Mark Cuban did not wait until the first round even started to start critiquing the opposing team. Cuban recently sat down with Grantland’s Kirk Goldsberry, for an interview and he had some things to say about the Mavericks instate rival and first round opponent, the Houston Rockets. He said at least one good thing about the Rockets, he believes James Harden should be the MVP, but he also calls them ‘predictable’ and ‘not a very good team.’
“(The biggest difference is) practice time. There’s no more predictable team than the Rockets. You know exactly what they’re gonna do,” Cuban said. “But James Harden is so good. That’s what analytics have begot. Right? Predictability. If you know what the percentages are, in the playoffs, you have time to counter them. Whether you’re good enough to do it is another question. Because they are very talented, and James Harden, I think, is the MVP. Because that’s not a very good team over there.”
Cuban clearly sees the talent that Harden has, and he respects his abilities on the court, but he believes the Rockets are predictable because James Harden is their whole team. They do everything through their MVP candidate. He scores a lot of their points and has the ball all the time. Teams know this, but since James is so good, it’s still hard to stop him. The reason that the Rockets do everything through James Harden is because the rest of the team, in the words of Mark Cuban, ‘is not very good.’
Dallas can already tell that Harden will be getting the ball, but the only question is, will they still be able to stop him? James is a talented scorer, and was second in the league in scoring behind Russell Westbrook. Dallas will key on Harden in the first round series, but he has been tough to stop all season. The rest of the Rockets team may come out playing better than ever trying to prove Cuban wrong. The Texas showdown will be an extremely fun series to watch, and Mark Cuban’s words will do nothing but add fuel to the fire of the rivalry and this playoff series.
