Inside The Mind Of Mark Cuban For The Luka Trade

The Luka Doncic trade left every single NBA fan stunned and thinking that ESPN’s Senior NBA Insider Shams Charania had just been hacked.

NBA fans around the world were confused, shocked and quite frankly lost at the fact that the Dallas Mavericks would trade their 25-year-old, once in a generation star, away. Former majority owner Mark Cuban was just as confused as all NBA fans were.

Cuban sold his majority stake in the team to Miriam Adelson and Sivan and Patrick Dumont back in December of 2023. He remained in control of the franchise’s basketball operations through the remainder of the 2023-24 NBA season and relinquished control this past summer.

Prior to selling the Mavericks, Cuban was one of the most loved owners not just in the NBA, rather in all of sports. Cuban treated his players incredibly well and cared deeply about the Dallas faithful.

Cuban himself did not have any say in the decision to trade Doncic, and quite frankly may not have known the Mavs upper management was planning on shipping Doncic out of Dallas.

“I texted [Mark Cuban] and I said, ‘I’m so confused.’ He wrote back, ‘That makes two of us.” said former Mavericks player Chandler Parsons on FanDuel’s “Run it Back” show.

If what Parsons said regarding his texts with Cuban is true, the former Mavs owner was all of us when the news of the trade broke.

The Mavericks’ minority owner has not actually spoken publicly about the Doncic trade since it went down, but has commented on the matter via email, according to Front Office Sports.

Cuban was known to have a strong relationship with Doncic and every NBA fan knows that if he was still in charge of the Mavericks, this trade doesn’t happen

At one point he went as far as jokingly saying if he had to “choose between my wife and keeping Luka on the Mavs, catch me at my lawyer’s office prepping for a divorce.”

Cuban never got the chance to prepare the divorce papers between him and his wife, because he had no idea that the Adelson-Dumont ownership had been planning to ship the Slovenian superstar to the Los Angeles Lakers.

Mark Cuban’s reaction to hearing about the trade can be best described by his viral reaction when he received news that the NBA season was being suspended due to COVID-19 back in March, 2020.

Ian Rothenberg is a first-year student majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email imr5327@psu.edu