00:00That's a lot of money to offer a 30-year-old point guard.
00:05Especially one whose playing style has an intense, all-out,
00:09who-cares-about-my-body-I'm-gonna-live-forever-or-die-trying aspect to it.
00:14Turns out, it was too much money for Mark Cuban and the Mavs to match the offer
00:18and keep their all-star starting point guard.
00:21Cuban looked at the facts in front of him and said,
00:24MASH can't keep up this level of play much longer.
00:27Oh, come on! This is still Mark Cuban talking.
00:31No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:33Any Shark Tank conventions that can turn back time coming up?
00:37No? Come on!
00:39Okay, it's me, Clara, talking again.
00:41In 2004, Steve Nash walked out of the Mavericks' locker room
00:44and immediately played the best basketball of his life,
00:48changing the way the game is played and leaving the Mavericks forever wondering,
00:52what if?
00:53Mark Cuban refusing to match the Sun's offer for Steve Nash
00:57was a big deal.
01:02Nash getting this stupid money offer was not anticipated.
01:06The Mavs' 0-4 offseason was supposed to be boring.
01:10Art Garcia, Mavs' beat writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram,
01:14took a vacation during free agency because he was so confident nothing was going to happen.
01:19Yeah, Steve Nash was a free agent, and yeah, he was going to test the waters,
01:23but he wasn't going to go anywhere.
01:25He loved Dallas.
01:27He and Dirk Nowitzki joined the stinky PU Mavericks in 1998
01:31via the same big old draft night trade.
01:34Dirk was a rookie, Nash was entering his third year,
01:36and they were both blonde.
01:38The team didn't improve instantly.
01:41But Steve and Dirk developed a nice little friendship,
01:44which likely wasn't much solace for long-suffering Mavs fans.
01:47Try talking about basketball.
01:50But before too long, that off-court chemistry showed up on the court.
01:55Before the O2 season, Nash did a photoshoot
01:58playing off of the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations.
02:03I don't know if he's supposed to be Dickens,
02:06or just someone who reads,
02:08or the malnourished orphan Pip, the subject of the book,
02:12but it doesn't matter.
02:13My point is, you don't get to do a big, dumb photoshoot
02:17unless people think your team is going to be very, very good.
02:21That Nash-Dirk connection played a huge role in the team's ascent,
02:25with Michael Finley rounding out their big three.
02:28Dirk was the face of the franchise,
02:30but if you pan down slightly,
02:33you'd also see the smiling face of Steve Nash right beside him.
02:37Nash was the heart, the soul, the engine, the glue.
02:41He was so good and did so much, mixing metaphors just made sense.
02:46Yeah, Dallas had a weird down year right before Nash entered free agency,
02:50but nothing getting a proper center and some defense couldn't fix.
02:53Probably.
02:55Either way, nobody thought Nash would want to leave in free agency.
02:58Walk away from his best bud?
03:01Walk away from the team he lifted from stink town to fresh-baked bread town?
03:06That's the best smell.
03:08Nash had promised owner Mark Cuban he'd give him the chance to match any offer.
03:12Nash was an unrestricted free agent.
03:15He didn't have to do that.
03:16Reporters, pack your bags and head to Hawaii on your own dime.
03:21Free agency is going to be a non-event in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
03:25And then Phoenix spoiled the vacation.
03:28They threw a lottery-winning-type contract at Steve Nash.
03:32They threw a general consensus overpayment at Steve Nash.
03:36And, as promised, Steve Nash brought the offer to Cuban.
03:39Giving the brash young owner a choice.
03:42Match it or don't match it.
03:45Actually, there was a third option, which is an interesting what-if to play.
03:48Match and sign-and-trade Nash to the Lakers for Shaq.
03:54Dallas needed a true center.
03:56Shaq was the best center in the league.
03:58He and the Lakers had had enough of each other.
04:00And Shaq said he wanted to play in Dallas.
04:03LA wanted Dirk for Shaq.
04:05That wasn't going to happen.
04:07However, there was a lot of chatter that the Mavs were loading up on assets,
04:11with Nash as the headliner to try and trade for Shaq.
04:14On draft night 04, Dallas traded away Anton Jameson for a bunch of assets,
04:19including a lottery-pick point guard.
04:22Why did they need a lottery-pick point guard with Steve Nash leading the show?
04:26Perhaps because Nash was going to another show.
04:29Now, there are a lot of reasons that Nash and company trade for Shaq wouldn't work out.
04:34The Mavs claimed it wasn't part of their plan.
04:37Steve would have to agree to go to LA, and he didn't want to do that.
04:41And LA would only trade Shaq for Dirk, not a Nash package.
04:46So, like I said, a fun game of what if, but likely not a decision that weighed heavily on Cuban.
04:52To match or not to match?
04:55That was the question plaguing Cuban as he went about his day-to-day life as a billionaire.
05:00So, as he programmed his robot butler to iron his t-shirts or something.
05:05Let's lay out the argument with as much clarity as said robot butler did on that balmy Texas evening in
05:12June 2004.
05:14The case for matching the offer.
05:16All the stuff I've said so far.
05:18About him being the reason the team rose from the doldrums of the league to a Western Conference power,
05:23banging on the finals door.
05:25Except for last year, but they can rebound from that.
05:27Basketball players love to rebound.
05:29The case against matching.
05:30Well, here's the thing.
05:33Old Stevie Boy was old.
05:35He was 30, nearly 30 and a half, when Phoenix offered him that lucrative.
05:40And here's the sticking point, long-term contract.
05:43And here is where playing through a fractured spine actually works against him.
05:47Did I mention that he did that in his first year with the Mavs?
05:51Dedicated fellow.
05:52Okay, put that in the case for real quick.
05:55Okay, now we'll also put it in the case against.
05:57Putting his body on the line night after night was bound to catch up with him sooner or later.
06:02And by later, we all mean before he's 36, right?
06:06The Mavericks medical team told Cuban not to match the offer.
06:10That had to be hard to ignore.
06:11It was a short-term versus long-term decision.
06:15Let him walk and save money and cap space for the future.
06:18Or overpay Steve now for the chance to win a title in the short term
06:22and who cares about the future, we live in the now.
06:24But speaking of now, what if the most recent season with its first-round exit
06:31was the trajectory of the team rather than a blip easily recovered from?
06:37What if the championship window on the Big Three was closing?
06:41Could a big wad of cash really hold the window open?
06:44Was the window even open wide enough to fit a big wad of cash in there?
06:48And yeah, Dallas would need a replacement, experienced point guard to help out rookie
06:53Devin Harris and promising second-year guard Marquise Daniels.
06:56But Daniels was a starter by the end of his rookie year and had a great postseason.
07:02And let's not forget, the Spurs won a title two seasons prior with a second-year point guard.
07:08So come on, anything is possible.
07:09In the end, Cuban let the guy who was about to have back-to-back MVP seasons walk.
07:16It's tempting to be like, Cuban, you moron, because we have hindsight making us so smart.
07:21But at the time, a lot of people thought Cuban made the right call.
07:25By a tiny margin, Mavs fans dedicated enough to vote in a newspaper poll supported Cuban's call.
07:32The other 47% of poll voting fans, they were screaming, Cuban, you moron.
07:37There was a contingent that found it quite easy to blame Mark Cuban, actually.
07:41There was even a great, now-we're-never-gonna-get-shack reaction.
07:45But come on, that feels like you're just shitting on Cuban for fun.
07:47That wasn't gonna happen anyway.
07:49Another faulty argument was, great, we don't even get anything in return for Nash.
07:54But Dallas did get something in return.
07:57Saved money.
07:58A boring prize on the surface.
08:00But with that saved money, Cuban went out and secured Eric Dampier, a true center.
08:05Which is what everyone said Dallas needed.
08:08They also landed Jason Terry to replace Steve.
08:11It didn't lead to immediate success.
08:14Coach Don Nelson was kinda like,
08:16Ugh, where's Nash? I don't want to talk to new people.
08:20A sentiment I completely relate to.
08:23The team seemed stuck in good-not-great territory,
08:26and Nelson resigned from coaching with 18 games left in the season.
08:30Meanwhile, Nash was having the best season of his career.
08:33He was MVP, and also leading a revolution in the NBA,
08:37with the Suns' system of fast breaks and three-pointers.
08:40The Suns went from 29 wins to the Western Conference Finals in one season.
08:45Gosh, Nash was doing a lot in the short term.
08:48Part of getting to the Western Conference Finals involved defeating Dallas in the conference semis.
08:53The 31-year-old Nash was brilliant in that series,
08:56and the smart Cuban looked less than brilliant.
09:00Nash was so good, the media was saying Cuban effed up choosing to build around Dirk.
09:06It should have been Nash.
09:07The Suns looked like the future of the West,
09:10and the Mavs looked like they'd be on the outside forever.
09:13Lucky for Cuban's reputation and self-esteem and wallet and life,
09:17that's not what went down.
09:19While Nash continued his brilliance,
09:21the Mavs actually defeated the Suns in the 06 Western Conference Finals.
09:25Cuban was forgiven.
09:27Probably helped that Jason Terry and Dampier were key contributors.
09:31Dallas didn't win the Finals in 06,
09:33but Cuban eventually traded a package that included Dampier for a package that included Tyson Chandler.
09:39And the new iteration of the Dallas Big Three got a title in 2011.
09:44Steve Nash never won a title.
09:46Sure, sure, sure, he had some legendary success with an outsized impact on the sport itself,
09:52ushering in the era of small ball, three-point happy, pace and space offense,
09:55but that's not a ring.
09:57Which I don't bring up to tease Steve Nash,
10:00nor to say Mark Cuban made the right call.
10:03Cuban himself doesn't think he made the right call.
10:06The what-ifs and what-could-have-beens of Cuban's decision not to match the Suns' offer
10:11are long and winding.
10:12If Nash and Dirk had never parted, would Nowitzki have developed like he did?
10:17Could Steve have reached such heights in the Mavericks system?
10:20Would they have both been better?
10:22Would the title have come earlier?
10:24Would there have been more than one?
10:26Would the league look different?
10:27Would there be a small ball revolution?
10:30We'll never know for sure without a time machine.
10:32So, without further ado,
10:35Sharks, may I present...
10:38Clara Morris Time Machine
10:42It also says time on this side.
10:51Thanks to our patrons.
10:52Thanks to all of you for watching.
10:54I'll see you next time.
10:56Not really, of course.
10:57I'm not doing a reverse camera spy thing.
10:59I would never.
11:00For Secret Base, I'm Clara Morris.
11:02Good night and good game.
11:03Good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night
11:10and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good
11:10night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and
11:10good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night
11:10and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good
11:10night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and
11:10good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night
11:10and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good
11:10night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and
11:10good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night
11:10and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good night and good
11:10night
