Opinion
Mark Cuban is one of the highest-profile NBA owners who delivered a championship to a franchise which had been a laughing stock.
He hit the jackpot when Dallas successfully maneouvered their way up to the No.3 pick in the 2018 draft to select Luka Doncic, a transcendent talent who has the ability to bring multiple championship rings.
But his overall record is for the most part poor, with the way he has run the Mavericks on and off the court.
Such has been the slipshod nature of the Mavericks’ management, they are treading water in mid-table mediocrity at seventh in the Western Conference with a 32-31 record after losing six of their last 10.
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The recent trade for Kyrie Irving brings a fleeting chance that the erratic All-Star guard will be the perfect partner for Doncic to take Dallas up the standings and through a playoff run.
Kyrie Irving and teammate Luka Doncic. (Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)
But the more likely scenario, whether the veteran free agent re-signs in the off-season or not, is that at some stage in the not-too-distant future, Irving will cause chaos of the negative kind, force his way out and the team will be left counting the cost, just as he’s done at Cleveland, Boston and now Brooklyn.
The Mavs have gone 1-4 since Irving arrived – growing pains or a painful trend that will keep growing?
Cuban is renowned for sitting courtside, taunting refs, copping huge fines and laughing it off.
When you do a deep dive into his time as Dallas owner, his crowning moment is clearly the 2011 championship when Dirk Nowitzki led the Mavs to a stirring comeback win over LeBron James’ star-studded Miami Heat side.
But apart from that season when a champion team overcame a team of champions and taking a punt on Doncic, the Cuban era has been one of big promises, poor decisions and underachievement for a team in one of America’s biggest cities.
A self-made billionaire, Cuban bought the team in 2000 for $US285 million. It’s worth more than 10 times that amount now.
Cuban got lucky when the value of his internet radio company Broadcast.com soared during the dot.com boom of the late 1990s and Yahoo! bought the business for $5.7 billion before the service quickly became obsolete and was shut down a few years later.
He inherited a franchise which had missed the playoffs for a decade, had dwindling crowds and was banking on a couple of young stars in Michael Finley and Steve Nash plus a lanky German forward they had drafted at No.9 two years earlier to be the building blocks for the future.
Luka Doncic. Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
One of Cuban’s first moves was to sign Dennis Rodman but the erratic fading star lasted only 12 games before he was punted.
The Nash-Finley-Nowitzki trio gelled and Dallas made the 2003 Western Conference finals but a year later when the Suns offered their point guard a $63m deal, Cuban cheaped out.
Nash went on to win back-to-back MVPs at Phoenix while the Mavs, after storming into the 2006-07 finals, fell short 4-2 against Miami. It’s fair to say if Nash was on board, the trophy would have gone to Dallas.
Cuban’s dream was finally realised in 2010-11 when they accounted for the Heat, this time led by LeBron, in a six-game finals series after coach Rick Carlisle used veterans Jason Kidd, Tyson Chandler and Shawn Marion perfectly around Nowitzki to pull off one of the biggest upsets in NBA history.
This should have been the start of at least a few years competing for titles but Cuban didn’t stump up the big dollars again when required with Chandler delivering some Nash deja vu to accept a better offer from Phoenix.
Kidd and Jason Terry didn’t last much longer in Dallas and the Mavericks entered another decade of mediocrity, effectively wasting the second half of Nowitzki’s career by surrounding him with a below-par support cast.
They botched the deal to bring DeAndre Jordan to Dallas in his prime by not getting him to sign a contract and the All-NBA First Team centre returned to the LA Clippers and whiffed with several other free agent pursuits like Dwight Howard, Carmelo Anthony and Deron Williams.
The nadir of Cuban’s reign was in 2018 when Sports Illustrated published an investigation into the organisation which uncovered “substantiated numerous instances of sexual harassment and other improper workplace conduct within the Mavericks organization over a period spanning more than 20 years.”
Cuban admitted to errors in judgment for not firing some of his executives who had been accused of appalling workplace behaviour and donated $10m to organisations which combat domestic violence and help support women in the male-dominated professional sports industry.
The following season they traded for Knicks centre Kristaps Porzingis and a couple of months later, rape allegations surfaced against the Latvian star, which he strenuously denied. New York claimed they informed Dallas of the incident before the deal was done but the Mavericks countered by saying this was not the case.
Then in 2021, the Mavs hired Kidd as their head coach. Kidd has a lengthy rap sheet for off-court dramas but the one that should have been a red flag for a Mavericks organisation trying to repair its image – particularly regarding the treatment of women – was that he had pleaded guilty to spousal abuse with his ex-wife alleging multiple incidents where he assaulted her.
It’s astounding that Cuban and his executives can talk about changing their culture on the one hand and then make moves like this.
Porzingis, who was a flop as a partner for Doncic and could barely stay on the court due to a string of injuries, was dealt to Washington last year with the Knicks emerging clear winners from the initial trade.
Kidd and Doncic combined with rising star Jalen Brunson to get the Mavs back to the Western Conference finals last season after the Suns imploded in game seven of their second-round series before the Mavs were bounced in a gentleman’s sweep by Golden State.
And yet again, they refused to cough up the cash and this time Brunson jetted out to New York where he has been a revelation for the Knicks as they have surged to a 36-27 record in the East.
The latest panic move from Dallas has been trading away Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith plus a future first-round pick and two second-rounders for Irving.
He scored just 16 points on 7/18 shooting in the 124-122 home defeat to Indiana during the week after a 21-point effort at a 36% clip in the 111-108 loss to the Lakers when Dallas somehow threw away a 27-point lead, the largest collapse of the season.
Irving and their third-best offensive weapon, centre Christian Wood, are free agents in the off-season and the flighty duo are no guarantee to stick around long term.
So where does that leave Doncic?
The Slovenian superstar could walk after 2025-26 season. He has a player option for 2026-27 for $49m but at 27, he will be in the prime of his career, and the salary cap by then would have risen enormously so it’s highly unlikely he’ll opt in.
The clock is ticking in Dallas, big time.
They want Doncic to follow Nowitzki’s lead and be at the franchise for two decades but the way they’re going, they’ll be lucky if he’s still there in two years.
Two of their next seven first-round draft picks are owed to the Knicks, Thunder, Kings and Brooklyn due to dud deals already done.
The success or otherwise of the Kyrie experiment over the closing months of the season will be crucial to the next decade in Dallas. Their best-case scenario is that he strikes up a winning combination with Doncic and the Mavericks go deep in the playoffs.
Even then, it’s hard to rely on Irving given his record of being a malcontent at his previous stops but at least it will keep Doncic from looking elsewhere.
But the more likely scenario is that Dallas are cannon fodder in the playoffs against the likes of Denver, Phoenix, Memphis and the LA Clippers and they will need to make some wise decisions in the off-season to keep Doncic settled.
Judging by the franchise’s history under Cuban, they’re more likely than not to get those calls wrong.
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