Speaker 1: All right, we got about thirty minutes left to go
Speaker 1: in the show. We're going to spend it all talking
Speaker 1: about the MAVs and the Lucas situation. A big bombshell
Speaker 1: article dropped today from Tim McMahon on ESPN. You had
Speaker 1: a Tim Cato article, You've had Mark Stein, and then
Speaker 1: you had another press conference. This time it was just
Speaker 1: Nico talking to the media here and he answered the
Speaker 1: question for questions for about twenty five minutes. A couple
Speaker 1: of those questions not that good. Some of those questions
Speaker 1: pretty good. I had wished it would gone on longer,
Speaker 1: but it just would. He would have been a pinata
Speaker 1: out there just getting killed if it had gone longer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think, you know, from a Nico perspective,
Speaker 2: the fact that no one asked him anything about those
Speaker 2: articles and he didn't have to go on record about
Speaker 2: it was a win for him.
Speaker 1: I don't understand that. I don't understand, and again, not
Speaker 1: being critical, I guess I am, but I'm not. Look.
Speaker 1: I wasn't there but for the people that went there
Speaker 1: specifically to ask questions. Tim McMahon basically wrote today that
Speaker 1: you know that there was a key moment that fractured
Speaker 1: the relationship between Luca and his team and Dirk. As
Speaker 1: he was pointing it out when Casey Smith was fired
Speaker 1: and he was fired, he was so respected and Tim
Speaker 1: McMahon makes it look like Casey Smith was fired because
Speaker 1: Nico was threatened by him, and he fired him while
Speaker 1: he was over Zoom, while he was visiting his mother
Speaker 1: who was passing away, and he lost Dirk at that moment,
Speaker 1: and probably lost Luca at that moment, and things were
Speaker 1: massively fractured, and that did none of the There was
Speaker 1: no questions about that that came up at this thing.
Speaker 2: He uh, you know, if I'm him at this point,
Speaker 2: I'm moving on. I'm not talking about that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I like, there's not going to be another chance for
Speaker 2: him to be in front of the media except maybe
Speaker 2: on Draft Day. And you right, and so when draft
Speaker 2: day gets here, we're going to be in late June,
Speaker 2: so you know, it's not going to be a story anymore.
Speaker 2: And so again, if I'm looking at it from his perspective,
Speaker 2: he's got to be like, great, nobody asked me about this.
Speaker 1: Here's how I feel about all this. I feel that
Speaker 1: with Mark Cuban, it felt like the MAVs were a
Speaker 1: small family owned business.
Speaker 3: I know they're not.
Speaker 1: They weren't in the You know, obviously he had his
Speaker 1: own issues, but I loved it. I preferred it, and
Speaker 1: I miss it. But it felt like a family owned business.
Speaker 1: A super passionate MAVs fan is running it. He's one
Speaker 1: of us. He just happens to be a billionaire. Felt
Speaker 1: like a family owned business. This field's colder and more corporate.
Speaker 1: And there was a moment in this press conference where
Speaker 1: Nico said, everything we do is without emotion, and it
Speaker 1: goes through the lens of process. Do you have that audio?
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a listen.
Speaker 3: Oop's wrong thing.
Speaker 1: I love a good drum, fill said locked on MAVs.
Speaker 1: You said that Patrick Jamontt initially laughed at you when
Speaker 1: you brought him the Luca trade. What did you say
Speaker 1: to convince him to approve it?
Speaker 4: It wasn't really uh, it wasn't really a laugh. It
Speaker 4: was more of a chuckle, But really it was just
Speaker 4: I'd set it out of the blue. And then, as
Speaker 4: we said, already talking more, I gave him reasoning behind it.
Speaker 4: And you know, we're a very process oriented organization and
Speaker 4: everything we do is without emotion and goes through the
Speaker 4: lens of process. And so once we had those substantive discussions,
Speaker 4: then he saw the vision.
Speaker 1: All right, if you're going to operate the organization with
Speaker 1: that emotion, it really just comes down to whether you
Speaker 1: win or lose. It's a corporate, cold blooded mindset. It's
Speaker 1: like everything is a spreadsheet. But when it's emotion, there's
Speaker 1: some emotions are really valuable in these situations, even from
Speaker 1: a business and marketing standpoint, like like loyalty, things like that,
Speaker 1: like passion, And if you're just gonna I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the problem. Like if you're a knee co and you're like, man,
Speaker 1: I just want to win a championship in the next
Speaker 1: two years. I don't care about the history of this organization.
Speaker 1: I don't care about the future of this organization. I'm
Speaker 1: going to be judging if I win a championship in
Speaker 1: the next two years, then maybe this trade makes sense
Speaker 1: to go for it like this. But if you care
Speaker 1: about the history of the organist, and you care about
Speaker 1: the future of the organization, and you care about the
Speaker 1: emotions of fans, you don't ever do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say like the things that he says,
Speaker 2: and sometimes you can say things in a way that
Speaker 2: you don't intend them. Like earlier we played the clip
Speaker 2: of him saying it was awesome when he was getting
Speaker 2: you know, you know, like sometimes you're not articulating things
Speaker 2: the way that you want. He may have been trying
Speaker 2: to say, we don't make emotional decisions, which is different
Speaker 2: than we don't factor in emotion, but regardless, that's how
Speaker 2: it came off. And the way that he's explaining himself
Speaker 2: to me very much reminds me of the way CEOs
Speaker 2: explain things when they run corporations.
Speaker 1: And usually if you look at.
Speaker 2: The lifespan of a CEO in a major corporation, it's
Speaker 2: usually these periods of time and then they go on
Speaker 2: to the next corporation. And so that's what's being communicated
Speaker 2: right now, and how it's being received very much feels
Speaker 2: like that he's doing he's speaking in CEO corporate tone terms,
Speaker 2: and that's definitely the way that it's being perceived.
Speaker 3: I want to get this correct because I don't want
Speaker 3: to misinterpret what he says.
Speaker 2: But Bobby Carella, who's now at d LLS, used to
Speaker 2: work for the Mass forever for a long time. His
Speaker 2: mom worked for the MAVs since the eighties. He very
Speaker 2: much cares about the Mavericks.
Speaker 3: A very good tweet this morning, and it was basically
Speaker 3: the point of this is the guy who has said
Speaker 3: multiple times he's here for three years, but nothing really
Speaker 3: more than that, which maybe that's Nico just saying that's
Speaker 3: how long my contract is. That was that was another
Speaker 3: point this is I haven't read his sweet now, so
Speaker 3: I don't screw it up here. He has explicitly said
Speaker 3: he plans to finish out his contract and reportedly has
Speaker 3: no interest in continuing beyond.
Speaker 2: Then yeah, Kato wrote that, right, Okay, so I didn't
Speaker 2: know if Kato wrote that that that I believe that
Speaker 2: was in the DLLs article, that he has no intention
Speaker 2: of being, you know, extending his contract.
Speaker 3: That's an amazing thing.
Speaker 2: Again, I would have loved if Cato could have been
Speaker 2: there to ask him that.
Speaker 1: On the record. And again, you don't want the steward
Speaker 1: of your whole spaceship being a guy who's out in
Speaker 1: three years because he doesn't care what happens to it
Speaker 1: after that. Presumabla I'm putting you know, but I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: you want, you want checks and balances. There should have
Speaker 1: been one other person they could have talked to with
Speaker 1: experience before they pulled the trigger on that trade.
Speaker 2: Well, I agree with you, Ben, But the problem with
Speaker 2: that is that person generally is the owner of the franchise. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it is the owner of the franchise's job to because again,
Speaker 2: like Nico can say he wants to do anything he wants,
Speaker 2: but if the owner doesn't let him, that's the owner
Speaker 2: doesn't let him. Ask Donnie Nelson what it was like
Speaker 2: working with Mark Cuban. Sure, you know, you can't just
Speaker 2: go do whatever you want. And so the whole point
Speaker 2: is that Patrick Dumont had the ability to say no,
Speaker 2: and he chose to believe in Nico, and since then
Speaker 2: has said several times and Nico we trust. And unless
Speaker 2: that is changed, which again that's the point of Team
Speaker 2: tim Cato's article. Nobody has really seen that publicly, No
Speaker 2: one knows, right, all we know is that he has
Speaker 2: said and Niko, we trust. And so you would believe that,
Speaker 2: especially based on the way it was presented today.
Speaker 1: It's the inexperience of the owner and it's a short
Speaker 1: term vision of the GM. But all the all Patrick
Speaker 1: Dumont had to do is called Dirk. Yeah, all he
Speaker 1: had to do is say, hey, you know what, you're
Speaker 1: the most important maverick of all time. What do you
Speaker 1: think about this?
Speaker 2: Right? And I'm sure it's Dirk. Dirk told his sister
Speaker 2: on that podcast and it has translated in German that
Speaker 2: he wouldn't have done that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, we're not finished yet. In just over
Speaker 1: three minutes, we'll be back to wrap up this conversation
Speaker 1: and wrap up the show. Don't go anywhere