After quietly simmering for over a month about the Luka Doncic trade, Mark Cuban is finally speaking out.
The former Dallas Mavericks majority owner Cuban spoke on Thursday in an interview with Jonah Javad of WFAA. Cuban addressed last month’s blockbuster trade of Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers, saying that “of course” he was mad about it and going on to criticize the return that the Mavs got.
“If the Mavs are going to trade Luka, that’s one thing, just get a better deal,” said Cuban. “No disrespect to Anthony Davis. But I still firmly believe that if we had gotten four unprotected [first-round draft picks] and Anthony Davis and Max Christie, this would be a different conversation.”
You can watch the full interview clip below.
Cuban brings up several good points here. It was already bad enough that the Mavs did not open up a bidding war to the entire NBA and instead chose only to negotiate with the Lakers for Doncic. But making matters even worse was that they only got one future first-rounder along with Davis and Christie for Doncic, Maxi Kleber, and Markieff Morris. While the Lakers only had one additional pick to trade beyond that (not the four that Cuban had mentioned in his hypothetical), they somehow managed to land a player of Doncic’s caliber while also holding onto both that pick as well as other valuable assets such as Austin Reaves and Dalton Knecht.
The 66-year-old Cuban was the majority owner of the Mavs from 2000-23 before selling his controlling share to Miriam Adelson and her son-in-law Patrick Dumont (who is now the governor of the team). In an interview last year, Cuban detailed the reasons why he chose to sell.
Cuban still holds a minority stake in the team but no longer has control over the Mavs’ day-to-day basketball operations (which he was originally expected to retain). As such, Cuban did not have any clue that Doncic was about to be traded until it was too late to do anything about it.
Ever since the trade happened, Cuban has dropped some subtle hints that he was not at all pleased about it. Now in this latest interview, Cuban is finally sounding off on what he feels that the team did wrong in trading away their generational All-Star Doncic.
