Mavericks’ newest guard Quinn Cook hopes to follow in Yogi Ferrell’s footsteps

Quinn Cook is hoping the same good fortune that happened to Yogi Ferrell last month will happen to him.

The Dallas Mavericks reached down to the NBA Development League and signed Ferrell to a 10-day contract on Jan. 28, and after three games the Mavs and Ferrell agreed to a two-year contract that pays him $208,000 this season and $1.3 million next season.

Cook played for the D-League’s Canton Charge, but signed a 10-day contract with the Mavs on Sunday. In the process, the 6-foot-2 guard noted that he and the rest of the D-League players were some of Ferrell’s biggest cheerleaders.

“Guys in the D-League, we all root for guys who get called up (to the NBA),” Cook said. “I think guys who prosper from getting called up on 10-day contracts give us a lot of confidence.”

Cook knows opportunities like these are chances for him to showcase his talents. That’s why when he was named the Most Valuable Player of the D-League All-Star game on Feb. 18, he and the rest of the players didn’t just go through the motions as the NBA All-Stars did in their game the very next day.

“It was a serious game,” Cook said. “Jerry Stackhouse was our coach and he wanted us to treat it like a real basketball game.

“It was an audition for us, there was a lot of scouts (and general managers) there, so we really went out there and played. That was a competitive game against the best of the best in the D-League.”

Cook was a teammate of Mavs guard Seth Curry’s at Duke. Cook helped lead the Blue Devils to the NCAA title in 2015. He also played in some games on the USA National Team in a non-FIBA tournanment with Mavs forward Dwight Powell.

“He’s a good player,” Powell said. “He’s smart, he’s definitely a point guard, a floor general and a competitor.

“So I’m excited to have him.”

Cuban upset with Bleacher Report

Over the weekend, the Bleacher Report deleted an insensitive video involving forward Dirk Nowitzki after owner Mark Cuban got into a twitter battle with the online sports website while expressing his disapproval.

The video showed Nowitzki air-balling a 3-point shot, and added two words: “DIRK FOREVER.”

Cuban was livid.

“It wasn’t the video,” Cuban said before Monday’s game against Miami. “There was a caption.

“I’ve yet still to find somebody that said they laughed at it. Let me first say, I didn’t know about it until some people tweeted to me that they thought Dirk had been done wrong, and (asked) had I seen it.”

Before he turned on his computer to see what all the fuss was about, Cuban said: “When I first saw it, ‘Dirk Forever,’ I was like, oh, it’s going to be him splashing a three. And then it shows him throwing up an air ball at a critical point.

“And it wasn’t a blooper where he’s smiling because he knew he made a mistake, or people around him are smiling. When you looked at the replies (on the Internet), there was nobody smiling, there was nobody saying, ‘That’s funny, Dirk threw up an air ball.’ All the responses were, this is disrespectful, this is wrong, greatest of all time.”

This story was originally published February 27, 2017 at 9:36 PM with the headline "Mavericks’ newest guard Quinn Cook hopes to follow in Yogi Ferrell’s footsteps."