Mark Cuban regrets not putting Mavericks ‘out to bid’ when selling team in 2023

Former Mavericks owner Mark Cuban expressed regret over his sale of the Dallas Mavericks two years ago in his Tuesday appearance on the DLLS Mavericks Podcast, saying he would have opened up the sale to a public bidding process if he could do it again.

“I don’t regret selling the team, I regret how I did it,” Cuban said. “I would have put it out to bid.”

Cuban, who shockingly sold the Mavericks after a 23-year ownership tenure in late 2023, said he felt like he “let people down by not being there” when Luka Dončić was traded earlier this year. Later, asked if he still has a talking relationship with general manager Nico Harrison, Cuban replied, “No,” before briefly considering and deciding not to elaborate.

In the Dončić trade fallout, Cuban has understandably been grilled in many different interviews about his initial claim, made following the team’s sale to the Adelson family, that he would retain control of basketball operations. In Tuesday’s interview, he claimed, not for the first time, that it was the NBA who struck down the written clause that would have allowed him to do so. (The NBA has refuted this claim in the past.) Because Cuban had no legal right to run basketball operations, he was effectively ousted last summer by Harrison, something DLLS has previously reported on. Cuban, who certainly would not have approved the Dončić trade, was not included in the decision making process.

Cuban said he has maintained a strong relationship with Patrick Dumont, Miriam Adelson’s son-in-law and the team’s governor. “I still talk to (him) a fair amount,” Cuban said. “He does care. And he cares when we lose. He’s spending time to learn. He’s learn a ton in time. Now I can talk to him about analytics. I can talk to him about our roster.” Asked later in the interview about the team’s regressive identity, which ran against the very modern approach the Mavericks had under Cuban’s ownership, he again said, “I mean, I’ve had lots of conversations with Patrick about analytics.” In the past, Cuban had described the Adelson family by saying, “They’re not basketball people.”

Cuban also addressed private equity’s entrance into the league and how it has increasingly created a worse product for fans, one which he was known for trying to cultivate, and his belief that the Mavericks’ season will succeed or fail based on Anthony Davis and Dereck Lively II’s 3-point shooting. Check out the entire hour-long interview here.