Dallas Mavericks: Mark Cuban explains trade confusion with the Miami Heat

On the first day of free agency last month, the Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat seemingly completed a trade that would send Kelly Olynyk and Derrick Jones Jr. to the Mavs. Minutes later, the deal was dead.

Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, spoke to Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald earlier this week and discussed the relationship that the Miami Heat and Dallas Mavs have had over the past several years, despite being unlikely rivals for some of those years. The conversation was an interesting one from multiple perspectives.

The relationship between the Mavs and Heat stems back at its earliest to the 2006 NBA Finals where the two teams met. Since then, Dallas and Miami have had close ties for several years, including another Finals matchup and multiple trades. Cuban says there are “no hard feelings” between the two teams after a strange deal fell through at the start of free agency.

The Mavs had been tied to the Heat for several weeks as a potential trade destination to move Goran Dragic. Dragic and the Heat have been due for a split for some time and the Mavs have Dragic’s countryman, Luka Doncic on the roster as well. The deal would have made at least some sense.

When talks between the two teams were first reported just hours before the eventual deal would be announced, everyone just assumed that Dragic was going to be a Maverick. As far as deals go, this one felt to be viewed as pretty much a ‘whatever’ move for the Mavs.

That is, until the actual details of the trade came out via Adrian Wojnarowski, Marc Stein and others. Instead of trading for Dragic, the Mavs had apparently made the move for Kelly Olynyk and Derrick Jones Jr., clearly a very different deal than was expected.

Apparently, that confusion was not held just by Mavericks fans, but also the front office of the Miami Heat. Clearly Cuban thought that if Woj announced it on Twitter then the Heat couldn’t back out, but instead the two sides remained at odds and the trade died that day. According to Cuban, this was simply just a miscommunication as Dragic no longer interested the team, but the Heat needed to move more salary than just Olynyk and Derrick Jones.

I for one am glad that this trade was quashed by the Heat. The Mavs were hoping to make some moves, but this trade to acquire Olynyk and Jones just didn’t make a lot of sense. It would have strapped up a lot of the Mavs free cash on a backup big and a high flying wing that hasn’t shown a whole lot of basketball skill underneath the rim yet.

For whatever reason, this trade looked great to the brain trust in Dallas, but Miami had our backs and vetoed the trade. Dallas landed Delon Wright and everything looks better already, but there was a moment there where it looked like Kelly Olynyk would be the big signing for Dallas over the summer. Those dark days are now behind us.