Tim MacMahon
speaker
74 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Tim MacMahon’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Well, Cuban's claim at this point is that they had a gentleman's agreement that wasn't followed through on. Listen, with Cuban, you always have to like you can't. Well, one of my favorite Jerry Jones sayings. I call him Jerry Isms, just because I say it doesn't make it so. Well, just because Cuban says it doesn't make it so. So you never know if what he's telling you is the truth.
So I don't know if there was a gentleman's agreement that they just kind of backed out on. I don't know if Cuban was completely full of crap when he was telling everybody, hey, they're real estate people. I'm a basketball person. I'm running basketball. Or he was trying to speak something into existence.
But what I do know is that as the ink dried on that deal, Cuban was done calling shots for basketball. Cuban did not call shots going into the trade deadline. And frankly, at this point, Cuban has no more influence on personnel decisions than any other rich dude who escorts side season tickets. He got a five-minute heads up via text from Nico that this trade's going down.
Try to talk him out of it too late. He got a phone call from DuMont after, like after it was over. And I was told that was about a two minute phone call, you know, like great. So thanks for touching base. Like the hell do you want to talk about? Um, so, um, This never happens if Cuban doesn't give up the majority share of the franchise.
I mean, honestly, if Nico would have gone to Cuban when he was running the show and said, hey, I'm negotiating a trade for Luca, I think it would have been a fireball offense. The first five and a half years of Luka's career that Cuban was calling shots, Cuban's top priority was doing everything in his power to make Luka as happy as possible. And I would say rightfully so.
I don't think the execution was always the smoothest, but I think... when you get that kind of a franchise player, when you get that kind of a prodigy, like, yes, they've got to be the priority. Everything does revolve around them. That's just reality in the NBA. And that took a sudden shift this summer.
I think it was just a text exchange. And I don't know the specifics of it. It's just Cuban basically saying, you can't do this. And Niko saying, it's done. I don't think there was a whole lot of back and forth there.
And with completely different supporting cast.
Well, and look, Luka was the most accomplished, decorated teenage prospect ever to come out of Europe. And you can argue he was also extremely mis-evaluated by the NBA. Three teams passed on this guy, right? One of whom, the Phoenix Suns, had just hired Igor Koshchkov as their head coach.
This is the guy who was the Slovenian national team coach when 17-year-old Luka is the co-star with Goran Dragic of a team that won Eurobasket. Slovenia has 2 million people. It's like if there's a tournament of all the states in America and Idaho wins it, right? I mean, it's insane. And Igor had never been a head coach, wasn't a coach there for very long, just one year.
They never asked his opinion. He finally goes to Robert Sarver and says, listen, man, I just got to get this off my chest so I can sleep. We've got to draft Luka. We've got this cap space, big offer sheet on the table. Get him Clint Capella. Get him a rim running center. Luca, Booker, Capella. That's our core we can build. And it's like, thanks for your input. You'll coach the guys we give you.
We're going with this guy who is from Arizona. You know, Robert Sarver, the Arizona alum. Yeah, no, I'm taking the seven footer who is from Arizona. And like a lot of people did have DeAndre in the morning draft. Then Vlade, Balkan basketball legend, had known Sasha Doncic for decades, Luka's dad.
One, I was told by a scout who was in the room that Vlade, quote, knew too much, you know, that he knew, hey, you know, Luka likes to have a good time. The discipline's not the best, all those sort of things, which, frankly, Sasha is kind of like the, I call him the Charles Barkley of Slovenia. You know, big, gregarious personality. Yes. likes to have a good time, you know?
So like, knew all that, but then, Vlade didn't think he was a superstar. Well, he'd take touches away from Darren Fox. We don't want that. Marvin Bagley III, Vlade said on draft night, is a better player and a better fit. Well, not sure about any of those, buddy. And by the way, Luca remembers last year, Vlade was sitting courtside in Sacramento.
And after Luca iced a win, he's sneering over there. He's going back to the bench talking about, that guy should have drafted me. That guy should have drafted me. And then the Hawks, they had Luke a little bit above Trey Young on their board. But hey, if we can get an extra lottery pick out of it, OK, let's do it.
And lo and behold, the Mavericks, who had an epic tank job that cost Cuban 600 grand when he said the quiet part out loud, then got booted back by the lottery gods. A couple of spots were able to move back up and get the guy who Donnie Nelson was absolutely crazy. pounding the table for, as he did Giannis when Cuban didn't listen in that draft.
And maybe more importantly, in terms of Cuban's decision-making, this gambling dude who'd been consultant for him on the sly, old Bob Volgares, and he brought up Harden. That's exactly who he brought up. This guy's going to be an MVP candidate at some point relatively soon. And James Harden was the comp. And I do still think prime James Harden is the best comp for Luka.
You can argue that Luka has surpassed that as a player already. But that's how Luka ended up in Dallas. Again, went third in the draft, but was missified. People didn't think he could be a point guard in the NBA. People didn't think he could be a primary ball handler.
didn't make any sense um but because people didn't believe the reasoning for the mavericks to make this trade they couldn't they they couldn't wrap their minds around it they they're like there has to be something more okay the condition's a problem like luca can be a leading the league in scoring and averaging damn near a triple-double. And that's the thing.
It wasn't about, with Luka, it wasn't about potential. He was proven. He was a proven perennial MVP candidate. It's not like, you know, you're trading a 25-year-old who, well, if he works on his conditioning, he has a chance to be one of the best players in the league. No, he's been one of the best players in the league despite conditioning issues. If he works on his conditioning, holy crap.
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