Mark Cuban on James Harden's Rockets: 'That's Not a Very Good Team over There'

I'm sure no one could see this coming. 

After the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks spent much of the last calendar year engaging in wars of words—the chemistry comments are one of many examples, and you can find so many more in this article by Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski—they're set to engage in a first-round playoff clash that begins Saturday night.

It didn't take long for Mavs owner Mark Cuban to lob in the first grenade, offering some billboard material to a Houston squad that may not even need any, per 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. 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.

"

Kudos to Cuban for recognizing James Harden's excellence this year, as the bearded shooting guard is all but guaranteed to finish either first or second in the MVP voting. Deservedly so. That's admittedly the primary thrust of his statement, but it's probably not going to matter to the Rockets. 

"Cuban likely sees this as a compliment to Harden rather than an insult to the Rockets," Tim Cato noted for SBNation, and he's right on the money. "It's unlikely they'll see it that way, though, not considering the two teams' history."

That history is going to thrust the last sentence of Cuban's remarks into the spotlight, especially because it's patently false.

Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports

The Rockets are a very good team.

Despite all of the injuries, they managed to work their way up to the No. 2 spot in a historically tough Western Conference, refusing to give in despite losing Dwight Howard, Terrence Jones, Patrick Beverley and others to injury throughout the course of a grueling season. And that was no fluke. 

Houston finished the season with a 107 offensive rating, per Basketball-Reference.com, and that stands as an above-average mark. Though it's not elite, coming in at No. 12 in the leaguewide hierarchy, it's more impressive when coupled with the Rockets' No. 8 defensive rating (103.4). 

Taking things one step further, we can look at simple rating system (SRS), which is a one-number-shows-all summation of a team's strength, based on point differential and strength of schedule throughout the season. The Rockets' mark of 3.82 comes in at No. 7, two spots ahead of Cuban's squad. 

The outspoken Dallas owner's point is that it's Harden who makes this team great, not the other players on the roster. If we read between the lines, it seems as if he's claiming that the Rockets are essentially a mediocre unit made into a dangerous bunch due to the presence of a certain bearded shooting guard. 

But even that isn't totally true. 

Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports

According to my FATS projections (based on historical similarities and explained in full here), the Rockets spent the 2014-15 campaign playing like a 40-win team when Harden was catching his breath on the pine. That's especially notable because, when discussing the squad as a whole, it's a misleadingly low number, failing to account for the starters—particularly a healthy Howard—who spent so many of their minutes right alongside the 2-guard. 

Reminder: The Mavericks won 50 games, and based on the underlying metrics they accumulated, FATS shows that they overachieved by three wins. 

The biggest issue with the statement, however, is much simpler. Harden is part of Houston's team. So regardless of how Cuban feels about the rest of the roster, he and his players are going to have to back up the statement about predictability, because it's not as if they'll be playing a clean-shaven group of Rockets. 

Whether Houston general manager Daryl Morey responds to the jab and allows this initial statement to escalate into yet another verbal sparring match or just takes the high road and ignores it, I have one enduring question. 

If the Rockets, who went 56-26 during the regular season, took three of four games against Dallas and boast home-court advantage in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs, aren't a very good team, then what exactly are the Mavericks?

Note: All stats, unless otherwise indicated, come from Basketball-Reference.com.