Ah.
Well, that seems a bit silly, and there is a very easy fix. Just make the players sign, with the promise that after all the numbers are crunched, their salary will get bumped to the maximum salary permitted within the cap rules for the upcoming season.
Calculate the previous year’s numbers, and them figure out who gets paid what on new deals. No one would be getting less.
I’m not going to argue that Jordan didn’t exactly act mature. But he’s a fairly young guy, and maybe he has a hard time saying no to people, and didn’t want Cuban to talk him back into going to Dallas. That would have made him look even worse.
Jordan will survive. So will Cuban. The Mavs are just going to have to re-tool, but this is no worse (and even better) then a scenario that had Jordan sign with Dallas and then gets hurt. He is on the roster and takes up cap space, and the Mavs have to plan around that… Not saying he WOULD get hurt, but GM’s HAVE to have plan B’s in place for all kinds of contingencies. Now the Mavs have more time to figure out what they can do with the money they have.