Quote:
Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla
A better question might be: You had Brunson and Doncic in your backcourt. How'd you **** THAT up?
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Grabbed those 2 out of the same draft and managed to lose them both.
There's a pretty strong argument to make that the Brunson calamity facilitated the Luka move. If you have Brunson instead of Kyrie it's a pretty hard sell to say "We have a 3-4 year window we're looking to capitalize on..."
Even Nico couldn't have convinced himself of that.
Now this is where Cuban can **** off a bit -- that was HIS fault. He didn't want to pay the tax on a Brunson extension. And the rumors are that he was actually anticipating a Luka Super-max as part of it. So while I do agree that he wouldn't have made that deal, that's ALSO why he wasn't willing to pay Brunson and the unwillingness to pay Brunson is what led, ultimately, to the Luka deal IMO.
It was just a perfect storm of bad timing for Cuban. If he sells a year or two sooner or a year or two later, the Mavs have at least one of them. They might have both. But because of when he got out, they lost both guys.
And really, Donnie Nelson set a LOT of it into motion on his way out the door. The Porzingis trade disaster and Hardaway extension really boxed Harrison in. He had to unload Porzingis which cost them a ton of assets they needed to surround Luka. And the tax issues Cuban was trying to avoid were created by the awful Hardaway deal.
Not offering Brunson the extension PRIOR to that walk year saw his market value double and ultimately it was Cuban being cheap and risk averse that created that. Then he tried to play hardball when Brunson was unrestricted and that was all she wrote.
Cuban is the cause of the Brunson fiasco, IMO.