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Mark Cuban wishes the Mavericks got more for trading Luka Dončić.
In his most expansive comments since the Mavericks stunningly traded away their franchise player for Anthony Davis, Max Christie, and a first-round pick on Feb. 2, the team’s former majority owner sat down with WFAA, Dallas’s local ABC station, on Thursday to discuss the state of the team.
Cuban still owns less than 30% of the franchise after selling his majority stake to Miriam Adelson in 2023 for $3.5 billion and previously told Front Office Sports he was alerted of the trade shortly before it happened. The Lakers were the only team the Mavericks directly negotiated with for Dončić and Cuban recently mused about his disappointment in a discussion with Bill Gates without directly addressing it.
“If the Mavs are gonna trade Luka that’s one thing,” Cuban told WFAA. “Just get a better deal. No disrespect to Anthony Davis. I still firmly believe if we had got four unprotected [first-round draft picks] and Anthony Davis and Max Christie, this would be a different conversation.”
So far, the trade has been a disaster for the Mavericks. Davis got injured during his first game with the team and hasn’t played since. Star guard Kyrie Irving’s season ended Monday with a torn left ACL. General manager Nico Harrison said at the time of the trade that the deal was done to improve the team’s title odds in the near future.
As of Friday, Dallas is currently 32–31 and has lost three games in a row. The Mavericks are 10th in the Western Conference standings, which is the final spot for the play-in tournament.
Cuban declined to say whether Dončić would’ve been traded if he was still the team’s majority owner.
“It doesn’t even matter,” he said.
He compared Dončić’s departure to when Steve Nash left the Mavericks in free agency for Phoenix in 2004 and became a two-time MVP for the Suns after Cuban failed to match the Suns’ offer. “But there wasn’t social media back then,” Cuban said.
Harrison has said the reason for trading Dončić was to improve the team’s culture while Patrick Dumont, Adelson’s son-in-law and the team’s governor, alluded to his work ethic. In addition to the lack of return, Cuban’s other big problem with the trade has been the messaging.
“I think the biggest challenge the Mavs have right now is there’s nobody outgoing to communicate,” Cuban said. “And it’s not so much what you do but how you communicate and why you do what you do.”
