Dallas Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont poses for a photo in an upper level suite at the Venetian Arena on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
MACAO, China — Worthy of a five-bubble Tripadvisor rating, our private Venetian Arena tour guide not only was informative, but affable. Animated. Attentive.
Was this smiling chaperone really Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont? Or was jet lag from the 22-hour Far East trek playing havoc on our senses?
“I mean, look at the detail in this corner,” said Dumont, pausing in one of the arena’s 32 posh suites. “You have the transition to the wood, then you have the leather, then you have wood again.”
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As a few reporters, but of more importance Mavericks players and staff, learned over the course of a week in exotic Macao, this wasn’t merely a trip in which Dallas faced Houston twice in the NBA China Games.
It’s been a cultural excursion into 52-year-old Dumont’s domain. His court of play. His day job as CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp. and chairman of its subsidiary, Sands China Ltd.
The eye-popping glimpse within the densely populated, 20-casino, dopamine-inducing Las Vegas of China helps illuminate Dumont’s metamorphosis of his NBA organization on the other side of the globe.
New basketball president. New general manager. New coach. New corporate culture. During Dumont’s 34 months as governor, the Mavericks gradually, inexorably, have been Sandsified. En route, Dumont hopes, to becoming a five-star-quality franchise. The Michelin Mavericks.
Best in class, if not yet on the basketball court.
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“The tip-off of this season is the first time this is Patrick’s team,” Mavericks CEO Rick Welts said. “You can say anything you want about what’s happened before, but this is the first time he’s picked the basketball organization.”
The Dumont and Miriam Adelson families purchased control of the Mavericks from Mark Cuban in December 2023. Six months later, Dallas wondrously rolled to the NBA Finals, losing to Boston.
Since then? The disastrous Feb. 1, 2025 trade of Luka Doncic on the way to a 39-43 finish. Then the godsend of landing No. 1 pick Cooper Flagg, but an injury marred season and 26-56 finish.
Dumont’s stealthy offseason hires of president Majai Ujiri and NCAA title-winning coach Dusty May were reminiscent of his late 2024 luring of Naismith Hall of Famer Welts out of retirement: hooking and landing seemingly uncatchable big fish.
Eight of the franchise’s top 11 business-side senior managers are Dumont hires. Apparently a Marvel Comics fan, he often reminds in meetings: “We’re gonna be the Avengers.”
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Dallas Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont poses for a photo in front of Cooper Flagg’s locker at the Venetian Arena on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
How Sands’ Macao moves relate back to Dallas
Vindication might win back fans, but what does this Macao trip and tour of Sands-owned 14,000-seat Venetian Arena have to do with Dallas and the Mavericks?
Though effectively corporate siblings helmed by Dumont, the Mavericks and Sands seemingly are apples to oranges. Same with Dallas and Macao.
It’s true Macao is home to five of Sands’ six integrated resort and casino properties (the other is in Singapore), which made their Mavericks purchase possible and are a big reason the Adelson-Dumont families comprise American pro sports’ fourth-wealthiest owners ($33.5 billion).
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Sands’ lifeblood, though, is casino gaming, which isn’t legal in Texas and by all appearances won’t be anytime soon.
The Mavericks are planning an arena, headquarters, training facility and entertainment district on the 104-acre former site of Valley View Mall, but Dumont and minority shareholder Cuban’s long-held dream of an arena-resort-casino combination is off the table.
At least one luxury hotel is planned for the entertainment district, but Dumont said it won’t be Sands-affiliated. That isn’t to say Sands expertise and resources aren’t part of the equation since, obviously, Dumont personifies both intangibles.
So, yes, the new arena will be luxurious, perhaps with leather in suite corners.
“So I think the question is, ‘How does this relate back to Dallas?’ ” Dumont said. “I think what this shows is there’s an approach, an aesthetic, a desire for hospitality, a desire for top-flight food and beverage.
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“And to create a unique and really high-level fan experience that can be executed really well in Dallas.”
As for the resort and casino possibility, perhaps that component of Macao can be replicated on the land Sands purchased in Irving.
“We can’t save land [in the arena development] for some future date, when maybe, possibly, potentially casino gaming will pass,” Dumont said. “We’ve got to do what’s right for the Mavericks today. Then if sometime in the future there’s an opportunity for gaming in Texas, we’ll find land for that effort.”
Certainly, Macao, a special administration region of China and the only place in the country with legalized gaming, is testament to Sands’ know-how to scale, pamper and entertain.
Though gambling has been legal here since the 1850s, it was modest in scope when Portugal transferred Macao to China in 1999.
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Las Vegas Sands founder and Dumont’s future father-in-law, Sheldon Adelson, opened a Sands casino on Macao’s peninsula in 2004, but he shocked the locals by holding a news conference a year later to announce he would create “Asia’s Las Vegas” on a strip of swampland.
Today the Cotai Strip includes four Sands resort-casino-convention-entertainment integrations with a combined 1.8 million square feet, 11,000 guest rooms and $16 billion in Sands investment — with Sands properties boasting 70% of Macao’s tourists.
Johns Hopkins and Columbia educated Dumont, who joined Sands in June 2010 as vice president of corporate strategy, has helped build upon Adelson’s legacy since his 2021 passing.
“He actually drew the strip on a napkin, like you hear in legends, then he went out and did it,” Dumont said. “He put his own money in. He designed everything.
“It’s actually an amazing story and it’s a lot of fun, too. People have a great time coming here, and he’d be really proud of that.”
A view of the Venetian Arena as seen from an upper level suite on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
Repairing China-NBA ties
The Adelson-Dumont families long had NBA ownership ambitions, too. In part they were kindled in 2007 when Cleveland, Orlando and the Chinese National team played exhibitions in The Venetian Arena.
A year later, Team USA’s Redeem Team trained and played two exhibition games here.
Since buying the Mavericks, Dumont’s stature among fellow owners quietly has grown, according to multiple people who attend NBA Board of Governors meetings.
It doesn’t hurt that Dumont is a welcome contrast to Cuban’s publicly vocal establishment-bucking for the better part of two decades.
But, more tangibly, Dumont probably will be a GFFL — Governor Favorite For Life — for his pivotal China-NBA diplomacy predating his Mavericks ownership.
On Oct. 4, 2019, then-Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted an image captioned, “Fight For Freedom. Stand With Hong Kong.”
The backlash from mainland China included TV blackouts, severed sponsorships and pulled NBA merchandise, with league commissioner Adam Silver estimating lost revenue of $400 million.
China-NBA tension was still smoldering when, in November 2021, Dumont and NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum met about the idea of preseason games returning to Asia.
In May 2022, the NBA shared with Dumont the framework of the deal that would be signed in July 2023. The NBA China Games returned last year with Brooklyn playing Phoenix here, the start of a multi-year contract.
“He’s probably single-handedly the most important person in making these games happen,” Tatum said in a recent interview.
Dumont committed to a $150 million Venetian Arena renovation that was completed in 2024. Sands committed two expo halls for NBA House fan activations.
“This is such an entertainment hub for the region,” Tatum said, adding that the arena is world-class. “The amount of money they’ve invested in creating a world-class experience for fans is something you can’t find any place in the region and few other places outside the United States.”
Dumont is a self-described student of arena interior design, and of basketball. Welts said Dumont has been leading design meetings for the Mavericks’ new arena, with as many as 20 consultants and meetings lasting three hours.
Welts said Dumont’s focus has been to plan aspects of the arena from the inside out. Mavericks president Ethan Casson said Dumont’s attention to detail has become legendary, but he also fosters collaboration.
That exactness is exemplified in the optics and flavor of Dallas in the NBA House exhibit in Macao. Inside a duplex-sized replica of the Dallas skyline and American Airlines Center are hundreds of artifacts organized in a room-by-room timeline of the Mavericks’ 46-season history.
For the Texas food section of the NBA House, Dumont wanted his favorite Dallas brisket, Terry Black’s, so Sands chefs spent months trying to replicate the flavor, and gallons of Terry Black’s sauce last week were flown in from Dallas.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and Dallas Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont pose for photos before a preseason NBA basketball game between the Dallas Mavericks and the Houston Rockets at the Venetian Arena on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
A full-circle moment in China
In a sense, these China Games were a full-circle week for Dallas, the NBA, China and Houston, the latter of which was Chinese government-exiled in the Morey tweet aftermath.
A quarter-century ago, it was the Mavericks and Rockets franchises that broke the Great Wall-like China-NBA barrier in the first place.
On June 30, 1999, the Mavericks selected 7-1 Wang Zhizhi with the 36th pick of the NBA draft. No Chinese or East Asian had ever been drafted, never mind played, in the NBA.
The Mavericks spent the better part of two years trying to pry Wang from his Bayi Rockets contract and his commitment as a Fu Tuan (lieutenant) in the People’s Liberation Army.
Negotiations led by then-Mavericks owner Ross Perot Jr. and general manager Don Nelson turned on a pivotal dinner hosted by Beijing’s mayor. The feast began with the beheading and cooking of a live snake.
“The Chinese love basketball,” Perot said in a recent interview. “We brought the legendary Don Nelson to China, all of Beijing stopped and all the leaders came to have lunch with us.”
Wang didn’t make his Mavericks debut until April 5, 2001, and he played only 60 games as a Maverick, but his breaking the China-NBA barrier led to Houston drafting Yao Ming No. 1 overall in 2002.
For entrepreneur and real estate developer Perot, who sold his Mavericks majority interest to Mark Cuban in 2000, other obstacles vanished.
“Because of basketball, I saw things in China that very few Americans have been privileged to see,” he said. “It’s because of basketball that I got plugged into the Princelings network and became friends of the Communist Party leadership.”
Dallasite Perot is board chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He’s long known Dumont, and they became closer after the Dumont and Adelson families purchased Perot’s remaining Mavericks stake.
“I’m very impressed with the Sands operation,” Perot said. “They’re deep in China, and Patrick knows the Chinese culture. Sands is active in building bridges between American business and China business — which need help, because it’s pretty strained.”
The Dallas Mavericks locker room pictured at the Venetian Arena on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
A view of a main concourse level suite at the Venetian Arena on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
The press conference room for the NBA China Games is seen at the Venetian Arena on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
A welcome desk is seen on an upper level of suites at the Venetian Arena on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
A hallway leads to upper level suites at the Venetian Arena on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
Performers rehearse before an NBA preseason game at the Venetian Arena on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
An event level VIP lounge pictured at the Venetian Arena on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
An event level VIP lounge pictured at the Venetian Arena on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
A view of a green room at the Venetian Arena on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
A view of the bathroom in the Dallas Mavericks locker room at the Venetian Arena on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Macao.
Elías Valverde II/The Dallas Morning News
Building bridges in Dallas
As the Mavericks return to Dallas to prepare for the Oct. 21 start of the regular season, against these same Rockets, Dumont understands bridge-mending with many fans must continue.
His players, basketball support staff and business-side employees are noticing, and appreciating, Dumont’s Sands CEO mindset.
Welts said summer upgrades to the Mavericks’ training facility and ongoing reconstruction of the business offices are costing Dumont eight figures apiece. Translation: At least $20 million in total. For facilities the franchise plans to leave behind when new ones are ready in 2031.
“There’s nobody else who would invest that level of money to create the kind of professional environment that he wants,” Welts said. “He wants every employee to come to work excited about being there and feel like they’re supported in a way that makes them feel great about the future of the team.”
Training facility upgrades include a new cafeteria with New York-trained chefs, Michelin star restaurant-quality kitchen equipment, plating and table linens.
It’s the Sands touch, much like players and staff have experienced in Macao, while seeing Dumont in his world.
A part of the world, by the way, that Dumont helped reopen to the NBA. A part of the world where Cooper Flagg and Kyrie Irving had product launches, with considerable fanfare.
“When you have the ability to utilize your wealth to make your visions come true, especially in the NBA, a lot of people are going to want to be part of it,” Irving said. “When we come over here, we enjoy the game of basketball, but when we’re not here there’s tons of things still going on.
“So I think it’s a happy marriage. A happy balance between what we bring, but also what Patrick and his business represent from an international standpoint.”