How Mark Cuban got his center from Michael Jordan in 45 minutes

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was interviewed on KRLD-FM (105.3 The Fan) on Tuesday to chat about Tyson Chandler's impact on the Mavs and Dominique Jones being sent down to the D-League. Here are some highlights:

With their win over Houston on Monday, the Mavericks are now 13-4. How is this team coming together?

I mean, you hit the nail on the head: it's come together and I think the guys are really playing hard for each other. We realize that it's a team effort and that we've got enough depth and talent that there's always somebody willing and able to step up. And I think the other thing is that the energy level is just 20, 30, 40-percent higher than it was last year and obviously that's attributable to Top Cat - Tyson Chandler. He's the leader of the band and as his energy goes, so goes the team and his energy is off the charts.

Chandler's performance so far for the Mavericks has been incredible. How much of the reason he's playing so well is he's healthy or because he's in a contract year?

Yea, I went and sought him like that. I'll tell you the whole genesis of Tyson coming here. The Bobcats had a trade with Jose Calderon in Toronto and that fell apart. I called Michael Jordan and said, "Look, we have [Erick] Dampier's contract; we really like Tyson; would you be interested in basically swapping it? But because of the money involved, you'd have to take back Eddie [Najera] and Matt Carroll." And he called me back 45 minutes later and we had a deal.

What we didn't tell him was that guy who really deserves all the credit for the trade was our trainer, Casey Smith. Casey is the trainer for the U.S. Olympic team and so he's been with Tyson this whole summer and I caught up with Casey and said, "What do you think…tell me about Tyson: about his health and about Tyson the guy." And he said two things: one, he's healthy. He's got his explosiveness back and having gone through everything on the medical side, we don't see any immediate risk; not that he couldn't hurt himself again but no immediate ongoing risk from his previous injuries. But then he said something even more important and this kind of goes to your contract year-type thing. He said, "You know what? Tyson doesn't get a lot of minutes on the USA team but he's the most vocal and inspiring guy in the locker room."

And that's something that Donnie and I have felt we always needed to coach. And also, we needed someone who was vocal in the locker room; someone who is up off the bench and loud and exciting and getting the guys motivated and when I pulled all those pieces together, it was a no-brainer to pull the trigger on the trade.

Everybody loves Tyson Chandler but what do you do about Brendan Haywood, whom you signed to a 55-million dollar contract in the offseason? He was expecting to be the starting center this season. How do you make that work when everybody in the NBA has an ego?

Well sure, everybody's got an ego but when you win, those egos tend to be put aside. You run into those battles where you're not sure about your team or you're a losing team because everybody wants to try and make sure they don't look bad. When you're winning, that's far less of an issue. Brendan has been great; he struggled a little bit against Miami but last night, he was a beast. And it was fun to watch Brendan because he was so gassed by the time coach took him out because he was playing so hard and it showed in his numbers. And he showed us a few things last night that he'd been wanting to show, in terms of his post moves. Look, you can't ever have enough insurance and enough protection at any position in this league. Just look at Houston. So having that depth is always a good thing.

On Dominique Jones being sent to the D-League:

He's a good kid. D.J. has got all the talent in the world; he's probably one of our top passers behind Jason Kidd, it is Jason Kidd, obviously. He knows the game. He just hasn't had enough time in real-game situations to really adjust to the speed of the game and the D-League will be the first step to that. Remember, we did the same with J.J. [Barea]. J.J. wasn't even sniffing the court and he went down to the D-League and put on a great show and got his confidence up and came back up and became a contributor.


Not at all. I mean, look, the list is long of first round draft picks who have gone down there and gotten playing time and come back and been contributors. So, it's not unusual at all and remember, most first round picks that you look to contribute aren't on playoff caliber, top-four, top-five teams. You need contributions from your first round picks when you're a bad team; that's when they just get thrown into the fire and are expected to really have an impact. On good teams that really doesn't happen. If anything, you hear all the lessons about them having to bide their time and that's what D.J. is having to do. And that's what really happens on this team over the last ten years. It's rare when a guy comes in…we drafted Devin Harris at No. 5; he came in and started the first ten games and then didn't get on the court for who knows how long.

This year, at the trade deadline, can you see yourself keeping the team you have together right now and just seeing how it goes?

Oh yea, absolutely. Unless there's just a really good, over-the-top reason to make a deal, why would we? And we haven't even see Roddy [Beaubois] get into the mix yet. So, obviously, things are going really well so far and there's not a lot of reasons to screw it up. But we're always going to be opportunistic. We're always going to look and we're always going to listen so you never know what might fall into your lap but we're not going to do something just to shake things up because why would we?

To listen to the interview, click here.

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