While Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard have mostly avoided discussing the scandal around Kawhi’s deal with Aspiration that allegedly circumvented the salary cap, one person who has continued talking about it is Mark Cuban. The former majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks has strenuously objected to the conclusions reached by Pablo Torre Finds Out with social media posts and even making appearances on the show.
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People have wondered why Cuban seems to care so deeply about this story since it doesn’t seem to involve him in really any way. One conspiracy theory that’s been circulated is that he has a vested interest in covering up salary cap circumvention since he’s suspected of indulging himself in a similar manner with Dirk Nowitzki toward the tail end of the Hall-of-Fame German’s career.
Cuban appeared once again on PTFO today, his second appearance on the show defending Leonard, the Clippers and Steve Ballmer. While he and Torre spent most of the episode discussing the particulars of the Kawhi case, he was also given the opportunity to clear his name when it came to the accusations surrounding his dealings with Dirk.
Late in his career, Dirk took a three-year, $25 million deal from the Mavericks, when reportedly other teams like the Lakers and Rockets were willing to offer him a max deal for about $90 million total. Dirk is and always has been a Mav for life, but as the saying goes, everybody has a price. Could anyone really leave that much money on the table for the sake of loyalty?
Cuban explained that because of the salary cap, which was only $58 million at the time and had been that way for three years in a row, the Mavs couldn’t offer any more than that.
“Tim Duncan had done a three-for-$30m deal,” Cuban said. “I vividly remember having the conversation, [Dirk] was like, ‘Well I’d like to get Tim Duncan money.’ I’m like, ‘Dirk, the cap stayed flat, here’s what we want to do,’ and he was like OK,” he added.
Dirk got a one-year contract for $25 million after that deal ran out, but Cuban explained that it became possible because the cap finally went up.
Torre questioned why Dirk would turn down max offers to stay for such a comparatively paltry sum, to which Cuban replied, “I don’t even know that [those teams] spoke to him. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, I don’t know.” He also said that if Daryl Morey, then the Rockets GM, really was interested in Dirk, he would have come directly to Cuban to work out a deal.
The supposed smoking gun that people think would prove that Cuban circumvented the salary cap to keep Dirk in Dallas is the fact that his company, Magnolia Pictures, paid for the rights to a documentary about the Hall of Famer. Conspiracy theorists have speculated that Magnolia way overpaid for the doc with an eight-figure sum, but Torre got to the bottom of it.
“What we did is we checked with the producers of the film,” Torre said. “And to your credit, they poured cold water on the whole conspiracy. The head of the production company told us that your company did a $100,000 deal for U.S. distribution rights.” That’s hardly a number that would move the needle and keep Dirk from listening to outside offers.
“I thank you for dispelling all the nonsense,” Cuban said. “I appreciate it.” He then unequivocally answered that the Mavs did not circumvent the salary cap for Dirk.
One interesting postscript to this story is that Cuban wasn’t as vehement in his refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing when it came to the Knicks signing Jalen Brunson away from his Mavs. “I don’t know. I just think there was a lot at play there,” he noted.
They say when one door closes, another one opens, and it seems that’s true for NBA conspiracy theories, too. It will be interesting to see if Torre goes down another rabbit hole on this one.
