BRUNSON BURNER: to NYK for 4yrs/$104M (no SnT) | NYK docked 2025 2nd for tampering

[hakeemfaan]

I think Cuban finally made a public explanation of the situation for a couple of reasons:

1. Public perception that he was "cheap".  It's one thing for fans to feel that way, but quite another for players.  Trading for Kyrie, and paying him a new max contract, should go a long way towards correcting that perception.

2. In the interview a couple of days ago, Luka answered a question about how much the team missed Brunson, and he answered "a lot".  If there was any doubt among current Mav players about how the team evaluated Brunson's value and contribution to the team, Cuban wanted them to have a clear picture.

I talked about point 2 in another thread. Talk to Kyrie and Luka in private and tell them your side and say that out of respect for an ex Mavs like Brunson you don’t want to say anything negative about his dad publicly . No need to now make Brunson Sr a bad guy in public even if this is what happened.  

Even for point 1 it is better to take the high road publicly. What good is it going to do trashing Brunson Sr now? Any player is going to read this as Mark trashing some player’s parent and they think about their own parent and what it would feel like for them if a rich billionaire to take shots. Stupid. 

All this also masks the real truth that the Mavs for a few years got to see Brunson every day in practice and in huddles and could not gauge his upside or value correctly to lock him up to a long term cheaper deal long, long before things went south and he was out of their reach. That part somehow Cuban glibly overlooks. 

How did we go from having one of the coolest owners to one of the worst and both being the same person to boot?