Exclusive: Mavs Deny Donnie-To-Warriors Report

GM Wants To Stay Until He's Given 'A Pink Slip Or A Pine Box'

Mike Fisher -- DB.com

   The reaction from Mavs GM Donnie Nelson about a published rumor that has him bolting Dallas to join his father in Golden State? “The Mavs are my family, too,’’ Donnie tells DallasBasketball.com. “The only way to get me out of here is with either a pink slip or a pine box.’’

   The report is also met with eye-rolling dismissal from Mavs owner Mark Cuban, who tells DB.com, “Who cares what Sam Smith makes up?’’

  Amidst the turmoil in Golden State, some around the NBA are speculating that it is Don Nelson's behind-the-scenes master plan (he got his close friend Larry Riley installed in upper management) to force out Chris Mullin to enable his son, Donn, to move over from Dallas …

   Responds Donnie Nelson, who we long ago labeled “The President of Utopia: “The Dallas Mavericks are Utopia to me. This isn’t a business that usually allows roots, but my family and I have them there. We’re very much invested in this community. Great weather, family values, no (state) taxes, a wonderful franchise and without doubt the best owner in sports. I haven’t talked about going anywhere and I’m not planning to go anywhere.’’

   Smith was a long-time NBA writer for the Chicago Tribune who made his living largely by reporting his imaginative transaction ideas as fact. In recent years, it seems he’s attempted to keep his profile high by purposely targeting specific nemeses and trying to engage them in combat. He’s done it with the Knicks as an organization (the highest-profile easy target in the NBA) and he’s done it with Cuban (the highest-profile owner in the NBA). Smith was bumped from the paper in March, but only after he’d written derisively about “blogging.’’

  And what duty does Sam now perform for Bulls.com?

  He blogs. Hat, presumably, in hand.

  Nothing inherently wrong with that, of course. But Cuban in the past has called Smith a “Joan Rivers’’-style journalist who “slimed his way to the top’’ by printing un-truths, and this Donnie-to-the-Warriors “scoop’’ seems to fit that mold.“Some around the NBA are speculating’’ seems a terribly irresponsible way to hedge one’s way around a blockbuster.

    Part of Sam Smith’s shtick is repeatedly predicting outcomes, year after year, and then being able to say “I told you so’’ if/when it eventually happens. (Hey, maybe somebody Chicagoland natives Kevin Garnett and Michael Finley really will come home to play for the Bulls; Sam’s been predicting those moves for 10 years.) Defined that way, we will say it is not outlandish to suggest that someday, Don and Donnie might work side-by-side again in some capacity – not counting their shared love of the saloon business, of course.    But that is vastly different from the implied imminence of such a reunion. And it is vastly different from Smith’s subtle-and-unfair portrayal of Donnie Nelson as a puppet.

   “My dad,’’ Donnie says, “is one of the great guys in this sport. But the loyalty Mark showed us when he bought the team and decided to stick with us, that is loyalty that deserves to be re-paid by me. I’ve never forgotten that. I never will forget it. Mark and I work without a contract – and Mark’s handshake is good enough for me.’’

   The truth as we see it is that Donnie Nelson, 11 years a Mavs exec, has found a comfort zone, an interpersonal truce, between Cuban and his “Mavs family’’ and his father. We were told that back in ’07, when Donnie’s Mavs opposed Nellie’s Warriors in the first round of the NBA Playoffs, father and son did not even take time to dine together on off-days, so committed as they were to avoiding entanglements.

    Additionally, as he notes, Donnie, his wife and their two teenage children have build a life for themselves in North Texas. Donnie grew up with a nomadic father that he at times felt he barely knew. While his travels as a Mavs executive (and international NBA ambassador of sorts) are demanding, he’s tried to avoid subjecting his children to the same challenges he grew up with.

  As Donnie recently told DallasBasketball.com, he feels his job as an NBA general manager means he “lives on the hot seat, every day.’’ And as the Mavs stumble through the opening of this season, there are fans turning up the temperature.

   “But,’’ Donnie says, “I am very aware that most people who start the building process with a franchise do not get to see it through. It’s a credit to Mark that I’m being allowed to be part of seeing it through. And that’s what’s going to happen: The Dallas Mavericks are going to win a championship, and I plan to be around when we do.’’

342pm nov 11 2008