Mark Cuban: Carlisle's threats '100 percent about pressing buttons'

Dallas Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle may have put some of his players on edge Tuesday night, when he appeared to threaten roster changes after what he called an "embarrassing" performance against the Toronto Raptors.

"If it's gonna be like that," Carlisle said of his team's effort, "these guys won't be Mavericks very long. I can promise you that."

Mavs owner Mark Cuban tried to walk that back a bit on Wednesday, insisting Carlisle's frustrated rant was more an effort to light a fire under his troops than a hint about changes on the horizon.

"Oh, it's 100 percent about pressing buttons," Cuban told ESPN's Tim MacMahon before the Mavs beat the Brooklyn Nets in overtime Wednesday. "The one thing you know about us, if we're actually going to make a trade, nobody knows about it. And they were buttons that needed to be pressed, so I agree wholeheartedly with him."

Cuban says he likes the makeup of the roster he and general manager Donnie Nelson have put together, and doesn't feel any major alterations are necessary. The issue, as he sees it, is that the Mavs' effort level waxes and wanes on a whim, and dips considerably when the team isn't hitting shots.

"The good news is I think everything is fixable," Cuban said. "It's not like we have guys who are dogs and won't work hard. These are guys who want to play hard, who want to win, who want to contribute. It's just that guys have been frustrated. ... It's funny, the games that our shots fall early, you never see us complaining about effort. It's just the way it is right now. We'll turn it around."

It's tough to tell if Carlisle's message got through. The Mavs very nearly lost to the lowly Nets on Wednesday, after letting a 16-point second-quarter lead turn into an 11-point fourth-quarter deficit. And yet, on the second night of a back-to-back, they refused to fold up, storming back to take the game to overtime, where they squeaked through by a point.

It was something like a microcosm of their season so far. Despite their lapses in effort, Dallas has been an overachiever, having come in with reduced expectations after a borderline disastrous offseason. At 16-13, they sit fourth in the Western Conference, tied with the far more explosive Los Angeles Clippers.

Cuban trusts Carlisle - who is in his eighth season at the helm and has never coached the Mavs to a losing record - to steer the ship in the right direction.

"He's been doing this a long time," Cuban said. "He feels the pulse of the team. We're a team that in order to be a really good team, we have to play really hard. ... I think he was right."