It has been a tough season for Mark Cuban‘s Mavericks so far, as the team currently ranks last in the Western Conference with a 7-18 record. Still, that doesn’t mean Cuban’s plan for Dirk Nowitzki has changed it all — he still envisions Nowitzki spending as many more seasons as he wants with the Mavs, finishing his career in Dallas.
“I still wouldn’t trade Dirk even if they offered me three No. 1’s,” Cuban said with a smile to Steve Bulpett of The Boston Herald this week. “Four, yes. But three, no.”
In addition to cracking jokes about his longtime star, Cuban also weighed in on a few more noteworthy topics. The Mavs owner talked about the rebuilding process for his club, which he hopes doesn’t last long, and pointed to the Celtics as a franchise worth emulating during that rebuild. He also revisited a topic he has discussed in the past, exploring why the NBA has been on the upswing in recent years, while other sports (most notably the NFL) haven’t had as much success gaining new fans and viewers.
Here are a few highlights from Cuban’s comments to Bulpett, whose piece is worth checking out in full:
On why the NBA is seeing increased popularity and TV ratings:
“There’s a confluence of a couple of things. No. 1, our demographic keeps on getting younger. The NFL and baseball, they keep on getting older. And I think what we’re doing with (the video game) NBA 2K is brilliant. And in the bigger scheme of things, in terms of building fans for the future, what do you want your kids to play? Of all the sports out there, do you want to go to a baseball game, or do want to watch your kid play basketball? Do you want to worry about him [playing] a whole football game, or do you want to watch your kid play basketball? Do you want him to get healthy from running the court, or do you want to watch him play football and worry about collisions?”
On the aspects of the Celtics’ rebuild that he admires and wants to emulate:
“I think the hallmark of what they did is how they get their teams to play hard. That’s really what we look to emulate more than anything else. I mean, they’ve done a great job in the draft, but there’s as much luck as anything else there, and things have got to fall in your lap one way or the other. So the way it’s worked out, the biggest takeaway that we’ve seen in looking at the Celts — and we’ve done a lot of deals with them, so we’re close to them — really, more than anything, it’s just how hard Brad gets his teams to play.”
On the Mavericks’ own rebuild:
“We just started last year. We weren’t going into last year thinking we were rebuilding, but [Andrew] Bogut got hurt and Deron Williams was hurt. We started off 3-17 or something ridiculous, and until we went into tank mode once we got eliminated from the playoffs, we were just outside the playoffs. So we have just started the rebuild, and hopefully it won’t be long.”
