The Dallas Mavericks were left scrambling to find an inside presence when talented center DeAndre Jordan reneged on his verbal agreement to join the club in free agency and decided to return to Los Angeles.
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Dallas owner Mark Cuban was predictably unhappy. Youd like to think when you look somebody in the eye and shake their hand and say, We have a deal, that you have a deal, Suns general manager Ryan McDonough said Thursday.
Instead, Cuban never heard from Jordan again until after he re-signed with the Clippers. Redick was there to prevent Jordan from meeting or answering any calls from Cuban.
The Clippers were making a late push to keep Jordan as LA teammates, team owner Steve Ballmer and coach Doc Rivers sought to change his mind about the Mavericks move.
After that, on Thursday morning, Cuban went off on his Cyber Dust account.
“I’m shocked, very disappointed, frustrated, disrespected”, Parsons told ESPN.
While at a Presidential Leadership Scholars graduation ceremony, Cuban admitted he wanted to know if there was something he could change for similar situation in the future.
The fallout from DeAndre Jordan’s decision to spurn the Dallas Mavericks and stay with the Los Angeles Clippers continued reverberating through the National Basteball Association on Thursday, the first day that teams and players could officially do business in the new league year.
After going through what Cuban did, I commend him for not being discouraged and talking it out publicly. The contract with the Clippers also is a four-year max deal that will be worth an estimated $88 million, sources told ESPN. “I think guys will have to just play basketball”, Cuban said.
“Through all of Monday we were texting back and forth discussing players available, the amount of cap room we had left”, Cuban wrote.
“I knew something was up”, Cuban said.
Shane Larkin, who signed with the Nets as a free agent on Thursday and spent his rookie season in Dallas, said it’s a hard situation to talk about. Chris Paul reportedly got all emotional, saying he had no idea Jordan has hard feelings toward him, that he thought they were “brothers”, and that he’d try to get him more involved in the offense.
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Potential role players in the frontcourt include Dwight Powell and three more who should soon sign soon – a pair of returnees in Charlie Villanueva and Richard Jefferson and Jeremy Evans, a free agent who spent his first five seasons in Utah. So while I was concerned, I still wasn’t anxious. This is something that I’ve never seen in my career, and I know that it doesn’t happen very often. So I went to bed.
