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Shortly after the Mavs won the NBA draft lottery in a stunner Monday night, Mark Cuban had a succinct reaction:
“Oh my fucking God !!!” he wrote.
Front Office Sports followed up with the Dallas minority owner about how he was feeling in an email Tuesday morning.
“It was just a relief,” Cuban wrote. “That it was such a crazy difficult season, one moment gave us a new energy going forward.”
The Mavericks are now primed to select Duke forward Cooper Flagg in June.
Monday wasn’t just the Mavericks’ first time winning the draft lottery. It was the first time the team ever moved up in the lottery at all after 16 previous tries.
Cuban, who was the majority owner of the franchise until selling most of the team to the Adelson family in 2023, had been outspoken about the notorious Luka Dončić trade, saying the Mavericks should have gotten “a better deal” than just the package headlined by Anthony Davis. He had also said he had “fully expected” to run basketball operations under new governor Patrick Dumont, but was instead sidelined by Dumont and general manager Nico Harrison. The NBA has said that any arrangement Cuban had with the new owners was not contractual.
Cuban still owns 27% of the team.
The blowback from the trade was so fierce that it led to death threats for Mavericks GM Nico Harrison and protests in the streets from fans, who were canceling season tickets in droves. A catastrophic run of injuries wiped out any hope Dallas had of salvaging a playoff run, and the team was eliminated by the Grizzlies in the play-in tournament. Harrison fired several members of the training staff last week.
Now the franchise is primed to select its second generational talent in a seven-year span. Harrison’s future—and the team’s—is suddenly looking brighter.
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