Mark Cuban Regrets Selling Mavs to Adelson Family

Mark Cuban is once again expressing regret over how he sold the Mavericks to the Adelson family.

Cuban appeared on the Intersections podcast in a new episode that will be released in full Tuesday. In a teaser, Cuban said he erred in selling a majority stake in the team to the Adelsons in December 2023. 

“I don’t regret selling,” Cuban said in the clip. “I regret who I sold to. I made a lot of mistakes in the process, and I’ll leave it at that.”

Cuban sold the team to the family of Miriam Adelson, the doctor and Republican donor who is worth roughly $35 billion. Adelson inherited her fortune from her late husband, Sheldon Adelson, who was the CEO of Las Vegas Sands and built casinos in Asia and Las Vegas. Her son-in-law Patrick Dumont was recently named the CEO of Sands Inc. and is the face of Mavs ownership; he is the team’s governor. 

After the new regime made the shocking choice to trade Luka Dončić to the Lakers a year ago, Cuban has repeatedly said he regretted his handling of the sale. But this is the first time Cuban has specifically said he regrets that the Adelsons now control the NBA team.

In August 2025, Cuban said in a podcast interview that he wishes he put the Mavericks on the open market. His comments came after the Celtics sold for $6.1 billion that March and two months after the Lakers sold for a record $10 billion; the sale of the Mavericks valued the team at $3.5 billion about two years ago.

“I don’t regret selling the team; I regret how I did it,” Cuban said. “I would have put it out to bid. But I didn’t, so it doesn’t matter.” 

Cuban, who still owns 27.7% of the Mavericks, said in September 2024 that he sold the team due to the changing ownership landscape and that he didn’t want his children involved.

“When I first bought it in 2000 I was the tech guy in the NBA,” Cuban said then to the All-In podcast. “I was the media guy. I had every edge and every angle. Now fast-forward 24 years later, in order to sustain growth to be able to compete with the new collective bargaining agreement, you have to have other sources of revenue.”

Cuban said at the time that he felt the Adelsons were better suited to turn the Mavericks into a profit-making machine with development and gambling. (Texas has still not legalized casinos or sports gambling despite the Adelsons aggressively lobbying the state legislature to do so.) 

“And so you see other teams in all sports for that matter talking about casinos, talking about doing real estate development. That’s just not me,” Cuban added. “I wasn’t going to put up $2 billion to get an education on building. If we’re able to build a Venetian-type casino in Dallas with an American Airlines Center in the middle of it, the valuation is $20 billion. But I own 27% of that.”

Adelson is one of the country’s most influential Republican donors and an influential backer of Israel. In the 2024 election, she donated about $100 million to her Preserve America political action committee to elect Donald Trump. Cuban backed Kamala Harris in that election but told FOS that year that he and Adelson were still “friends and partners” and that “politics doesn’t get in the way.” 

Cuban’s influence in the Mavericks is expected to lessen in the coming year. The sale agreement with the Adelsons allows the family to buy another 20% of the franchise from Cuban within four years of the deal, which would lessen his stake to 7%. 

After a February report suggested Cuban was involved in an investor group trying to buy the team back, a family spokesperson indicated it plans to buy the majority of Cuban’s remaining stake. 

“The Dumont and Adelson families remain fully committed to the Dallas Mavericks franchise and to the Dallas community,” the statement said. 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.”

The Mavericks declined to comment. Sands did not immediately respond to a request for comment.