{"id":686629,"date":"2026-06-05T20:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T20:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/686629\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T20:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T20:19:08","slug":"he-was-frustrated-with-luka-and-lukas-team-mark-cuban-reveals-nico-harrison-stopped-him-from-mediating-a-truce-with-luka-doncic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/686629\/","title":{"rendered":"“He was frustrated with Luka and Luka’s team” – Mark Cuban reveals Nico Harrison stopped him from mediating a truce with Luka Doncic"},"content":{"rendered":"

The controversial trade of\u00a0Luka Doncic<\/a>\u00a0certainly put\u00a0Mark Cuban<\/a>\u00a0in a tough spot, who did not want to be caught in the crossfire, and rightly so. However, it’s been close to a year and a half since the historic trade, and the former majority-turned-minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks<\/a> hasn’t stopped issuing clarifications about his role in the entire fiasco.<\/p>\n

Back in 2023, Cuban sold his majority ownership stake to the Adelson and Dumont families for a reported $3.5 billion, while still holding a 27 percent minority stake. Nonetheless, Mark was assured he would have an active role in basketball operations, but that clearly did not turn out to be the case, as he was kept in the dark about the decision to trade Doncic.<\/p>\n

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Ever since, the billionaire has been doing several interviews, addressing all the questions surrounding the rather infamous trade. During a recent appearance on the “House of Haymaker” podcast, Cuban mentioned sensing stress in the relationship between Harrison and Doncic, hinting that he had probably been intentionally kept out of it.<\/p>\n

“At that point, Nico wasn’t talking to me at all. I knew he was frustrated with Luka and Luka’s team,”revealed<\/a>\u00a0the 67-year-old, who also offered his assistance to address any such tensions.<\/p>\n

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Learning about how much Nico despised Luka<\/p>\n

It’s no secret that Cuban and Doncic go back a long way, dating back to when the Slovenian guard played for Real Madrid. No surprises, Mark was left impressed by whatever he saw from the teenage sensation, coupled with his overseason popularity \u2014 thus, doing whatever it took to get Luka on the Mavericks.<\/p>\n

Hoping to mediate any internal issues between Luka and Nico, the former Mavs GM assured Mark that he would handle the matter. The next thing Cuban knew, the management had traded Doncic. When informed, the veteran entrepreneur tried to reconnect immediately, but the plan had already been executed.<\/p>\n

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When he reached out to the new Mavs owner and governor, Patrick Dumont, Cuban was taken aback to learn the extent of Harrison’s angst toward Doncic.<\/p>\n

“When I talked to Patrick about it, you could just tell that Nico just s\u2014t on Luka, just s\u2014t on him bad \u2014 cause some of the stuff that Patrick was telling me was not true,”\u00a0said the former Shark Tank judge, who did not forget to applaud the former player turned Mavs executive, Michael Finley, to do what best he could to stand up against it.<\/p>\n

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Related: Charles Barkley once named the three greatest rebounders he faced in the NBA: “Those are the guys that I respect the most”<\/a><\/p>\n

A complete disaster<\/p>\n

Looking at the sequence of events, the decision to trade Doncic backfired heavily on Mavs management, who now face the tall task of resurrecting the franchise and winning back much of its lost fanbase. On the other hand, the call to pair Anthony Davis<\/a> with Kyrie Irving<\/a> was made in a win-now situation, but that never panned out, sadly, as injuries played major spoilsport.<\/p>\n

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As a result, the backlash and the uncertain future left the management in Dallas no choice but to drop the axe on certain things. It started with firing Harrison from his GM post, followed by trading Davis to the Washington Wizards<\/a>, and most recently, the removal of Jason Kidd as head coach.<\/p>\n

The only silver lining in all of this has been the Mavs turning lucky with the No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft, Cooper Flagg<\/a>, who could be their potential ticket to emerge out of this misery. Not to mention the recent onboarding of 2013 Executive of the Year, Masai Ujiri, as the President of basketball operations.<\/p>\n

Related: “He was ballsy, fearless – that’s half the battle” – Mark Cuban wasn’t certain about Luka Doncic being a generational talent<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Basketball Network<\/a> on Jun 5, 2026, where it first appeared in the Off The Court<\/a> section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The controversial trade of\u00a0Luka Doncic\u00a0certainly put\u00a0Mark Cuban\u00a0in a tough spot, who did not want to be caught in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[5554,98076,761,760,34286,764,3014,298360,14207,355,34499,73985,99,11948],"class_list":["post-686629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-anthony-davis","tag-basketball-operations","tag-cooper-flagg","tag-dallas-mavericks","tag-harrison","tag-kyrie-irving","tag-luka-doncic","tag-marc-cuban","tag-mark-cuban","tag-nba","tag-nico-harrison","tag-patrick-dumont","tag-sports","tag-washington-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}