BOSTON — Mark Cuban said he had no personal grudge against the Knicks, just the job of developing an NBA finalist.
Benching their top player at the end of last season increased the chances that the Mavericks would both retain their 2023 first-round pick and keep it away from the Knicks, who would have acquired it as a final reward for Kristaps Porzingis if it had been outside the top 10.
Asked if it felt like unexpected revenge after it was revealed the Knicks had rigged Jalen Brunson, Cuban told The Washington Post, “I’m not a revenge guy.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” the Mavericks’ owner said. “We just decided to use some younger guys the last few games. But… [general manager] Nico Harrison and I [coach] Jason Kidd’s job is to make tough decisions. Nobody who makes the decision to effectively rebuild likes that. It’s not always fun to play young guys. So we felt it was time to play some young guys.”
However, the NBA never considered this a run-of-the-mill rebuild and fined the team $750,000.
The problem? The Mavericks still had a chance to qualify for the play-in tournament, but they benched the likes of Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving for their final two games.
They kept their lottery pick at 10th overall and used it to acquire Duke center Derek Lively II, who was a key part of Dallas’ run to the NBA Finals.
“We made the decision that 10 other teams made, right?” Cuban said. “We just delayed it a little bit. Obviously the result was good.”
Commissioner Adam Silver, who created the play-in tournament to ensure teams like the 2023 Mavericks don’t run out of steam late in the season, tried to downplay Lively’s connection to Dallas reaching the NBA Finals.
“We punished them. We did what we thought was appropriate at the time,” Silver said. “I don’t think their success this season and the success they’re seeing now in the playoffs and now in the Finals is because of any one draft pick, no matter how important that pick was to the team.”
Cuban said he was unfazed by those perceptions.
“I don’t care. People always say shit to me,” he said. “You guys [the media] “Give me shit all the time. Does it really matter? It’s like going on Twitter and expecting people to be nice to you. You know the game, you’ve been doing this forever, you’ve seen the good times and the bad. When you break your hand, it changes everything. I’m just trying to enjoy the moment.”
The story isn’t over yet, but the Knicks appear to be the losers of the Mavericks’ decision, dropping from a mid-10th pick last year to 24th this month.
The Knicks also own the 25th pick.
About a year ago, after the Mavericks’ disappointing season, Cuban publicly blamed Brunson’s father, Rick, for the point guard’s decision to leave Dallas for New York in free agency. “The reason things got bad was because Rick was [the negotiations]”Cuban told reporters last April.
Rick Brunson has longstanding relationships with both Knicks president Leon Rose and head coach Tom Thibodeau.
The Knicks were stripped of a second-round pick because they “conducted free agent negotiations involving Jalen Brunson prior to the date such negotiations are permitted.”
Cuban told the Post that it’s now in the past.
“I have no problem [Rick]”When I played against you guys, I saw him, I said ‘hi,’ I shook his hand. What’s done is done,” Cuban said. “You can’t hold grudges in this league. It doesn’t mean anything. The guy you hate could be the best player tomorrow.”
