DALLAS — The battle lines have been drawn. Mark Cuban, the former majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has accused current team governor Patrick Dumont of locking him out of business opportunities tied to a proposed move out of downtown, according to a bombshell newspaper report.
The Dallas Morning News revealed Wednesday that Cuban alleges Dumont engaged in “adversarial business practices” while orchestrating a plan to shift the franchise roughly 10 miles north to the former site of a Dallas mall.
A Mavericks spokesperson and Cuban himself declined to comment to the Associated Press.
The billionaire sold his controlling stake in 2023 to the families of Miriam Adelson and Dumont, her son-in-law. Cuban says he had a handshake agreement to continue running basketball operations, but Dumont handed full control to then-general manager Nico Harrison.
The newspaper reports that Cuban claimed in a filing he had no idea Harrison was planning to trade superstar Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in February 2025 until it was too late to block the deal.
The shocking trade ignited a firestorm of backlash, and Harrison was fired in November after the team stumbled out of the gates in the 2025-26 season.
Cuban still owns 27% of the Mavericks, but the report cites a clause in the purchase agreement allowing the Adelson and Dumont families to buy another 20% of his stake.
The filing comes just over a month after the Mavericks signed an option agreement to buy roughly 104 acres in north Dallas, envisioning a new arena that would open in 2031.
The team’s lease at the American Airlines Center expires that same year. The Mavericks have called downtown home since their expansion debut in 1980.
Cuban insists his businesses were “contractually entitled to participate” in the move, calling it “a unique investment opportunity” in the court filing.