The Dallas Mavericks committed to signing Chandler Parsons to an offer sheet even before they were officially told by LeBron James or Carmelo Anthony that they wouldn't sign with the club.

"I told Chandler from the start [of free agency]: 'Do you want me to be brutally honest with you?'" Mark Cuban says now. "And he said yes. So I told him with as much granularity as I could that I think it's a 10 percent chance at best that we could get Melo, but we had to try. Then, we started hearing our percentage was getting higher, and I told Chandler that, too.

"But then, when we weren't hearing a whole lot from the Melo camp, we knew we were pretty much out. So I told Chandler [on July 9]: 'I could end up being the dumbest idiot in NBA history, but even if LeBron comes back to us and says he's choosing us, I'm committing to you.'"

The Cleveland Cavaliers also strongly pursued Parsons while waiting on a decision from James. Sources say the Cavs told Parsons he was "Cleveland's guy" if James signed elsewhere.

Sources say Parsons' camp tried to convince the Rockets to agree to a four-year, $48 million deal before signing an offer sheet with the Mavericks.

"LeBron and Melo, those are long shots," Cuban concedes. "But you do 'em because you have to run things out. People give you a hard time when you don't get this person or that person, but you never win any games you don't play. And in the worst case you develop a relationship for the next time something comes up. It's as much about trying to develop relationships as it is about trying to hit the home run.

"When it comes to restricted free agency, you look at what it takes to get the player away and you can't pay less than that. We went through and looked at all the numbers and all the permutations, and we realized that the pricing for free agents in this market was going to be far more than anybody expected, just because of how cap room was playing out and who the free agents were."