After years of taking pay cuts, Dirk Nowitzki finally got a pay day from the Dallas Mavericks. The career-long Mavs power forward was able to secure a large sum of money once Dallas completed its free agent signings.
According to Mark Cuban, the amount of money received by Dirk was not even negotiated.
Following from CBS Sports Radio:
“Dirk wasn’t even in the country and people couldn’t even reach him when free agency started,” Cuban told us. “I basically told him, look, you tell me the price and it actually started lower. His agent said ‘how about this much’ and we said ‘we’ll have a little more money, we’ll give you more’ and as the numbers started getting bigger and bigger, it was like ‘what about this number?’ ‘We’ll give you more.’ Finally, it was like ‘this is what we got left, take it!’
We wanted to make it a two-year deal with a team option so that people wouldn’t speculate that he was going to retire because Dirk is the type of guy, he’s just a good guy. He would hate going city to city to city and everyone asking him if he was going to retire because he has no intention of retiring after this year and, with the team option that we have, he gave us the flexibility that said ‘if we find somebody that we can send the money to that he likes, we all like, then let’s do it and if not, let’s give the money to Dirk again which I’m fine with too.”
I’m going to ignore the not-so-subtle shot that Cuban took at Kobe Bryant’s retirement tour.
But this decision is interesting from the Mavs considering how Bryant’s final deal with the Lakers was perceived. There are differences, of course, but Kobe’s deal was also done without negotiation. The Lakers came to the table with a contract in place and he obviously signed it.
This is not to say that what the Mavs did was the wrong decision. In fact, it was a duty to pay the player they owe so much to the money he deserves. Having Dirk Nowitzki finish his career in Dallas by getting paid is a good look for the Mavericks and a smart decision by Cuban.
