Mark Cuban is accusing Dallas Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont of freezing the team’s former majority owner out of business opportunities in a proposed move of the club out of downtown, according to a newspaper report.
The Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday that Cuban alleges Dumont has engaged in “adversarial business practices” in his bid to move the team about 10 miles north of downtown to the former site of a Dallas mall.
A Mavericks spokeswoman told The Associated Press the team wouldn’t comment. Cuban didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The billionaire businessman sold his majority stake in 2023 to the families of Miriam Adelson and Dumont, who is Adelson’s son-in-law.
Cuban said he had an agreement to continue running basketball operations, but Dumont gave former general manager Nico Harrison full control of the basketball side.
The newspaper reported that Cuban said in the filing he was unaware of Harrison’s plan to trade superstar Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in February 2025 until it was too late to object and call off the trade.
The shocking trade backfired on the Mavericks, and Harrison was fired in November after the team’s slow start to the 2025-26 season.
Cuban owns 27% of the Mavericks, but the newspaper reported there is a clause in the purchase agreement that the Adelson and Dumont families can buy another 20% of Cuban’s stake.
The filing by Cuban comes a little more than a month after the Mavericks signed an option agreement to purchase approximately 104 acres in north Dallas, part of a plan to build an arena that would open in 2031.
The Mavericks’ lease at American Airlines Center expires in 2031. The team has been downtown since it debuted as an expansion franchise in 1980.
Cuban said his businesses were “contractually entitled to participate” in the move to the new site, which the filing describes as “a unique investment opportunity.”
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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/nba
