Tim MacMahonNov 19, 2025, 07:00 AM ETCloseJoined ESPNDallas.com in September 2009Covers the Dallas Cowboys and Dallas MavericksAppears regularly on ESPN Dallas 103.3 FMFollow on X
MacMahon: Anthony Davis to sit until owner’s OK (0:49)Tim MacMahon reports on the latest with Anthony Davis’s injury and Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont’s involvement. (0:49)
THE DALLAS MAVERICKS, mired in the misery of a four-game losing streak amid the chaos that had overwhelmed the franchise for the past nine months, sat on the tarmac at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C.
It was bad enough that the Mavs had been blown out hours earlier in Memphis in a matchup between two teams in early-season tailspins. Now, the buses scheduled to transport the traveling party to the hotel were delayed by red tape.
After almost an hour, the first of the team’s two buses arrived. Weary players boarded for the ride to the Four Seasons in Georgetown, arriving after 3 a.m. ET. They expected some good news the next day, which All-Star big man Anthony Davis and his personal medical team — as well as former general manager Nico Harrison — had targeted as his return date from a low-grade left calf strain.
Those plans changed the next afternoon, hours before tipoff against the Washington Wizards, when Mavs governor Patrick Dumont stepped in at the last minute to put Davis’ return on hold, according to team sources.
Dumont acted on the advice of Mavs director of health and performance Johann Bilsborough, who had thrown up a late caution flag, concerned that Davis was at risk of aggravating the calf strain or sustaining a related catastrophic injury.
This marked the first time Dumont had directly involved himself in the Mavs’ daily basketball operations since acquiring a majority stake in the team in December 2023.
It was also the most public and direct indication that the trust he had developed in Harrison, which was so strong last season that Dumont signed off on the most controversial trade in NBA history without seeking any other opinions, had completely disintegrated.
Davis’ availability at the time was considered day-to-day. That description also applied to Harrison’s job security.
It was the culmination of the most tumultuous era in Mavericks history, fueled by competing egos, a controversial team sale, the trade of the most dynamic star in franchise history and a quiet but simmering power struggle between a former owner and the general manager he had hired.
In the aftermath, Dumont and his new basketball cabinet, which once again includes former majority owner Mark Cuban, are plotting to pivot to the future with 18-year-old Cooper Flagg, the No. 1 pick delivered to Dallas by unprecedented lottery luck, gifting the new ownership group a second chance to build a sustainable contender around a generational talent.
Multiple team sources said the Mavs, who are 4-11 and outside the playoff picture in the West, will also explore the trade market for Davis, the 10-time All-Star big man who was the headliner in the return of the Luka Doncic deal, as part of that process before this season’s deadline.
For a fan base that still feels betrayed, so many questions linger in the wake of this self-inflicted saga, many of which center around the famous former majority owner.
Why wasn’t Cuban given any more input than any other season-ticket holder in a franchise-rattling decision? And how much power will Cuban have moving forward as the Mavs try to get the franchise back on track?
On the morning of Nov. 11, that simmering power struggle finally bubbled to a boil — and everyone was burned.
A HORDE OF reporters and television cameramen waited patiently for Cuban to wrap up his 3-point shooting routine on the American Airlines Center court, a pregame routine of his that was one of the perks of running the Mavericks.
This was the evening of Dec. 27, 2023, hours after the NBA had officially approved the sale of the franchise’s majority share to the Adelson and Dumont families at a $3.5 billion valuation, more than a dozen times what Cuban had paid 23 years earlier. Cuban, still dripping with sweat and wearing shorts and a team-issued sleeveless T-shirt, was more than happy to discuss what he claimed were unique details of the deal.
“Nothing’s really changed except my bank account,” Cuban boasted to the media, crowded around him in a three-deep circle.
Cuban explained how the new owners, whose 11-figure wealth was built running the Las Vegas Sands casino corporation, would focus on the franchise’s business interests, including eventually building a new arena as part of what would hopefully be Dallas’ version of a Venetian-style resort.
Cuban, he said, had been relieved of the financial stress of funding an NBA contender as a mere “middle-class billionaire,” and he proudly proclaimed he would continue to control the Mavs’ basketball operations as part of the partnership in which he maintained a 27% ownership stake.
“That’s Cuban overselling himself because he always has a microphone in front of him,” one team source told ESPN.
Minutes later, after divulging the intricacies of the deal, Cuban gathered the team’s players, coaching staff and front office personnel in the locker room to deliver a similar message.
“Nothing’s going to change,” Cuban told them hours before they faced the Cleveland Cavaliers. “I’m still running basketball.”
Multiple sources found Cuban’s comments to be disrespectful toward Harrison, who was in his third season as the Mavs’ president of basketball operations and GM following a lengthy tenure as a Nike executive.
Across the organization, it was common knowledge that Harrison’s freedom to function in those roles had ebbed and flowed based on when Cuban decided to grab the wheel. Now, in front of players and staff, Cuban had just dismissively minimized the power of the GM he had hired nearly three years prior.
For many people in the room, however, the prevailing takeaway from the meeting left them perplexed: Why in the world would people pay billions of dollars to buy the franchise but allow Cuban to run it?
Days later, Dumont made his first visit to Dallas since the sale. He held separate meetings with the franchise’s business staff, basketball operations department and players.
The directive from Dumont was a relief to many, including Harrison and coach Jason Kidd, who were often frustrated by what they perceived as Cuban’s frequently unproductive meddling in personnel decisions, sources inside the organization said.
A trip to the Finals that season, aided by a pair of trade-deadline deals that paid immediate dividends, provided Dumont enough evidence to put faith in Harrison’s basketball brilliance.
TWO WEEKS LATER, before Game 4 of the NBA Finals, Dumont conducted the only news conference he has held since the ownership transfer. He was flanked by Harrison and then-Mavs CEO Cynt Marshall.
Unlike his predecessor, Dumont doesn’t bask in the glare of the public spotlight. Cuban soaked up the fame that came with NBA ownership, parlaying his image as a bombastic businessman into a long-running role on ABC’s Shark Tank that elevated his celebrity far beyond the sports world. By stark contrast, a Google search produced only one photograph of Dumont when news broke of the Mavs’ sale.
The corporate world is the comfort zone for Dumont, who received an MBA from Columbia Business School before beginning his career in investment banking more than a quarter century ago. He has climbed the corporate ladder since joining Las Vegas Sands following his 2009 marriage to Sivan Ochshorn, the daughter of the corporation’s owners Miriam and (since deceased) Sheldon Adelson, becoming the president and chief operating officer in 2021.
“Nico basically said, ‘Dude, I don’t want to deal with Mark anymore. He’s too much,'” one team source said.
With a new direct line to his boss, and his former one out of the picture, Harrison accelerated the ice-out.
Harrison had once told Cuban that he was nicknamed “The Silent Assassin” at Nike because of his ability to quietly maneuver to get his way in business matters. Suddenly, Cuban believed that he was in Harrison’s crosshairs.
“Immediately after the sale, Nico started really playing Dumont,” another team source said. “He honed in. Then we went to the Finals, and Nico could do no wrong.”
Cuban blamed Harrison, not Dumont, for his basketball exile, according to sources familiar with the dynamic.
As Harrison’s power rose, Cuban privately claimed that the league office required the parties to remove a clause in the purchase agreement that ensured him the right to be invited and attend all basketball operations meetings, sources said. That clause, however, made no mention of Cuban having any authority over basketball operations.
In Cuban’s mind, according to a source, he would have maintained control essentially because he would have been the smartest, most experienced man in the room.
“That’s the most obvious instance of having my cake and eating it, too,” a source involved in the process said. “How long have you known Mark Cuban? Did that seem out of character?”
Even so, Cuban privately insisted that he never intended to give Harrison autonomy and hired him with the hopes that his relationships with players and agents would help the Mavs reverse their long-running trend of finishing as runners-up in free agency.
Cuban hired former Utah Jazz general manager Dennis Lindsey as a senior advisor in summer 2023 — a move suggested by Doncic’s agent Bill Duffy and business manager Lara Beth Seager — to help mask Harrison’s perceived shortcomings as an inexperienced NBA executive.
Harrison blamed Cuban for what he believed were the Mavs’ biggest personnel mistakes during his tenure, which came in summer 2022: allowing Jalen Brunson to get away in free agency and trading for Christian Wood, a player Kidd didn’t want to coach and resented having on the roster. Several members of the coaching staff and front office also faulted Cuban for those moves.
Dallas was 28-23 and in eighth place in the West — two games out of fifth — when Harrison’s new additions joined the team. The Mavs had the league’s best record (16-4) and top-ranked defense in the final 20 games of the regular season before their run through the West as a No. 5 seed.