Mark Cuban on Isiah's future with Knicks; NY Times profile

Came across these interesting items last week, which prove rather conclusively not only what a human quote-machine IU grad and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has become nationally, but also how after so many years of constant media mis-reporting and resentment of him, his personality is finally starting to be better understood and put in its proper perspective.
Mark's blog, http://www.blogmaverick.com/ has been a MUST-READ for me since it started.
It's by far one of THE most interesting on the internet, not merely because of Mark's well-honed intuition about the intersection of business technology, marketing and consumer tastes, but also because his judgment about what is sensible and practical and what is merely excessive PR hype is seldom wrong.
Mark's own experience with failure and success has earned him the right to be known as one of the few personalities in the country who truly "says what he means" and "means what he says," and "puts his money where his mouth is," to combine three useful cliches in a meaningful way.

These stories all appeared after yet another Knicks loss at MSG last week, with the New York Times' Howard Beck , New York Post's Marc Berman and New York Daily News' Filip Bondy commenting on Mark's positive remarks last week about Isiah Thomas' future as Knicks head coach.
The Times' Selena Roberts meanwhile paints an interesting "Prince and the Pauper" storyline, with Mark cast as the savvy, understanding underdog, and MSG head James L. Dolan as the spoiled and over-indulged pig of a prince who knows the cost of everything, but the value of nothing.

South Beach Hoosier first met Isiah early on in his first semester at IU in the fall of 1979, when his new friend, IU basketballer Jim Thomas, a fellow South Floridian from Ft. Lauderdale, introduced him when they were walking from the IU Library over to the middle part of campus, and ran into Isiah holding court with some friends of his near the HPER -while other IU students on their way to class stopped and gawked at the new IU wunderkind they'd heard and read so much about.
(This was at that ridiculous walkway of gravel -masquerading as a sidewalk!- located between the HPER's east entrance and the construction delivery area for the IU Arts Museum
-http://www.indiana.edu/~iuam/iuam_intro.htm ,featuring world-renowned architect I.M. Pei's soaring triangular atrium- when it was being built, which was an absolute mess when it rained, and a disaster when it snowed.)

After Jim introduced me to him, Isiah's first words to me, as we shook hands and he smiled at Jim, were "Hey Dave, nice to meet you. Call me Zeke."
It was the first of many conversations, and Isiah's magnetic smile was, as always, very powerful.
The Berman & Beck nuggets are excerpts, so go to the URLs if you want the entire story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/sports/basketball/21knicks.html
March 21, 2007
Mavericks 92, Knicks 77
Dallas Leaves Knicks Battered and Bruised
By HOWARD BECK

REBOUNDS
... Mark Cuban is renowned as a risk-taker, so it should perhaps come as no surprise that he endorsed the Knicks’ much-criticized decision to extend Isiah Thomas’s contract. “It’s not just about, ‘Should he stay or should he go?’ It’s ‘Who’s next?’ ” said Cuban, the Mavericks’ owner. “Who’s next isn’t always who’s better. Working with a guy and letting him develop and letting him get to a point where he can succeed, and giving him the tools he needs, in the N.B.A., is a far better strategy than just saying, ‘O.K., next, next, next.’ “ Cuban praised the Knicks’ progress. He said their better chemistry and camaraderie was evident. “As an owner, I see that that’s a cultural change. That’s going from a place where people didn’t want to be, where there was so much drama, and no one wanted to be, to a scenario where people want to be here and are glad to be here. That’s huge.” ... Cuban and Thomas overlapped for one year at Indiana University, but Cuban said they never met. “He was the stud on campus,” Cuban said. “I was just a freshman alcoholic.” Cuban later clarified that remark: He was a senior when Thomas was a freshman.
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http://www.nypost.com/seven/03212007/sports/knicks/cuban__zeke_pact_merited_knicks_marc_berman.htm New York Post
CUBAN: ZEKE PACT MERITED
By MARC BERMAN

March 21, 2007 -- Mavericks billionaire owner Mark Cuban, wearing a pair of the Stephon Marbury-brand $14.98 sneakers, supports Knick owner James Dolan's decision to give Isiah Thomas a new contract.
"You see chemistry-wise how guys are getting along out there on the court, laughing on the bench, supporting each other," Cuban, an Indiana University senior when Thomas was a freshman, said at the Garden last night before his Mavs throttled the Knicks 92-77.
Thomas is 1-3 since he got his extension.
"As an owner, when I see that, that's a cultural change. Going from a place where people don't want to be because there's so much drama, to a scenario where people want to be here, that's huge," Cuban added - referring to last year's Knicks fiasco under coach Larry Brown.
Cuban taped an edition of Marbury's "Stars on Stars" TV talk show Monday and reiterated Marbury's discount sneaker was one of the smartest business idea of 2006. Cuban also reiterated he explored selling the team over the summer because of his outrage over the officiating in the Mavericks-Heat Finals.
"I told [Commissioner David] Stern, I told other owners that I was out given what happened in June," Cuban said. "There was a lot of things that I wasn't comfortable with. But as I told the guys in Dallas, there's more to it than just that. It's a connection to the players, and obligation to the players. I felt I owed them more."
Cuban did not rip anyone in a 20-minute spiel, but joked that, "Dolan has lost his marbles" for taking high-definition off his cable system. High-def TV is another Cuban venture.

Copyright 2007 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/knicks/2007/03/21/2007-03-21_they_try_so_hard_it_hurts_to_watch-1.html
They try so hard, it hurts to watch
BY FILIP BONDYDAILY NEWS SPORTS COLUMNIST
March 21st 2007

This is an Eastern Conference playoff race by attrition. The team that has the night off is generally the team that gains ground in the standings. And so the idea last night for the Knicks was not so much to beat the Dallas Mavericks as to emerge healthy, feeling good about themselves and prepared to feast tomorrow on Portland in a must win.
That was the plan, anyway, until the body count started rising again and the Knicks ended the game holding onto their ice packs for dear life. Channing Frye was scraped in the cornea. Stephon Marbury's shoulder became a trampoline for Josh Howard. What might have been a giddy gravy game turned instead into another reason to sharply inhale.
There are 15 games left in the season now, and the Knicks probably need to win seven or eight of them with a shredded lineup that is galloping with a limp and keeps missing its foul shots.
"We can't really use this game as a barometer game," Marbury insisted, after the 92-77 loss. "Those guys are a really good team. They've been playing together for a long time."
Sounds like a barometer, with the pressure rising.
Of the two injuries last night, Marbury's appeared to be the less serious. He won't miss a game with his stinger, while Frye will be reexamined today. Regardless, this is now a very thin group sliced even thinner. Isiah Thomas came into the game already worried about the state of Eddy Curry's back. Now, he has other concerns.
"We'll recover," Thomas declared. "And when we recover, we'll play well."
The Knicks didn't play so hot last night at the Garden, where the talent gap and miscues were obvious. There are two conferences and realities in the NBA: East and West, matter and anti-matter, plodding mediocrity and explosive grace. The Knicks crossed over, faced a very different kind of entity in the Mavericks. They lasted two-plus quarters, then evaporated into thin air.
Before the game, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had chastised the New York press again, this time for being too impatient with the home team. He said he would have been "crucified" in this city for his management style, and that success was all about showing progress.
He basically sounded like Jim Dolan, only without the prepared script.
But Cuban's deep roster looked very different than the Knicks' current lineup. There was but one bright spot: Curry appeared OK, despite escalating back pain. The Knicks' bulky pivotman finished with 22 points and 12rebounds, looking more energetic than usual. He blew eight of 12 free throws, or he might have fared even better.
The Knicks have proved to be extremely resilient this season, rebounding from their slow start and then a series of injuries. When David Lee and Jamal Crawford both went down with stress injuries, the roster bent but did not break.
Now there is Frye's eye and Curry's sore back, potential disasters. Thomas had a theory about Curry's problems, that his troubles were caused by the rough double-teams he'd faced in recent weeks.
"The pounding and the beating," Thomas said. "People play a different kind of game with him than they're allowed to play against other guys."
The Mavericks didn't seem to go hard at Curry. They just played as the Mavs usually play. They stormed out at the start, scoring 30 points on 70% shooting in the first quarter. They dissected the Knicks around the paint, spreading the floor and then launching back-door cuts that caught the home team looking dumb and flat-footed.
The Knicks slowed down this textbook display with some stubborn offensive rebounding and the long-range bombs of Nate Robinson. Jared Jeffries hounded Dirk Nowitzki, bodying the 7-foot forward off his designated shooting spots. They probably did as well as can be expected against a team that has lost 11 games all season and is the early favorite for an NBA title.
Realistically, though, these teams were as different as their records and their owners' personalities. The Mavs are now 25-1/2 games better than the Knicks. For the home team, this result was always likely to fall into the wrong column.
"We're going to need everything tonight," Thomas had said. "A team effort, the fans, and hopefully a little help from Dallas."
They got the effort. The fans were spotty. Dallas didn't help much at all. Worst of all, Portland doesn't look like such a gimme anymore.

fjbondy@netscape.net
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New York Times
There Are Messages in All That Money
March 21, 2007
SELENA ROBERTS

One N.B.A. big spender is the son of an automobile upholsterer. He sold garbage bags as a boy to raise money for a pair of Puma sneakers and financed his college years by teaching dance lessons to any clunky, corn-fed Midwesterner with a spare dollar.
Mark Cuban graduated from Indiana University but hardly upgraded from his peanut-butter budget, forced to share a house with a half-dozen guys when he moved to Dallas in the '80s. He left Hoosier hoops behind, or did he? Cuban and his buddy Todd Wagner had a geeky dream: What if they could stream live games over the Internet? Cuban is a billionaire now -- self-made.
The other N.B.A. big spender grew up among the plush estates of Long Island with all the luxury perks of his father's Cablevision monopoly: staffed yachts, catered limos and free HBO.

James L. Dolan strummed a guitar, but needed a worthy hobby. So Daddy Dolan gifted his son with Madison Square Garden. Jim Dolan doesn't possess brilliant ideas. He has money, which, to him, is as good as intellectual capital.
Dolan is a billionaire -- an inherited perch.
Fat cats collided last night. If only in terms of league payroll, Dolan and Cuban were joined at the wallet as the N.B.A.'s fully loaded teams met at Madison Square Garden, with the Mavericks breaking free for a 92-77 victory.
The Knicks (30-37) lead the league with a $117 million payroll and the Mavericks (55-11) are No. 2 at around $92 million.
Money talks with different messages, though. With his team of past castoffs and foreign risks -- including three undrafted players and a certain German who nearly exited as a flop a few years ago -- all focused on a championship run, Cuban's payroll is a meritocracy.
With his team of erratic, Starbury-esque superstars -- some on the roster, while others have vanished into a buyout abyss -- all seeking love pats for mediocrity, Dolan's roster money is rooted in entitlement.
Cuban uses his wealth to forge a vision; Dolan wields it as a tool of vengeance.
Dolan indulged his contrarian muse when he recently extended Isiah Thomas's contract by conveniently measuring him against Larry Brown when his bar should have been Lenny Wilkens. Three years ago, Dolan fired Wilkens, whom Thomas hired, after the Knicks finished the 2003-4 season with 39 wins and a playoff spot. Dolan fumed when the Knicks started the next season at five games below .500, so Wilkens was out.
Dolan's pay scale slides on a whim. Dolan celebrated Thomas for a sub-.500 record and a possible cameo spot in the playoffs. The Knicks are 1-3 since the extension was announced.
It's not that Thomas deserved no consideration, but why would Dolan deliver a judgment so soon? Because he wanted to use his money as a bully stick, as an in-your-face response to skeptics. Dolan is an emotional spender, an investor in fool's gold. The Mavericks earn every amenity, every dime, with results.
"We don't work off of pedigree," Cuban said last night. "I've tried to set the tone by saying, if we need a free-throw coach, we'll get a free-throw coach. If we need a sports psychologist, we'll get a sports psychologist. If we need someone to teach you to dribble with your toes, we'll do it.
It's just so there are no excuses. The guys we bring in recognize that and really, really work at their game."
In the off-season, after his team's journey to the finals, Cuban rightly rewarded Dirk Nowitzki, Josh Howard and Jason Terry with $160 million in contracts to maintain the soul of the Mavericks.
He also extended Coach Avery Johnson's contract with a $20 million thank-you for his skill and work ethic, the same qualities that defined Johnson's unlikely N.B.A. career.
"Avery knows what it's like to be the 15th guy on the roster; he knows what it's like to be cut on Christmas Day," Donnie Nelson, the Mavericks' president, said in a telephone interview, adding, "It's like starting a company and being the stock boy and working your way up and knowing every position, from the guy who empties the trash cans to the foreman to an executive, versus a guy who steps in as a made man, as a C.E.O. of a company."
So Johnson is a lot like Cuban. Different experiences, same self-made character. The Mavericks stand as a mirror to Cuban, all people of their own invention.
"It's like the Island of Misfit Toys," Nelson said. "We have all these guys who have had these mountaintop, soul-searching situations. They were at the bottom of their barrel and they picked themselves up by the bootstraps."
Dolan didn't need bootstraps. He grew up Gucci. As Sports Illustrated reported last month, Dolan once broke out into song at a corporate outing that included this verse: "We'll have some fun. As long as you remember: I'm Chuck Do-lan's son!"
The son of Charles Dolan was missing last night. Usually, he sits impassively on the Knicks' baseline, but he has been known to berate an employee for serving stale Diet Coke.
The son of an auto upholsterer was in a T-shirt and jeans behind his team's bench. Cuban will scream at officials, but he respects the employees under his roof.
Cuban versus Dolan, billionaire versus billionaire, meritocracy versus entitlement. The reflection of each man is in the standings.

Copyright (c) 2007 The New York Times Company