Mark Cuban didn't think he had to 'quarantine' DeAndre Jordan

By foxsports
Published

DeAndre Jordan isn't a Maverick. Shocking, I know? 

Instead, after five days of being one in principle, he decided to head back to the Clippers and sign with the team he's played his whole career with as soon as the NBA's moratorium ended. Of course, the last day of the moratorium was one of the most entertaining in NBA free agency history.

In a recent ESPN feature, Ramona Shelburne and Tim MacMahon chronicled the process for Jordan and all the surrounding parties.

And Mark Cuban had some grievances to air: "Never in a million years did I think I had to quarantine the guy," Cuban said.

Cuban and Chandler Parsons pitched Jordan on how they could turn him into a star in Dallas, where he would no longer be eclipsed by Blake Griffin and Chris Paul. From Shelburne and MacMahon:

Click here to read the full article. It's fantastic.

(H/t ESPN.)

Photo Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

What makes this so hard for Parsons and Cuban to understand is they gave Jordan absolutely everything he said he wanted.

"There is nothing more that we could have physically, emotionally or possibly done to make him feel more comfortable," Parsons said.

Jordan said he wanted to take the next step in his career. The Mavericks showed him how he could do that in Dallas. They broke it down in the clearest analytical terms.

"He got 0.8 post-ups a game last season," Cuban said. "That's less than Kyle Lowry and Khris Middleton. His usage rate was 18th on the Clippers and sixth-lowest in the NBA. I said to him, 'DJ, if you want to be a brand, you have to separate yourself.'

"We didn't talk bad about the Clippers. We just said that there aren't enough balls to go around for you to reach your potential there."

Jordan said he wanted to be wooed. Parsons and his friends jumped in his car immediately after returning from a trip to Vegas with several Mavs staffers and drove from Dallas to spend the weekend with Jordan in Houston. This was June 19, more than a month after the Clippers had been eliminated in the second round of the playoffs.