Dallas Mavericks majority-turned-minority owner Mark Cuban has offered up shocking new insight into the club’s surprise trade of five-time All-NBA First Team guard Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers last year.
Cuban infamously sold his controlling 73 percent stake in the franchise in December 2023 for an estimated $3.5 billion, mere months before Dallas marched all the way to the NBA Finals for the first time since the club’s 2011 championship run. He now retains a smaller chunk of the team.
Cuban had bought his controlling percentage in the club from previous owner H. Ross Perot Jr. for “just” $285 million in January 2000.
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The new ownership group, led by Miriam Adelson, Adelson’s daughter Sivan Ochshorn and Sivan’s husband Patrick Dumont, initially seemed to be handling the Mavericks’ affairs capably. They stewarded the team’s most successful season in over a decade, and then oversaw some summer 2024 moves that appeared to be positioning Dallas for another deep playoff tear.
Luka Doncic #77 of the Dallas Mavericks and team owner Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks look on from the bench as the Dallas Mavericks take on the Utah Jazz in the second quarter of…
Luka Doncic #77 of the Dallas Mavericks and team owner Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks look on from the bench as the Dallas Mavericks take on the Utah Jazz in the second quarter of Game One of the Western Conference First Round NBA Playoffs at American Airlines Center on April 16, 2022 in Dallas, Texas.
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But in February 2025, that facade of competence fell apart.
Dallas general manager Nico Harrison flipped five-time All-NBA First Team guard Luka Doncic — the Mavericks’ best player — to the Los Angeles Lakers in a stunning blockbuster deal. The Mavericks ultimately shipped Doncic and big men Maxi Kleber and Markieff Morris to L.A. in exchange for 10-time All-Star center/power forward Anthony Davis (six years Doncic’s senior and without his offensive upside), 3-and-D shooting guard Max Christie, and a single first-round draft pick in 2029.
Both the Lakers and Mavericks also traded away 2025 second-rounders to the Utah Jazz so that L.A. could get off the contract of little-used 2023 first-round draft pick Jalen Hood-Schifino.
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With Davis and fellow 30-plus-year-old All-Star Kyrie Irving invariably hurt, the Mavericks fell into the play-in tournament, where they were booted by the Memphis Grizzlies.
As a lottery team, Dallas lucked into the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, which the club used to select National College Player of Year Duke phenom Cooper Flagg.
While on a new episode of the “All-In Podcast,” Cuban — as he has done for months — made sure to distance himself from the Doncic deal.
“I f—ed up,” Cuban conceded. “When I did the deal [to sell the team], the presumption was that I would still be running basketball, and we tried to put it in the contract, but the NBA said, ‘The governor is the governor, and they make all final decisions.’ I was involved, and then we went on this run where we went to the Finals.”
“Rather than try to interject myself all the time, I was like, ‘I don’t want to get in the way, we’re rolling.’ That was a mistake,” Cuban added. “So there were some things that happened internally, where the person who traded Luka didn’t want me there. And so, they won, I lost. But that’s in the past I’m still hardcore Mavs.”
Given that Mavericks ownership is a family, not an individual person, it seems pretty clear that Cuban is talking Nico Harrison, a man whom he had initially hired for the position.
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