Mark Cuban said he was shocked by the contract offer that brought his star point guard Steve Nash to the Suns.

Cuban wrote that he planned carefully before offering Nash a five-year, $51 million contract, figuring that the Suns wouldn't be able to beat it.

Then the Suns immediately offered a five-year contract, with an option on the sixth season, worth a total of $65 million.

So Cuban was confronted with a very challenging choice.

"It wasn't easy for me. I knew it wasn't going to be easy for anyone associated with, or fans of the Mavs. It was Steve's choice to leave for money. It was my choice not to pay him the money," Cuban wrote in a Web log.

"I told Steve directly that I wanted to be fair, and that I wanted to pay him more than any other team," Cuban wrote. "I said that I didn't want to negotiate against ourself and play games. That if another team came in and paid him a max like deal, what I called an extreme deal, outside the norm, then he would have to take it."

While Cuban expected that to be enough to retain Nash's services, and that he would hear back from Nash and his people in a couple of days.

But the Maverick owner's phone rang again that same day.

"To make a long story short, Steve said he got an incredible offer from the Suns," Cuban wrote. "He wouldn't tell me the exact numbers, but every time I said a number, he said it was more. He said they flew down a whole group of people, including Amare Stoudemire to recruit him."