07-08-2022, 01:51 PM
Scott4Mavs41– as far as SnT goes, not sure what side of that fence I fall on; I can see the argument from both sides. I will say that our leverage has decreased immensely, unless, as you said, we use tampering threats as a bargaining tool. Is THAT legal though? Seems like just a different type of rule circumvention. I may be way off base though. What’s most concerning to me is that we were hearing that Brunson was a near lock to return and then the Knicks clearing space almost seemed to take us by surprise. That doesn’t speak well to Nico’s preparedness. If the MBT knew in advance that Cuban had a ceiling in mind to offer JB and didn’t expect the Knicks to be able to clear that much cap without a SnT with Dallas and MBT were in fact caught off guard when they did, they didn’t play their cards very well. The variable, in my eyes, was Cuban not budging on his #. JB’s camp knew the offer and confidently cut us out. We may still get a SnT or maybe we will find out there was nothing we could have done to keep JB. Personally, I would bluffed them on our willingness to go up to 5yrs-30m and make the Knicks sweat it. Maybe that wasn’t an option or they didn’t want to do JB like that. His camp sure didn’t seem to have any such qualms about playing hardball. They got their man, and will likely have no lasting repercussions.