Donuts: 'We Like Our Guys' (And Other Teams', Too)

   Three things we’ve learned in the last few days during the NBA Shopping Window: 1) Lucrative deals are not done until they are done. 2) Lucrative deals during “The Summer of Nuclear Winter’’ © are sun-kissed and rare. 3) In MavsLand, “We like our guys.’’

   Which brings us to a handful of the Monday Morning Donuts that may or may not have any relationship to the Mavs and are offered here for NBA educational purposes only. We’re talking Rasheed Wallace and Allen Iverson and Shawn Marion and Hedo Turkoglu. … and we’re talking what happens when the aforementioned 1) meets the aforementioned 2) … thus violating the aforementioned 3).

   Donuts!

   That we can even suggest such a thing re-establishes our accuracy (actually, Mark Cuban’s accuracy) on the “Nuclear Winter’’ prediction.

    DONUT 2: OK, so the BAE won’t come into play for Rasheed (who was on Dallas’ radar before the pursuit of Marcin Gortat). From The Boston Globe:

   "Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, and Paul Pierce joined president of basketball operations Danny Ainge and managing partner Wyc Grousbeck for a three-hour meeting with Wallace in Detroit …  the Celtics offering a contract using their midlevel exception. But Wallace is apparently in no hurry to respond, preferring to weigh approaches from Charlotte, Cleveland, Orlando, and San Antonio, according to an NBA source. Bill Strickland, Wallace’s agent, said in a text message that it was a 'very good meeting; some contractual terms discussed, nothing agreed to.' Strickland added Wallace will be'meeting with a few more teams next week.’’

   The full-MLE for ‘Sheed was offered? On Sunday night, he apparently accepted. But what was he waiting for?

   Well, the Wallace camp had said he planned to meet with officials of San Antonio and Orlando. So he’s still shopping himself. But. … the folks in Orlando say they know nothing of ‘Sheed visiting their town.

    And there you do. Suddenly the Boston deal looks pretty good.

    DONUT 3: Why hurry to take what you can get? It ain’t getting any better than that. Ask Marion, who thought he was negotiating a new deal with his team in Toronto when Hedo came available and … whoosh! … the rug was pulled on Shawn’s negotiations.

   By the way: Reports suggest Orlando isn’t interested in a Sign-and-Trade to acquire Marion. And Portland apparently doesn’t see him as a fit. So, heck. … maybe with time, this angle does become more Mavs-related, you know?

    Check out our very clever (we think!) way Dallas can use Marion’s situation to its advantage here.

    DONUT 4: OK, how about the BAE on Iverson? Again, we’re not necessarily endorsing this for the Mavs (though it is sexy), but rather simply trying to feel the pulse of the market. From Ira Winderman, South Florida Sun-Sentinel: "To a degree, an Allen Iverson-Heat marriage makes sense. …  But it's not going to happen the first week of free-agent negotiations. It's not going to happen at the July 8 start of the free-agent signing period. And it's not going to happen until after the July 12 window opens for Dwyane Wade to be eligible to sign an extension. Iverson makes sense because Iverson may not have many other options. But until the Knicks spend their mid-level exception, until Larry Brown gets an official rejection from Bobcats management, and until the remaining precious little cap space around the league is spent, Iverson doesn't have to move to Plan B. With the Heat already into the dollar-for-dollar luxury tax, anything paid to Iverson will be doubled on the books next season. So even with a $2 million contract, is he worth $4 million at this stage?"

    Is A.I. worth the $1.99-million BAE? That depends on the team. More pertinent to our point is that we are even discussing such a dollar figure for such a legendary player.

     DONUT 5: So, did Hedo screw the Blazers? I mean, he “reportedly’’ had a deal, right?

     Wrong.

     Think of it like a marriage; there is no marriage until there is a wedding. At any time before Hedo says “I Do,’’ he can decide “He Don’t.’’ It seems like the media jumped the gun here. … or maybe it’s fair to put it on Portland, which just maybe failed to secure an agreement because … well, because it failed.

   Blazers fans might think this harsh, but we promise to say the same thing if Kidd or Gortat ends up not coming to Dallas: “Don’t tell me about the labor pains, just show me the baby.’’

     There's no deal until there's a deal. On paper. There cannot be a deal on paper until July 8. In the interim, any player and any team can continue to talk -- and thereby risk the stability of the agreement they have -- or they can act as if the deal is already set in stone. Most do the latter; GMs and agents don’t generally like to screw each other. So honoring the verbal deal is what happens almost always, but there's nothing to prevent one party or the other from doing otherwise.
     Again, though, we don’t know that there was truly an agreement reached between Portland and Hedo. They were talking, they were close, Hedo’s agent mentions something about a “verbal agreement’’ but obviously they never quite got a deal hammered out. All the time, it seems, Hedo and his agent were also talking with Toronto to see what they would offer … that’s obviously what was going on, and it is as any smart negotiator would do. Ultimately, they chose the Toronto offer. No one in the Portland front office that we’ve heard says Hedo backed out of a Portland agreement, because no Portland deal was ever really reached.

   And even if you think Portland got screwed by Hedo. … didn’t Marion get screwed by Toronto? Word is he thinks he also had a “verbal agreement.’’ … but things changed.

    There is a moral to this tale, and to all the items above, we think: Get a good offer, run with it. Get a good deal, cement it. Come to the realization that you’re only gonna get the MLE, or the partial-MLE, or even the BAE or (God forbid!) a veteran’s minimum, deal with it.

   The Summer of Nuclear Winter,  ©  we say.
   DONUT 6: Romo plays golf with Tiger in Maryland. Which is fine. … assuming the Cowboys training facility is in Maryland.

    DONUT 7: There’s a lesson to be learned in the Steve McNair killing. But it’s the same lesson wealthy jocks, wealthy non-jocks and non-wealthy non-jocks have been ignoring for 50 years. So we won’t bother teaching the lesson.

    DONUT 8: We’re the first to say there is a “devil in the details’’ on the Jason Kidd signing. But you don’t want Jason Kidd back? Fine. Magic is fat, Maravich is dead and Chris Paul is taken. Who are you plan on replacing him with?

   DONUT 9: Cuban’s response to the (obviously) bogus Big Baby rumor?

   “We like our guys.’’

    Does that bother the Mavs audience?

    Only the ones like you, who are on DB.com every day and have therefore heard and read it a skillion times. But “We like our guys’’ still serves as a handy catchphrase to pacify the casual fan – and, by the way, to calm anybody on his roster worried about being shipped out.

    “We like our guys’’ can mean a million things depending on the context. Often it can mean Cuban doesn't want to slam the player in question as being a scrub they don't want, or he doesn't want to compare him to what they already have, or he doesn't want to discuss the idea further, or he doesn't want to talk about their targets going forward. But it never necessarily means they are determined to sit pat from that point. If you are a DB.com reader, you might consider it overused. But if you are a DB.com reader, you also know not to read too much into it.

    DONUT 10: Follow us at twitter.com/fishsports … Please.

   DONUT 11: Fish does some TV tonight. “DFW Sports Talk’’ with Brady Tinker, it’s on at 6:30 p.m. and it’s on Fox Sports Southwest. Talking Mavs, de nada.

   DONUT 12: From reader Matthrew: “Marcin Gortat doesn’t sound like the name of an NBA player but like some warrior out of the middle ages.Shouldn’t we say that Marcin Gortat has been signed to the medieval exception? … And a nickname: “Medieval Marcin Gortat- He’s ready to go Medieval on your ass!’’