When he finally spoke out after remaining silent for almost all of this year’s NBA Playoffs, Mark Cuban hinted that he was interested in purchasing something other than the traditional championship rings for his Dallas Mavericks players, coaches and staff. Cuban explained:
It’s just like I’m going to sit down and I had some brief conversations with Dirk [Nowitzki], Jay Kidd, and Jason [Terry]. We want to change the game. What I told them was ‘Look everybody wears short shorts until the Fab Five came along and then everybody went to long shorts. Now short shorts look outdated.’ I said we want to do the same thing when it comes to rings and how we represent or how we record the fact that we won a championship. Part of the fact is that it irks the hell out of me that you got into towns where teams have won a ring or won a championship and you know the ball boys, the towel boys, everybody has got a ring. It kind of deflates the value and the impact, so I don’t know exactly what we are going to do, but we are going to try to change the game.”
Sounds very Cuban-esque, and frankly not that bad of an idea. Only problem though is Cuban’s star player, Dirk Nowitzki, wants a ring rather than, say, a bracelet.
“We got to talk to him about that,” Finals MVP Dirk Nowitzki said with a big smile. "I don’t think the last word has been spoken yet. You know he always wants to do something different, wants to do something bigger, but I mean, the ring is just so classic.
“I think I would vote for a ring. I mean, I’m a man. I don’t know how I’d feel about a bracelet. I’ve gotta go with a ring.”
He’s not alone. Rick Carlisle, who called Dirk Nowitzki the ‘best basketball player on the planet’ on Monday, also thinks Cuban is probably alone in his sentiment about doing something other than rings:
“It’s got to be rings. I don’t know what he’s thinking,” Carlisle said, laughing. “You win an NBA championship, you gotta have a ring. If he wants to give guys something else (in addition to) a ring, that’s great.”
Ah, the beauty of being World Champs. You get to argue over jewelry.