By JON MACHOTA
FOXSportsSouthwest.com Special Contributor
Feb. 24, 2011
When the New Orleans Hornets added forward Carl Landry on Wednesday it appeared to have little effect on the Dallas Mavericks. Sure, it helped a division rival add depth, but that seemed to be the end of it.
However, before Dallas took to the court to face the Utah Jazz on Wednesday night, Mavs owner Mark Cuban let a group of reporters know that he was not happy about the deal that sent Landry to New Orleans and guard Marcus Thornton and cash considerations to Sacramento.
SportsDayDFW.com reported that because the contracts of the two do not match up, the Hornets are taking on an additional $750,000 in salary, and that's the part of the deal that isn't sitting well with Cuban.
"All I know is that if most of the owners in this league can't take back salary in a deal, then the Hornets shouldn't be allowed to, either,'' Cuban told SportsDayDFW. "We've allowed a team that's basically losing its (assets) to take on salary. I'm not saying anybody did something underhanded. I'm just saying that when we wrote the rules, somebody forgot the loopholes.''
Because the Hornets are owned by the NBA until new ownership can be found, Cuban is technically one of the 29 NBA owners who currently hold partial ownership in the franchise.
Adding Landry puts the Hornets over the salary cap, and that clearly has angered Cuban.
"If New Orleans is taking back $2 million and the team is losing money and I own one-29th of it, I'm going to go against the grain and say that's just wrong," Cuban said, according to MavsMoneyball.com. "There's no way, with their payroll, having to dump salary before they were sold to us (NBA owners), now they can take on more salary while they're losing money. That's just wrong every which way."
Added Cuban: "I don't have a problem if they go dollar-for-dollar, great, more power to them. You could see if it was like a marquee guy and he's going to bring in lots of dollars. No disrespect to Carl Landry, but I don't see that's the way it works. It's just wrong. I'm one of the owners. The league is supposed to just give them a budget, and it never dawned on me that the budget would say you can spend more money to bring in players."
The 6-foot-9, 250-pound Landry was averaging 11.9 points and 4.8 rebounds a game for the Kings this season through 53 games. The 6-4, 205-pound Thornton played in 46 games for the Hornets, averaging 7.8 points and 2.9 rebounds. Thornton is in his second NBA season, and Landry is in his fourth.
