
However, taking that anger out on teams that choose to do everything in their power to improve their product strikes me as sour grapes.
Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban Are The REAL Villains Entering The NBA Finals
May 31, 2011 - Without question, the Miami Heat are the villains of the 2011 NBA Finals, just as they have been the villains of the entire season. Since LeBron James uttered the words "South Beach" on ESPN back in July, and since he, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh took the stage at the AmericanAirlines Arena to celebrate their very existence, and since King James -- already hated by many for, well, being King James -- said the goal was to win "not one, not two ... not seven" championships -- since all of that, the NBA Most Wanted Moral Criminal List has been the Miami Heat roster, replicated in full and sorted by minutes played.
First off, I don't feel like LeBron was that hated before he pulled his decision crap. Compared to Kobe, the Celtics, and the Spurs (for the crime of being boring), I feel like most people rooted for the Cavs when their team was out. I know I did, and ridiculed those that chose the Lakers. And I'm not going to reiterate all the arguments, I feel like your entirely justified for hating LeBron for the way he handled everything about last summer.
That isn't changing now, and should the Heat beat the Dallas Mavericks, as they are heavily favored to do, it won't end there. There will be a dozen columns bemoaning the new NBA, written by the self-important and self-appointed nobility of the pundit class. They'll bemoan that James, Wade and Bosh took team-building into their own hands when their teams -- Wade excepted -- couldn't handle it themselves. They'll rail that the ring is cheapened by the dark way in which the superpowers joined. They'll lament that the Mavericks, a team built the right way was beaten by a fraudulent champion, a victor with an asterisk.
As anyone who has ever played in a pick-up game knows, it's pretty annoying when the best players refuse to split themselves up in order to make the games competitive (coughmarkmillerandb-lowecough)*. While they certainly have the right to choose to do that, we have the right to not respect them for it.
*non-UIC people, insert your own two p
Let me tell you something about the Dallas Mavericks.
Only one team has spent more money in the last decade than the Dallas Mavericks. Not the Lakers, not the Heat: only the New York Knicks, for a time led by an Isiah Thomas with a credit card and no conscience. The Mavericks have spent $851 million on payroll in the past decade, some $130 million more than the Lakers and $240 million more than the Heat.
But doesn't the NBA have a salary cap?
So what, right? Well, the NBA has a little thing called "the salary cap." It's used to cap salary that teams are allowed to pay out in order to keep player payroll down and create an even playing field.
I knew it!
But it's a soft cap, with exceptions and routes in which teams that are so inclined can exceed the cap. Some would call some of these methods "loopholes." Like signing a retired Keith Van Horn to a contract solely to trade him for Jason Kidd, a deal that cost the Mavericks $10 million, and was legal under Bird rights rules despite Dallas being tens of millions of dollars beyond the cap. (Bird rights aim to allow teams to re-sign their own players in excess of the cap. Teams like the Mavericks instead use it to make high-dollar deals over the cap.)
Look, I know it'd be nice if we lived in a world where Communism worked and every team spent the exact same amount of money on payroll every year. But this isn't MLB, either. The Mavericks are not the Yankees, who are spending 5 times what the Rays are this year. The Mavs simply do what they can to put the best team on the floor, which should be commended in any sport. As a fan, I want the money I spend on tickets, concessions, etc. spent on making the team better, not on buying the owner another yacht.
The Mavericks work around the system by including draft picks in deals to get trades done ... then buying back into the first round almost every single year, to the tune of $3 million a pop, cash that doesn't count against the salary cap. Dallas works deals like the Peja Stojakovic buy-out/Alexis Ajinca trade this season. (What happened there? Oh, the Toronto Raptors decided to buy out Peja, taking a financial hit well in advance of the trade deadline. The Mavericks quickly signed him to a minimum contract. In a total and complete coincidence, the Mavs quickly traded prospect Alexis Ajinca to the Raptors with cash to cover his salary and a future second-round draft pick for the rights to a Greek dude who will probably never play in the NBA. The Mavs couldn't legally trade for Peja without giving up a key player -- a Stojakovic for Ajinca trade would have been illegal -- so they borked the system set in place to limit salary, and did it through the back channels, claiming all the way that the deals were totally separate. Riiiight.)
It is not Mark Cuban's fault that Robert Sarver is a cheap bitch that wouldn't spend the extra money it took to win a championship, thus destroying Steve Nash's prime. You can't just buy a draft pick, you have to find a team willing to trade it, and sadly there are a lot of those teams right now.
Also, while the Raptors also fall into the category of "Teams I don't follow very well during the regular season", I feel like Peja was a disaster for them and they were set to get rid of him anyway. The way they got him might seem shady, the reason this wasn't made a bigger deal when it happened is that no one wanted Peja. It's not like the Raptors cut Bosh so the Heat could sign him here.
After that shenanigan went down, Mavericks bankroller Mark Cuban had the audacity to take the league-owned New Orleans Hornets to task for accepting more salary in the Marcus Thornton-Carl Landry swap. Cuban has to pay 1/29th of the Hornets' payroll, you see, and that $10,000 or whatever was just a bit too steep ... for a guy paying his roster $90 million.
And this is where we get really dumb. Mark Cuban has absolutely no responsibility to make the Hornets, who are good and in his division, a better team. As a Bulls fan, I would be just as mad if the Bulls had to pay part of the Pacers' salary. I'm not against revenue sharing per se, but every team supporting one is a little different.
Mark Cuban and the Mavericks have been abusing the NBA salary cap and trade rules for years, completely ignoring the standards by which teams are supposed to abide for the good of the league, for the good of the fans. The NBA is careening toward a lockout. You know why? Because teams who cry and plead about how much cash they're dropping every season have to overspend on everything to keep up with The Benefactor and his ilk (James Dolan, Jerry Buss and Paul Allen). The NBA is headed to a lockout because Mark Cuban and friends flog the salary cap until it bleeds, pushing and pushing and pushing for the smallest advantage on the court.
Mark Cuban did not put a gun to Abe Pollion's head and tell him to give Gilbert Arenas a nine-figure deal. Yes, some teams can whether an Erick Dampier signing, but that doesn't make him a villain.
And you're mad because Miami clears the decks, signs three of the best players in the NBA, and marches to the NBA Finals? Give me a break. LeBron and Dwyane and Ch Bo and Pat Riley ain't the villains here. The Heat played by the rules (more or less) to assemble this team. The Mavericks stretched salary rules to the last thread, and have done so for a decade, and have done more than every team but the Knicks to send payroll on its upward trajectory over the past 10 years.
Root for the Mavericks if you choose, but don't root against the Heat because they're the bad guys. If you do, you're indicting the wrong suspect.So let me get this straight. You want me to cast the Mavs as the bad guys because they have a high salary? Or do they have a high salary because they consist of a bunch of aging veterans who haven't won a ring yet? What did anyone besides theoretically Mark Cuban do wrong here? And are we just going to ignore The Decision and the stupid championship rally they had before they ever won a championship?
Yeah, I think I'm still rooting for Dallas.
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