Before Steve Nash became the legendary superstar point guard we know him as today, he was a young and promising point guard for the Dallas Mavericks. Nash was with the Mavs for six seasons, until he returned to the Suns in what former team owner Mark Cuban described as his biggest mistake.
“That season, he had played like 29 minutes per game, and the doctors were saying that he’s got all these orthopedic issues and all that,” said Cuban on Gil’s Arena. “We made him a good offer, and I’ll never forget it because I still have the calendar from that very moment when I took the notes when I was talking to Steve. Kudos to Steve because he called me back and said, ‘Hey, they gave me Mike Bibby money.’”
The NBA salary cap was much different back then than it is today, and teams had to be more selective in how they allocated contracts. While Nash was an elite point guard at the time, Cuban made the choice to preserve his team’s financial flexibility over matching the Suns’ lucrative offer. It’s a decision he has come to regret.
“We had offered him like $13 million,” Cuban added, “and Mike Bibby money back then was like $16 million, and I was like, ‘This is what we’re sticking at Steve. We want you to come back, but to make it all work with the cap….’ Back then, the cap went down in years; it wasn’t always straight up, and it made it tougher to pay up. But that was probably my biggest mistake, letting Nash walk. It really was.”
The Mavericks could have re-signed Nash and had the perfect point guard to pair with Dirk Nowitzki. It would have altered the course of NBA history. Instead, the Suns turned into a powerhouse with Nash, Amar’e Stoudemire, Joe Johnson, and Shawn Marrion.
To make matters even worse for Cuban, Nash won back-to-back MVPs following his exit from the Mavericks, averaging 17.2 points, 11.0 assists, and 3.8 rebounds per game on 50.8% shooting. While he never won a championship in Phoenix, he made several deep playoff runs and secured his place in history as one of the greatest point guards to ever play the game.
Had Mark Cuban not let the money cloud his judgment, he could have kept Nash and significantly boosted his team’s chances of winning more championships. With Nash, Nowitzki, and anyone else they added, Dallas could have dominated the West and competed with teams like the Spurs and Lakers.
Of course, it’s always easier to make these claims in hindsight, and Cuban had no way of knowing just how special and rare Nash’s talent was. It’s also worth noting that part of the reason Nash took such a leap is that he was playing in the perfect conditions on the Suns, with teammates who could play defense and run with him on the floor, and a coach in Mike D’Antoni who instilled a system that catered to his strengths.
As it stands, Mark Cuban would certainly do things differently that summer, but if he had managed to keep Nash, it could have rewritten the Mavericks’ entire trajectory. Now that he’s no longer the majority owner, Cuban has no say in these things, but he can certainly provide his wisdom of experience to the executives currently in charge.
