I’m guessing Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is a busy man and didn’t have time to read my Spurs
season review in which I wrote about the spectacular regular season the San Antonio Spurs just wrapped up with a 10-game winning streak.
Had he read it, he would have seen that the Spurs were the only team to have three double-digit winning streaks in the compressed season, they never lost more than two games in a row, and have a top-five MVP candidate on their team.
Well it seems Cuban doesn’t think the Spurs’ season was all that great, as he says no NBA team had an impressive season.
“Like I’ve said all year long, the regular season means next to nothing,” Cuban said Thursday. “Every single team, even the Spurs for a period there when they go through a tough part of their schedule, struggle. … There was nobody that was overly impressive. So we’ll see what happens.”
Cuban said the Spurs struggled? When? When they were bounced by the Heat without Manu Giniobili in mid January and still didn’t have a team identity? When they got drubbed by the Lakers at home, but then responded to beat the Lakers in the next two games by a combined 40-plus points?
“The Spurs have been playing great, obviously, because they’ve been shooting really well,” Cuban said. “But, we’ve been that team before, too, and they were that team last year.”
Even when the Spurs haven’t shot well in some games this season, they were still able to pull out wins. Cuban can’t really compare this Spurs team to his past high-scoring Mavs teams for one big reason, this Spurs team has an insurmountable amount of depth. They have a bench that can score more than 60-points in a game, as they showed on several occasions.
Cuban’s current team has a lot to do with the Spurs’ success this season. As I wrote in my season review, it was the loss to the Mavericks that willed this Spurs team to finish the season so strongly and find a team identity for themselves. The Spurs were 12-9 when they played and lost to the Mavericks in overtime on January 29, they would finish the season 38-7 the rest of the way because that loss built cohesiveness and confidence in their bench, that has carried them to the number one seed in the Western Conference.
On Saturday when Cuban’s Mavericks face the Oklahoma City Thunder, and Sunday when the Spurs face the Utah Jazz, Cuban will find out if this regular season had no meaning at all.
