Steve Nash and Mark Cuban in 2004. (AP Photo/The Daily Oakland Press, Jose Juarez)
In an interview with Rolling Stone about topics ranging from being an NBA owner to life as a billionaire, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban spoke about some of his experience as the owner of the Mavericks and what it takes to be a good one. He said his biggest mistake as an NBA owner was not keeping Steve Nash on his team.
I learned an expensive lesson. It took me too many years to realize that for some GMs, their number-one job wasn’t winning a championship, it’s keeping their job. It’s easy to look back and see my mistakes today. I wish I would have been smart enough to know better back then. I loved taking risks to win. Unfortunately some of them were not as educated as they should have been.
Also, when asked if considering some of the things he had said that had made news he emphasized at all with Donald Sterling, the former Clippers owner, he said that he did.
Did I empathize with him? Yes. Of course I did. This is an elderly man who grew up in a generation that is night-and-day in how it understood race and culture. And yes, I empathized with him because this was a conversation that took place in his kitchen and he had a right to expect privacy in his home. But none of that excused him from the rules of the NBA. He put the business of the NBA at risk. That is a situation that, while I have been fined, I have never found myself in and don’t expect to.
