In the final few days of 2023, Mark Cuban—perhaps the face of the NBA’s ownership class—sold his majority stake in the Mavericks to the Dumont and Adelson families to relatively little fanfare at a valuation of $3.5 billion. Cuban retained a 27% stake in Dallas and after the sale said that he intended to stay on to run the day-to-day operations of the franchise. Given everything that has happened in the years since, that clearly was not the case.
The most clear example came in February 2025, when under the cover of night, the franchise traded superstar Luka Dončić for a package headlined by Anthony Davis less than a year removed from a surprise trip to the NBA title. The deal was done without Cuban being consulted, and he admitted that he found out just before it was finalized. It also pulled back the curtain on Dallas’s operation, revealing that the former governor was no longer running the show.
