For the second straight offseason, the Mavericks missed out on their top target in free agency, and like he did a year ago when he discussed Deron Williams, owner Mark Cuban suggests his team will be better off without Dwight Howard. Pointing to the club's ability to sign "five good players or more" rather than just adding one max-salary player, Cuban suggested that the roster would have more flexibility going forward, as Bryan Gutierrez and Tim MacMahon detail at ESPNDallas.com.
Cuban also addressed a number of other Mavs-related topics, so let's round up the noteworthy quotes from Gutierrez's separate piece at ESPNDallas.com.
On having to move on to Plans B or C this offseason:
"You guys like to make a big deal about it. Obviously, we were disappointed we didn’t get Dwight, but we pretty much got everything else we wanted to get and then some. Much more. We never thought we’d be able to get Monta [Ellis]. It turned into a good summer. Now, the key is to get everybody playing together, get everyone healthy, keep them healthy and go."
On whether the team will explore trades:
"We’re open. Given that all of these are new signings, it’s going to be tough for us to do a trade. We can do anything until December. We didn’t sign these guys to trade them. We signed them to keep them. Our goal is to have everyone here, play together and move on. We still have a lot cap room for next year, so we’ll see."
On how the signing of Jose Calderon improves the team:
"We just have a great compliment of people. He’s great in the pick-and-roll, which will be great for Dirk [Nowitzki] a whole bunch. He’s a pass-first point guard, which will help with Monta. It’ll help with Sam [Dalembert], Vince [Carter] and Shawn [Marion]. We’re going to have guys who can get Shawn the ball, which we couldn’t do last year. Vince won’t have to work as hard as he did last year. We can block shots between Sam and Brandan [Wright]. I think we’ll be in good shape."
On a new agreement with Devin Harris:
"I think we’ve got something worked out. We just restructured the deal. When we have something to announce, we’ll announce it…. I think we'll get him back, but I don't want to jinx us. We'll let him rehab with us and all that kind of stuff."