Mark Cuban on his beloved Rockets, save James Harden: ‘That’s not a very good team’

As it always is with Mark Cuban, there is a little bit of truth here, there’s a bit of bluster and there’s a righteous, knowing dig.

Just in time for the 2015 playoffs, with Cuban’s Dallas Mavericks set to take on the James Harden-led Houston Rockets, Cuban was asked to give his personal scouting report on Harden and his teammates by Grantland’s Kirk Goldsberry:

“[The biggest difference is] practice time. There’s no more predictable team than the Rockets. You know exactly what they’re gonna do,” he says. “But James Harden is so good. That’s what analytics have begot. Right? Predictability. If you know what the percentages are, in the playoffs, you have time to counter them. Whether you’re good enough to do it is another question. Because they are very talented, and James Harden, I think, is the MVP. Because that’s not a very good team over there.”

He gave Harden his MVP vote! In a tight race that Stephen Curry may have pulled ahead in, Harden could use all the help he could get! What better voice than Cuban’s, a man who inherited a perennial loser in 2000 before proceeding to act as the top-of-the-fish leader of a club that has made the playoffs in 14 out of 15 full seasons in the years since?

Also, Mark Cuban hates the Houston Rockets. And the feeling is mutual, pal.

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Last fall Rockets general manager Daryl Morey went after Cuban after the Mavs owner spent months belittling the Rockets franchise following Dwight Howard’s free-agent decision (in choosing a younger Houston team over Dallas) and Houston’s attempts to sign Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki when he hit free agency.

The enmity between the two camps intensified over the 2014 offseason when Cuban (after a gutsy and studied but ultimately frustrating few years of offseason whiffs) possibly overpaid former Rockets swingman Chandler Parsons (to the tune of three years and $46 million) when the Rockets took their own gutsy and studied but ultimately frustrating calculated risk on allowing him to hit restricted free agency.

In late September, Morey offered this in talking to Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski:

“We’ve been pretty good, and I think he’s doing a smart thing to take on a rival,” Morey told Yahoo Sports late Sunday. “He should want to beat up on San Antonio, too, but it’s hard to paint the Spurs that way. So he’s directed his bully pulpit onto us. Our owner stays above the fray, so I’m outgunned honestly.

“But let’s be clear: If the money’s equal between the Rockets and Mavericks, I think players are picking Houston. Every time. For Dwight [Howard], I just don’t think it was a hard choice between us and Dallas. If you want to win, you’re going to want to join our organization. We have a first-team All-NBA player in his prime [James Harden]. They have an enormously talented superstar [Dirk Nowitzki] but he obviously isn’t 24 years old.

“The choice was pretty obvious between the two teams. Dwight is the smart guy in this.”

For once.

The Rockets managed to top the Mavs by six wins in 2014-15 despite Howard playing exactly half the season, despite Patrick Beverley missing 26 games with a season-ending hand injury and despite being without contributors Josh Smith and Corey Brewer for the first chunk of the season. Donatas Motiejunas, who helped the Rockets circle the wagons in several different ways, will miss the postseason because of back woes. James Harden has done a masterful job with this team, and though most analysts’ personal MVP choices will likely give Stephen Curry the award, nobody can deny that Harden has had an MVP-level season that is well worth the hardware.

Cuban may be needling, and this interview came even prior to news about Motiejunas’s injury explanation, but he’s also not far off. Houston may currently be stocked full of unheralded contributors, but they’re not … they’re not great.

Most wouldn’t go as far as “not a very good team over there,” as Cuban did, but Howard has only been dominant (if that) in fits and spurts this season, Smith and Brewer are very specialized players who possibly could be coached out of a contest in a seven-game series up against a very good coach (the Mavericks, in Rick Carlisle, have one of the best), other contributors remain quite streaky. The Rockets finished only 12th in offense this season even with Harden turning a brilliant offensive turn. And Harden himself is coming off of a disappointing personal offensive turn in the 2014 postseason.

This is Cuban going aggressive/aggressive, though. Maybe toss in yet another “aggressive.”

He lauds Harden’s fantastic play, opines that the Rockets are easy to figure out because they’ll take the best percentage shot or make the most successful analytics-driven defensive decision, before calling out Harden’s supporting cast as “not very good.” Part of that cast, mind you, includes a man in Dwight Howard to whom Cuban attempted to throw a maximum contract less than two years ago.

Dallas may not have a great chance in this series. Nowitzki has rebounded of late, but we’re a day away from the postseason and nobody knows how Mavs guard Rajon Rondo is going to work with his teammates in a playoff setting, and Parsons himself (whom former teammate Howard called “the enemy” on Friday) is struggling with a sore right knee.

To hear Cuban tell it, his Carlisle-led crew can work as something bigger than the sum of its parts, eschewing predictability on its way toward a well-studied and well-practiced crew that can top any bit of robotic precision from Houston’s side.

Don’t listen to him. Dallas may win this series, but Cuban (who boasts one of the biggest analytics staffs in the NBA, if not the biggest, and has for years) himself knows these two teams are closer in style and substance than just about any other two teams in the NBA, much less two teams pairing up for the first round of the playoffs.

Why else would they hate each other so damn much?

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops