Mavericks owner Mark Cuban joined DAC (Dennis and Cowlishaw) recently to discuss the Ezekiel Elliott case and the signing of Nerlens Noel. Here are some highlights:

If he's happy with how Nerlens Noel's contract played out:

Mark Cuban: I'm satisfied with it. I wouldn't call it happy. We made what we thought was a significant offer. Nerlens decided to bet on himself and now we're in a position where if everybody comes out ahead this coming season, he'll get paid, we'll be happy and we'll go on with life. He's not going to be the first player to bet on himself and he won't be the last. It's unfortunate for Nerlens and other players--there's a lot of other restricted free agents, particularly bigs that are in the same position--where last year the market was really strong and guys saw players get paid that maybe they didn't think deserved the amount they got paid and everybody expected the cap to go up another $10 million and when the cap didn't go up that $10 million, everybody got squeezed and that's just what happened. I think Nerlens understands that. I've talked to him since and he's like, "I'm ready to do this. Let's go out and have a great year." He's just got that positive attitude and that's been great. Look, the whole time--I've got to give Nerlens props--while all of this was going on, he was very positive. It was like look, "Our agents are our agents and they're doing their thing but I'm excited." So I give him a ton of credit.

Noel's contract being wrapped up a month before training camp starts:

Mark Cuban: I give him and his agent credit for that. That's really a positive for all of us. It gives Nerlens a little more confidence, and he was already working out hard, but it gives him a little more confidence to come in early and work out. A bunch of the players got together and did some team-building exercises and he was part of that and so it really was a positive from that perspective.

If Noel's knees are healthy:

Mark Cuban: I haven't talked to Casey [Smith] about it but we have a very strict protocol on all of our guys that have any, even the slightest, potential for injury or rehab they have to do so between Casey and Jeremy Holsopple and all the technology that we have, we monitor these guys very, very, very closely.