When the owner of an NBA team receives a verbal commitment from a player during the free agency period, it’s usually assumed a deal is all but done, and rightfully so.
From one grown business man to another, they face each other, come to terms and shake hands. If not, they go their separate ways.
This is how things are supposed to play out, but proved not to be the case for Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who has had a rough 24-hour period after DeAndre Jordan backed out of the four-year, $80 million deal he agreed to sign a week ago. Jordan, who apparently had cold feet about the initial agreement, ended up signing a four-year deal with the Los Angeles Clippers on Thursday.
Leading up to that signing were reports from Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports and Chris Broussard of ESPN, detailing the situation behind the scenes for Jordan, Cuban and other parties involved.
Broussard made a strong report on Wednesday about Cuban with the following tweet:
Sources: Cuban beside himself. Driving around downtown HOUSTON begging (thru texts) Jordan’s family 4 address to DeAndre’s home
Cuban, who saw the tweet early Thursday, was less than thrilled with the report and went at Broussard hard:
.@Chris_Broussard that’s is the dumbest shit Ive ever heard. If you had any ethics u would msg me and I will give u his address
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) July 9, 2015
@mcuban if you had the address last night, you would’ve gone to the house. I stand by my multiple sources who had u calling & texting them — Chris Broussard (@Chris_Broussard) July 9, 2015
@mcuban you didn’t fly to Houston to text all night, did you?
— Chris Broussard (@Chris_Broussard) July 9, 2015
@Chris_Broussard post what you have. I have the facts you got lied to — Mark Cuban (@mcuban) July 9, 2015
@Chris_Broussard how about this. You post any proof I was calling/texting his friends asking anything I give 100k to charity of yr choice.
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) July 9, 2015
Broussard has yet to respond to the offer.
As for Cuban, his team now has a lot of work to do, thanks to Jordan’s screw job. Still, this incident won’t stop the owner from doing plenty of other relevant things to keep things off his mind, like hanging out with two former presidents on the same day he was completely screwed:
Amazing night with @billclinton @thebushcenter and some amazing PLC grads ! pic.twitter.com/TMThDyeANg
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) July 10, 2015
Seems Cuban is and will be doing just fine.
Jim Park is a blogger and editor of Sheridan Hoops. Follow him on twitter @SheridanBlog.