EXCLUSIVE: 'Mark Cuban's Four Factors That Keep The Mavs At 50-Wins-Plus'

       The Dallas Mavericks have a habit. They win. They win 50-plus games and contend, reload, win 50-plus and contend again, reshuffle, win 50-plus and again, re-focus … This figures to be Year Ten (10X50!) of making the magnificent seem mundane.

   The Mavs have another habit, though: Consider that as matter of course, other franchises –maybe due to parity or to human nature -- bob above sea level, make a notable-but-temporary splash, and then sink. It happened to the Heat, then the Warriors, then the Hornets.

   Now, it just so happens that when these upstarts-and-soon-to-fades have made their marks. … they’ve made them against the Mavs. In the playoffs. In historically significant ways.

   That’s worth discussing here. But so the factors that have made Dallas (along with the Spurs) the only team in the NBA to have won 50-plus for the last nine seasons. We spoke exclusively with Mavs owner Mark Cuban to get his thoughts on why others bob-and-sink as the Mavs charge to 10X50.

    “I think there are four factors,’’ Cuban tells me.

     OK. Mark Cuban’s Four Factors That Keep The Mavs At 50-Plus. …

    Golden State popped and then dropped in embarrassing ways.

    New Orleans popped and then dropped in embarrassing ways.

    Now, again, in fairness, it speaks to … something negative … that they all popped while in the postseason spotlight against your Mavs. (And I’ll get to that below.) But it speaks to something very positive that while foes come and go, the Mavs remain resilient … and near the top.

    “I think there are four factors,’’ Cuban tells me, so let’s go.

    The Four Factors That Keep The Mavs At 50-Plus

    1. “The fan base understands what we are doing and they stay with us,’’ says Cuban. “They support the effort. They appreciate the effort. I get emails about it and I get people coming up to me all the time. They are passionate when we don’t win, too, and believe me, I hear about that, too. But they appreciate what we’ve put together with the Mavs in an effort to win, and to be in contention on a yearly basis.’’

    2. “We have a GM in Donnie Nelson,’’ Cuban says, “who is connected, hard-working, a great evaluator of talent and of people, and a very creative thinker when it comes to basketball and more.’’

 3. “Dirk,’’ says Cuban.

    I ask him to flush out answer No. 3.

    “Dirk,’’ says Cuban again, needing to say no more.

  4. “There is a philosophy we have about retaining a core we believe in,’’ Cuban says. “Let’s go through it: In 10 years, we’ve really only had two different cores. First we had Dirk (Nowitzki), (Steve) Nash and Fin (Michael Finley). After that, the core has been Dirk, Josh, Jet and Damp. Those guys have now been together for, what, five years?

    “We’ve been lucky to get that sort of talent, starting with Dirk. But then I think we’ve been smart to stick with that talent, for the most part. Obviously, we add other pieces and make other changes. If you go around the league, us and the Spurs might be the only teams who’ve done it that way. For the most part, we get our core guys and we keep them.’’

    I suggest to Cuban that the quality of people involved is a factor, too, that from Donnie and Dirk on down, it’s about more than just basketball skill but about character, too.

    “For instance,’’ I say, “maybe Golden State would’ve liked to keep the core … but the people involved were more ‘characters’ than they were ‘character,’ you know?’’

     “No comment,’’ says Cuban, grinning that billionaire-ate-the-canary grin.

      Now, it’s not all laughs and jollies around here. As promised, let’s consider the Mavs’ recent bob-and-sink rivals:

   The 2005-06 Miami Heat

Miami had built a power, for sure, one worthy of being in the Finals with Dallas. … one with probable staying power, too. They were to be “The Champs’’ and “The Next Big Thing.’’ So the Heat recorded their (increasingly controversial) win. … and then came the sink:

   The next year, they got fat (literally, as James Posey and Antoine Walker were punished for failing body-mass tests) they got theatrical (Dwyane Wade hurt his shoulder in a way that required the use of a wheelchair!), they got old (Shaq missed 30 games) and they got complacent (when things were obviously going south, coach Pat Riley ditched the bench for the safety of the front office). Miami lost Game 1 of the next season by a record margin, won just 44 games, and in the first round of the playoffs became the first defending champ in modern basketball history to be swept from the postseason in the following year.

    Fat, theatrical, old, complacent and swept is no way to go through life, sons.

    Miami today? A .500 team. Lots of empty seats. Lots of talk of Dwyane Wade “shutting it down.’’ (I think that wheelchair is still somewhere in a storage closet somewhere.)

    The Miami Heat was an “It’’ Team, if only for a moment. But “It’’ beat Dallas. … bobbing before sinking.

   The 2006-07 Golden State Warriors

   The Mavs won 67 and had the top seed, and were then embarrassed by the Warriors in Round 1, the only time an eighth seed has ever topped a No. 1 seed in a seven-game series. Golden State had become “The Next Big Thing.’’ They were young and athletic and a little bit nuts, and all they had to do was submit to being corralled by legendary coach Don Nelson …

    But over the ensuing two-and-half years, Nellie has blown up his own front office and blown up his team. Maybe it’s Nellie himself who needed to be corralled, because all the Warriors are about now is bad trades, bad signings, suspensions, gun-charges, motorcycle accidents, free agents’ refusing to sign, fans using their “We Believe!’’ T-shirts as carwash rags.

   Golden State didn’t make the playoffs in the season after its surprise. The year after that, it won 29. As I write this, today’s Warriors are 7-18, the second-losingest team in the conference, and Nellie is ready to break it all up. … again.

    That series with Dallas marked GS’s first playoff appearance in 13 years. At the rate they are sinking, it might be 13 more before they ever see the postseason again.

   The Golden State Warriors were an “It’’ Team, if only for a moment. But “It’’ beat Dallas … bobbing before sinking.

   The 2007-08 New Orleans Hornets

    The Hornets has their best year ever … 56 wins (the sort of total taken for granted when the Mavs achieve it.) The Hornets also won their first-ever division title and downed Dallas in Round 1.

   Chris Paul and Company were  … say it with me. … “The Next Big Thing.’’

   But the next season, they won just 49. They were eliminated in the first round 4-1 by the Nuggets with one of those games, a 121-63 loss, going into the record books as an all-time lopsided postseason result.

    And here we are,  just 19 months later … New Orleans is a one-man show, with an 11-13 record, trying to remain just a little bit better than the Memphis Grizzlies. Attendance is a problem, revenue is a problem, and fans prey they never reach the day when Chris Paul asks for his escape.

     So up and down they go. But not Dallas. This decade, it’s been 53 wins, 57, 60, 52, 58, 60, 67, 51, 50 and … this year. …

    “Ten years? Has it been 50 for 10 years?’’ Cuban asks when I mention to him DallasBasketball.com’s touting of the “10X50’’ theme. “Wow.’’

    Yes, wow. Not “They’ve-Won-A-Championship-Wow,’’ but a respectful “wow’’ for how the 10X50 Team perseveres, avoids the NBA’s normal pop-and-drop pattern, and certainly offsetting the occasional heartbreak with the overall benefits of good habits.