There's more to Cuban than his \o7enfant terrible\f7 act, breathing life into his franchise. Despite an ego struggle with coach Don Nelson, they kept it together for five seasons until Nellie walked away, when Cuban turned to Avery Johnson, whom Nelson had nominated as his successor.
Cuban's willingness to answer e-mails makes him the people's owner of all time. On the other hand, he's a little too down-to-earth, acting like a yahoo on talk radio.
His team, he claims, either wins or has it stolen by referees, supervised by the bumbling league office while the national press, which hates Cuban, the Mavericks and Dallas, makes up lies.
Cuban's May 23 blog, the day after his team eliminated the Spurs, was standard conspiracy theory, noting TNT's website had put up a montage of players from Detroit, Miami and Phoenix, with San Antonio's Tim Duncan where Dallas' Dirk Nowitzki should have been.
"I guess we didn't get the memo," wrote Cuban. "Unbelievable? Not to the Mavs family. We don't care what the national media thinks. We don't care what the NBA thinks. We believe!"
Actually, if it wasn't for Cuban, no one would have anything against the Mavericks, who are low-key guys and indisputably an elite team. Nor is Dallas some burg pining to be major league. The Cowboys once billed themselves as America's Team and had the national TV ratings to back it up.
With Cuban around, America's Team may now be Whoever's Playing the Mavericks.
As great as the Mavericks-Spurs series was, Cuban, not Nowitzki, may have been the MVP for going onto the floor in Game 1. \o7(Ka-ching! This is the league, that'll be $200,000. Do you want to use the credit card on your account?)
\f7Coaches think drawing a technical foul buys a call or two, but 200K buys more than that.
The Mavericks won Game 3 because of a 50-32 edge in free-throw attempts, with Duncan fouling out when Nowitzki came down on his foot. They won Game 4 when the officials put Nowitzki on the line at the end after a little bump by Bruce Bowen. In Game 7, the officials let Nowitzki get away with going over Duncan's shoulder and hacking him to prevent the winning layup.
There are always questionable calls both ways and the Mavericks proved themselves as worthy as the Spurs. Nevertheless, with Cuban's exuberance and Johnson's determination to toughen his team up, Big D now stands for Dizzy.
