Mark Cuban acknowledged the Dallas Mavericks made a number of moves at the deadline with the future in mind.
The Mavericks traded Andrew Bogut in a package for Nerlens Noel while also releasing Deron Williams.
"The goal always is to get to be a championship contender and get another ring," Cuban said Sunday on ESPN Radio's NBA Insiders show, his first extended public comments on the Mavs' latest personnel decisions. "As well as Deron was playing and even Andrew, defensively ... we had to match up to our criteria of trying to position ourselves to get a lot better. Then you combine that with the fact that I've always said, when a lot of teams are tanking, you don't want to tank. And when there aren't many teams tanking and everybody's trying to compete, that's the best time to consider trying to go for a draft pick. You can try to play as well as you can and still be in competition for a great pick.
"We obviously haven't played well enough to be in the playoffs right now, but we're playing a lot better. One loss here and there, we're all the sudden in the top five for draft contention, but we're also playing to get better and trying to win, which I think is a good thing."
Dallas has a 23-35 record and are 2.5 games out of the eighth seed.
"It's painful, but I'm also realistic," Cuban said. "Look, if I wasn't realistic about the value of a draft pick, we would have kept D-Will, we would have kept Andrew. We would be playing an older lineup, but now we're playing our young guys.
"That supposedly is the definition of tanking: You play your youngest players to give them experience without the expectation you're going to win. In our case, we're playing our youngest players, but we're playing them with the expectation that they're going to win. I think that's the best type of experience. And if that means we get the eighth pick or the 10th pick instead of the fourth pick, I'll live with the consequences."
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