Mark Cuban was asked how the Dallas Mavericks were "able to get such a good deal on the Kristaps Porzingis trade" with the New York Knicks.

“It’s almost like the James Harden trade," said Cuban. "It was like, ‘Why didn’t you guys offer that to us?’ Sometimes you just have teams that you work well with, and we’ve always worked well with the Knicks and they just said, ‘You guys said you were interested before, here’s the deal yes or no.’

“And we said yes.”

The deal was widely praised at the time for both teams, but the Knicks' portion of the trade was largely predicated on the notion that they would sign two max free agents.