DALLAS (AP) - Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and former Mavs coach Don Nelson are headed to mediation Thursday to try and resolve their long-running dispute over the former coach's compensation package.
"We're going to mediation for the appeal," Nelson, who now coaches the Golden State Warriors, said before his team played the Mavericks on Wednesday night. "That's all I know at this point."An arbitrator ruled last August that Cuban was to pay Nelson $6.3 million, a figure that a federal arbitrator increased to $7.1 million in September.
Nelson has argued the money was owed to him from his time with the Mavericks from 1997-2005. But Cuban hasn't paid.
Nelson said the mediation will take place in Dallas.
"We appealed it and I don't know all the details on how it's all going to work, but we sent it back for mediation," Cuban said.
The Warriors hired Nelson in 2006. When he resigned as Mavericks coach in March 2005, Nelson still had a deal to remain a Dallas consultant through 2011 for about $200,000 a year.
In Nelson's claim, he contended he was never paid a consultant fee and thus was free to take another job. Cuban has said Nelson returned to coaching after repeatedly telling Cuban that Dallas would be his last job.
The contract terms, originally worked out during Ross Perot Jr.'s ownership before Cuban, required that Nelson be paid through 2012.
Nelson was being paid about $1 million a year until Cuban stopped payments after Nelson took the Warriors job.
In response to Nelson's claim, Cuban claimed that his former coach used "confidential information" to help the Warriors upset the top-seeded Mavericks in the first round of the 2007 playoffs. The arbitrator rejected Cuban's claim in August.
"It is what it is," Nelson said. "I'm making 5 percent on my money. That's better than I can do on the stock market. And he seems to be happy because he says he's making more money. He's happy, I'm happy. I'm not in a hurry. I'm not broke."
