"I Don't Regret Selling The Team, I Regret How I Did It" - Mark Cuban Finally Opened Up About His Decision To Sell The Dallas Mavericks

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When the news first dropped back in 2023 that Mark Cuban was selling his majority stake in the Mavs, it was certainly a bit of a surprise for a few reasons

First and foremost, that he was actually doing it. But I suppose when you can get that type of ROI on your initial investment, I guess you have to do it. The second unique part of that sale was that at the time, we were led to believe that Cuban was still going to have control over the basketball side of things. As we (and he) quickly learned, that was very much not the case. Cuban certainly wasn't quiet about how if he was still in charge, he would have never traded Luka

This was a wrinkle that we would also see in the future sale of both the Celtics and the Lakers in terms of the former owner still being involved and staying on, but my guess is that those situations will play out similarly to Cuban and the Mavs. If the new regime wants to do something, they're going to do it. 

You got the sense that Cuban was blindsided by the fact that he actually would not be running the basketball side, as he later declared that the NBA took that writing out of the language of the deal. How true that is, we'll probably never know, but my guess is his decision to pick the Adelson family was not only the $3.5B, but also the part about him staying on. Now that we know that's bullshit, does he have any regrets?

He also shared that his relationship with the Adelson-Dumont family would just be a partnership to build a new arena and at that time he had 'no idea they was any interest' in buying the team.

What is with everyone associated with the Mavs refusing to put things out into the market to create a bidding process? Nico Harrison didn't do that with Luka, which to this day still makes my brain hurt trying to justify why he would do such a thing, and now we have Cuban openly admitting that he didn't even put his team out for bids? I can understand maybe not doing it formally, but you didn't float that idea out to any potential buyer? Just to see what they may pay? Even if it was fugazi, why not potentially use that as leverage to bump up the $3.5B price?

Am I missing something? Probably, but at the same time, that seems like a pretty surprising swing and a miss for a rather successful businessman in Cuban. I can't imagine this was his first sale negotiation of some kind, so that definitely surprised me. 

In the end, while chances are Cuban may have missed out on some extra cash if he took the team to the open market, let's not pretend like $3.5B isn't a shit ton of money. I also don't really fault him for not seeing the Luka trade coming because who on this planet did? I think it's a stretch to suggest that maybe Suban should have made sure whoever was buying the team was also going to keep and invest in their 25 year old superstar/franchise cornerstone. The fact that they didn't is probably what fuels a lot of his regret, but again….