Mark Cuban had no chance to buy the Chicago Cubs, and all the smart guys knew it. He wasn't Bud Selig's idea of the get-along-go-along guy. Selig had his own favorite candidate and could delay decisions until the timing was more propitious for his guy.

Plus, it's the Cubs, who cast one of the longest shadows in the game. And Cuban is, well, just too wacky and zany -- a little too Bill Veeck for Selig's own good.

Sing it from the mountaintops: Sell the Cubs to Mark Cuban! (Getty Images)

And the second biggest plus: Cuban has the money and the will to get the deal done. His stewardship of the Dallas Mavericks has been largely positive, and his negatives are few and not significant.

The biggest plus of all, though, is that Cuban was the voice of "Hey, wait a minute!" in the Seattle/Oklahoma City fiasco, one of David Stern's least impressive hours in a streak of failings at the back end of his tenure.

Cuban was the guy who asked, "Why are we trading the Seattle market for the Oklahoma City market?" -- a perfectly reasonable question. Cuban was the guy who asked, "Why is it a good idea to quit a long-standing city with a basketball history for one in the middle of college football country?"

And though he didn't say it, he surely must have meant, "Clay Bennett?"

Bennett has been the handy villain in the piece, a classic carpetbagger who didn't even have the wit not to leave an e-mail trail telegraphing his moves. Stern is less blamed, but just as culpable, energetically and imperiously (normally a tough combination, but he carried it off) greasing the skids for Bennett so as to shame Seattle into giving some of its civic treasure over for a new basketball arena its citizens have decided it doesn't need.

And now, the worst crime yet has been committed, making Cuban all the more prescient for NBA fans and valuable to baseball fans. The Oklahoma City team's nickname is the unutterably stupid "Thunder," evoking all the worst ideas of the WNBA, minor league baseball and slow-pitch softball.

Thunder? Really? That's the best you could do? That's your marketing department at its best? You're doomed.

Cuban would never have come up with something that lame, not even after a six-day, gin-and-Vicodin bender. He wouldn't come in, buy the Cubs and change the nickname to "Power" or "Pride" or anything with two "X's" where one "S" should be. And he won't move them to Indianapolis if the upper deck gets too pricey.

At least we're pretty sure he won't. Clay Bennett swore he wouldn't move the Sonics, too.

Is the Cubs deal done? Far from it. At least two other groups have come in with offers in the same 10-figure neighborhood, one by the Ricketts family that owns TD Ameritrade (remember the Sam Waterston commercials?) and another that includes Henry Aaron and Jack Kemp among other investors.

And Cuban still won't be one of the guys Selig will be comfortable with, because Cuban has this habit of being visible and voluble -- sort of like Hank Steinbrenner with a counterculture bent. Bud likes quiet owners who know where the line is and how to toe it.

In other words, the next round of bidding can undo Cuban's master plan, and in such a case David Stern and Clay Bennett will probably smile quietly to themselves.

On the other hand, either way, Cuban never backed down to power when he thought he was right, and is now known for being among the first to sense that something was wrong about the NBA's officiating (although he didn't know how potentially bad the problem was). Intuition is always a valuable gift.

Better than that, though, he definitely never called his team "Thunder." Now that we know how important such common sense actually is, we have a rooting interest for one billionaire as opposed to two others.

A depressing notion, yes, but hey, if you don't pay attention to the rich guys, you end up with Clay Bennett. And Sam Zell. Case closed.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.