Missed Cuban Crisis: What could have been for the Cubs

Cubs fans can only dream of Cuban owning and leading their team to the promised land.

this will sound weird. Im laying in bed. with the trophy next me.#dreamcometrue.

    This was a tweet posted by Mark Cuban earlier this morning. Can't say I blame the man for enjoying his (and the Mavericks') first ever championship. His Mavericks have come a long way since he bought the team back in 2000. In the 20 years before he bought the team, the Mavs won only 40% of their regular season games, with only 1 division championship in that period of time (which was followed by a quick 3-1 first round exit in 1986). Since Cuban took over, they are now winning close to 70% of their regular season games and have made the playoffs every year in his reign - including two Finals appearances. Before this year, they had been known as a regular season team who faded come May - including a rare upset to the #8th seed Golden State Warriors in 2007.

      Around that time, the Tribune company was looking to sell the Cubs - a team that Cuban highly coveted. So much so, that Cuban was rumored to be the highest bidder for the team ($1.3 billion). However, baseball being the way it is (Selig and Reinsdorf being the guys with power), it wanted nothing to do with a younger new age owner that may look to shake up MLB's status quo. His bid was never really taken seriously even though he did enter the 2nd round of negotiations (The Ricketts family ended up with the winning bid). To say that the Ricketts' tenure of ownership  has been rocky would be an understatement, especially with this insistence for public funding to rebuild Wrigley seemingly his focus over the product he has been putting on the field. To be fair, the bad deals made were done before him. But he has done nothing to inspire the loyal fan base, a base whose faith is starting to crumble.

    I don't know how much better Cuban could have done with this roster. But I do know his track record with the Mavericks (and his other business ventures) has been nothing but successful. He would have provided hope for a franchise needing a non-traditional owner to improve its long-term chances of winning. Instead of their franchise being in the hands of such an owner, Cubs fans will have to hope that Ricketts can get his focus more on the team and less on a stadium financing deal.

     If the Cubs organization hopes to light up some victory Cuban cigars celebrating a World Series title, it will have to do so without Cuban.

     Until then, cheaper knock-offs will be smoked, and likely only in situations involving stress, not celebration.

One in the Hand is Worth Two Busch Lights

Only took 70 years, but Americans are finally embracing an element of Germany again.

Disregard every I said in the past month about LeBron and the Heat. Everything they did right against the Bulls, they did wrong against the Mavericks. They couldn't close out games. They blew a big lead in what turned out to be the difference making game (to me anyways) in Game 2.

Everyone and their mother (except me and my mother) were rooting for the Mavericks in this series.

Correction. They were rooting against the Heat. Never have I seen such hatred for a team in my memory. The 2007 Patriots were close, but this Heat team takes the cake. Not to say I blame people, because all the elements of hatred were there.

(1) The declaration of a championship in July. Actually, make that 8 championships. Not too many people are going to like you when you do that.

(2) The Decision. Even though all the money he got for that went to charity, this was what made people hate LeBron and the Heat the most. Jim Gray goes from respected journalist willing to ask tough questions to a complete tool. Lebron made people think this The Decision was a difficult one when he knew all along he was going to join his boy Wade as early as 2008.

(3) Heat over Bulls in EC Finals. This was merely the icing on the cake. People from Chicago didn't need any extra reason to root against the Heatles in the Finals. But Chicago's exit made Miami a popular hate item on the menu. See: just about every bet I made with people on the Dallas/Miami series.

An aside here, but I don't think the Heat are going to relinquish their Eastern crown any time soon.

(4) Dirk - What do fringe basketball fans like rooting for more than anything? A white guy who can shoot hoops! Ok, this wasn't really a reason. I just needed to throw in a "White Guy is Good at Basketball" reference.

There's probably more reasons, but I don't care to go into them. I just lost $190 ($135 from series bets and $55 on Miami -5) and 6 pitchers of beer. And not only that, I'm drinking a 9 month old Busch Light at the moment. The point of the story is: people here (and everywhere aside from Dallas) were watching to root against the Heat, not necessarily rooting for the Mavericks. If Dallas beats Orlando, no one here gives a rat's ass.

Turn out the Busch lights, the party's over. As the 26 real Miami Heat fans sulk in defeat, the rest of Miami (and the world) parties.