Outspoken owner Mark Cuban made that clear Sunday night before his team broke an eight-game losing streak to “improve” to 3-13.
Here’s how the Mavs will approach the season, divined from three quotes from Cuban (via ESPN.com):
On the outside noise and how bad can translate into good but not great:
“Haters gonna hate. We think that you always compete. If you’re competing when the league is better, like it is this year, if you don’t do well, you’ll be in a position to get a good pick. Which, remember, even if you have the worst record in the NBA, there’s a 75 percent chance you’re not going to get the top pick.”
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On tanking and why it’s not a strategy — especially this season:
“We have so many young guys on this team, we want the games to mean something. Not to be, ‘OK, who are we going to pull in the fourth quarter so we can lose this game?’ That’s not how teams develop good habits. The only way you overcome that is to have the ultimate superstar carry you through, and it’s tough to draft the ultimate superstar. I don’t see any Shaqs or LeBrons or Tim Duncans in this draft, so I don’t think that’s the right way to do it. You just ignore the haters, let them bitch, and go about your business.”
On the rest of the season, future trades and ‘difference-makers’:
“We’ll play it by ear. The one thing you don’t do is panic. The one thing you don’t do is make any rushed judgments. You see what you have – right? – and that’s exactly what we’ll do, and we’ll make determinations from there. If we just can’t get healthy, that will tell us one thing. If we can and we’re just not any good, that will tell us another thing. If we can and we start rolling along and we think we can get a lot better, then that tells what we do there. You just don’t know. The crazy thing you don’t do is panic. … This is not a race-to-the-bottom year.”
