Mark Cuban on Mavericks: 'We’ve got a high basketball IQ'
The Mavericks once again failed to land any of the summer's biggest free agents, but the team still put together an impressive off-season that saw them reacquire Tyson Chandler and sign Chandler Parsons away from their Texas rivals, the Houston Rockets. They also added names like Devin Harris, Jameer Nelson, Raymond Felton, Richard Jefferson and Al-Farouq Aminu, among others.
All those moves should add up to Dallas being in good position to repeat, if not improve upon, the 49-win performance that saw them squeak into the playoffs in a historically tough Western Conference last season.
Mark Cuban agrees.
“Yeah it’s been fun so far. I try never to get too excited, but I’m always excited," Cuban told The Dallas Morning News. "Getting Chandler, getting the Chandler brothers is going to be a big step forward for us. I think we’ve gotten younger, I think we’ve got a team that is very flexible; we’ll be able to do a lot of different things. We’ve got a high basketball IQ. I’m really excited about it," he added.
The Mavericks owner expanded on the addition of that necessary basketball IQ. Again, via The Dallas Morning News:
"I think one of the reasons we were able to give San Antonio such a run is that we had a high basketball IQ and we were able to make adjustments that they didn’t expect. I think if our basketball IQ was a little bit higher, then we should have beat them - we could have beat them, we would have beat them - and that’s what we were looking for this summer: guys with high basketball IQs, guys who can play multiple positions, guys who were unselfish and were willing to move the ball and guys who could hit an open shot. And so we think having a lot of flexibility, being able to switch on defense, moving the ball a lot, we think by adding all these starters from all these other teams, we added guys who had those capabilities and I think hopefully it will take us to the next level.”
The Mavericks pushed the eventual champion Spurs to seven games in the first round of the playoffs before being blown out in Game 7, 119-96.