Mark Cuban still thinks breaking up 2011 Championship team was right decision

The Dallas Mavericks and owner Mark Cuban made the controversial do disassemble their 2011 NBA Championship team letting stars walk during free agency. One of those stars was center Tyson Chandler.

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Chandler was offered a large single-season contract, but elected to sign with the New York Knicks instead on a multi-year deal. You could say that executing a trade with the Knicks to bring back Chandler could be an omission that Cuban made a mistake back in 2011, but he told 103.3 FM’s “ESPN Dallas Game Day” that isn’t the case and stood by his decision.

“First of all, you know I don’t make mistakes,” Cuban said, as transcribed by Tim MacMahon of ESPN Dallas. “When you think I’ve made one, see Rule 1 because you know I won’t admit it.

“Again, people don’t want to hear me talking about the rules and the new CBA, but there were only so many courses of action that we could take. If we re-signed anybody to a $10 million-plus amount, then we basically had to re-sign everybody, and we just didn’t feel re-signing everybody would put us in a position to succeed. We realized we were taking on a risk-reward where we were going after free agents. … Particularly last year, we didn’t get what we were trying to get with Dwight [Howard], but we thought that the risk-reward really made sense.

“We also felt, as nice as it sounds and exciting as it might have seemed if we kept the team together after we won the championship, I mean, if you just look where everybody is at right now, I think you kind of look back and say maybe it was the right move. So taking that approach now, let us get to the point now where we can bring back Tyson and we’re in a good position to re-sign him next year as well and we have cap room in addition to Tyson and we’ve been able to add Monta [Ellis] and we’ve been able to add Vince [Carter]. …

“We think we’re in a better position now than if we’d have just kept everybody together, and so I think that flexibility, the ability to add someone this summer if we can make that happen, along with bringing Ty back when we hope he’s in good shape — and everything looks like he’s in good shape — that also gives us a little bit of risk reduction and more upside than if we’d have just kept everything together.”