A rumor involving the Dallas Mavericks took flight on Monday, when longtime NBA insider Marc Stein reported a group of Dallas investors are interested in partnering with Marc Cuban to buy back control of the franchise from the Dumont/Adelson family currently running it.
It’s a tantalizing idea for fans still irate that controlling owner Patrick Dumont rubber-stamped the increasingly infamous Luka Dončić trade. It also does not appear to be happening.
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The Mavericks shot down any possibility of a sale on Wednesday with a statement to the Dallas Morning News’ Brad Townsend:
“The Dumont and Adelson families remain fully committed to the Dallas Mavericks franchise and to the Dallas community. They remain focused on building a championship organization for the long term.
“The team is not for sale and the families look forward to expanding their ownership stake over time.”
It’s the second half of that last sentence which might hold the biggest significance. As Townsend notes, the Adelson/Dumont family bought a 69% stake of the Mavericks from Cuban in 2023, while Cuban retained 27% of the team. However, there is a provision in the agreement that allows the Adelsons to buy another 20% of the team from Cuban within the first four years of ownership, leaving him with as little as 7%.
So here’s that statement, translated into simple terms: Mark Cuban is about to own a smaller piece of the Mavericks, not larger.
Mark Cuban probably isn’t getting control of the Mavericks back. (Photo by Richard Rodriguez/Getty Images)
(Richard Rodriguez via Getty Images)
Cuban himself expressed skepticism that any deal could happen, telling the News he also doesn’t think. the Adelson/Dumont family would sell. This apparently isn’t even the first time he’s been approached:
“I get asked fairly often if I would be part of a group if they could buy the team,” he wrote to The News. “I tell them all the same thing: I don’t see them selling.”
That’s probably not what most Mavericks fans want to hear, even with former general manager Nico Harrison out the door and Cuban seemingly more involved in basketball operations.
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It’s understandable why the fanbase would be so ready to hear a sale is in the works. It’s not like Cuban nailed every decision when he was majority owner, but the team was, for the most part, competitive and stable in his two-plus decades at the wheel. He handed over a Mavericks franchise that reached the NBA Finals in its first season under the Adelsons, and it’s all fallen apart in the two years since.
The Mavericks traded Dončić and bet big on 32-year-old Anthony Davis and 33-year-old Kyrie Irving forming an immediate contender. It didn’t work out. Davis is now a member of the Washington Wizards, Irving still hasn’t played since tearing his ACL nearly a year ago (while playing more minutes than any player in the NBA) and the Mavericks are 19-34.
The only thing that has landed right for the Mavericks is a ping-pong ball, which is hard for anyone to take credit for (Harrison tried, though). Maybe Cooper Flagg, the result of that ping-pong ball, will lead a new era of competitive basketball teams, but the rub for the Adelson/Dumont family is they’ve already shown what can happen when they receive one of those.
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