Back to Cuban, who is apparently not happy with the decision that Dwight Howard made to sign with Houston over his Mavericks. The following is a quote from Cuban when he appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Thursday Night:
“I like to go for the fences. And with the Mavericks, we’re trying to get better. One of the best free agents on the market, obviously, was Dwight Howard. I thought we had a chance. We spent a lot of time putting together a really cool presentation. He went to the Houston Rockets, made a huge mistake.
After playing 15 years with the Boston Celtics, it has not taken Paul Pierce long to acclimate to the Brooklyn/New York rivalry: “”I think the hate [for the Knicks] has grown a little. Everybody knows how much I disliked the Knicks when I was with the Celtics, but I think it’s grown to another level,” Pierce said on ESPN NewYork 98.7 FM’s “The Michael Kay Show” on Thursday. “I think it’s time for the Nets to start running this city.” Pierce later told reporters at a Sprint H-O-R-S-E event in Manhattan: “The only thing that separates the two teams is a bridge. And both of them are in the same division and both of them are considered contenders. You can’t help but say this is probably gonna be the best rivalry in sports next year.” The Nets and Knicks will meet four times in 2013-14. The first game of their regular-season series will be Dec. 5 at Barclays Center.”
Speaking of the Knicks, there has still been no timetable set for the return of J.R. Smith: “During the offseason, J.R. Smith re-signed with the Knicks, underwent knee surgery and temporarily dyed his hair blond. The NBA’s reigning Sixth Man of the Year was expected to miss three to four months after having surgery on his left knee in July to repair the patella tendon and fix a torn meniscus. He walked without a brace Thursday — his hair now a very dark shade of red — but said he’s uncertain if he’ll be ready for the beginning of the season.”
“It’s still too early to tell from what I hear from the doc and all that, but I hope so,” he said before The J.R. Smith Youth Foundation golf tournament at Eagle Ridge Golf Club. “I want to be there opening night. I want to start training camp off with my team and my new teammates.”
As if there already wasn’t enough drama in Lakerland, Jeanie Buss believes things could have shaken out differently with Dwight Howard if her father, the late Dr. Jerry Buss, were here to woo Howard: “It’s hard to say now if the Los Angeles Lakers could have done anything differently to retain free-agent center Dwight Howard that would have changed his mind about going to Houston. The “Stay D12” billboards around town didn’t work. Neither did anything anyone said in the Lakers’ pitch meeting to Howard in early July. Howard’s mind seemed mostly made up by then. But Lakers executive vice president Jeanie Buss thinks one person had a chance — her father, the late Dr. Jerry Buss.”
“They would’ve probably had a better relationship if my dad hadn’t been sick,” Jeanie Buss said in a wide-ranging interview with hosts Mark Willard and Mychal Thompson on ESPNLA 710 Thursday. “When it came time to try to convince Dwight to stay, we lost the best closer in the business in Dr. Buss.
“Putting up the billboard maybe wasn’t the right thing. But we maybe have to learn to do things differently because Dr. Buss isn’t here anymore. People said [of the billboards], ‘Oh, that’s not the Laker way.’ Well, the Laker way isn’t the same, because Dr. Buss isn’t here.”
Ben Baroff is a basketball journalist who blogs for SheridanHoops.com. Follow him on Twitter here.