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Last week, the Adelson family, which runs the Las Vegas Sands casino company, confirmed it was in talks to buy a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks from owner Mark Cuban.
That news was quite surprising at first glance, as Cuban has been one of the most successful and front-running owners in the NBA since purchasing the franchise in 2000.
But beneath the headlines of the proposed transaction was a much more interesting nugget of information.
‘Cuban maintains shares in the team and full control of basketball operations,’ Shams Charania of The Athletic reported.
That kind of deal would be curious for any outgoing owner, let alone one as hands-on as Cuban, whose reported $3.5 billion sale is said to be part of an effort to legalize sports betting in Texas.
Mark Cuban will continue to lead the basketball operations of the Dallas Mavericks
Miriam Adelson heads new ownership group that will soon take over the Mavs
While some owners simply delegate tasks and hire the best people to work for them, Cuban has been actively involved with the Mavs.
Aside from the fact that he is a fixture on the court for Dallas games, a rarity among owners, there are many examples of his direct involvement over the years.
When the team was trying to sign DeAndre Jordan in 2015, he flew to Houston and stayed in a hotel just minutes from the center’s house to try to make his proposal.
“I had my driver take me to his house,” he wrote on his messaging app, Cyber Dust.
‘It’s inside a small gated community, but the gate was wide open. So we walked in and I literally walked up to his door.
Three years later, when the team was trying to include Luka Doncic in the NBA Draft, Cuban called Hawks owner Antony Ressler directly to negotiate a trade, he said in ‘all the smoke.’ They finally got their man by offering him a top-five protected pick in next year’s draft in addition to Trae Young.
And last week, former Mavs forward Chandler Parsons detailed about ‘Up and Adams‘ how he would text Cuban for investment advice while he was on the team, and still does to this day.
“Most owners have no relationship with their players,” he said.
All of this is to say: does this sound like an owner who will enjoy giving up any some kind of power for the Adelson family?
While the concept of a team controlled by a minority owner is rare, there is some precedent for it and the results reportedly have not been ideal.
Premier League side Crystal Palace are managed by Steve Parish, who is said to own “only” 10 per cent of the club, while the Sixers’ Josh Harris and David Blitzer also have stakes, and businessman John Textor owns a stake. majority share of more than 40 percent. percent.
But Parish and Textor, who owns several other clubs and invested in Palace in 2021, have not had a smooth relationship, with the pair falling out in January and barely speaking, according to The Guardian.
Crystal Palace majority owner Steve Parish and John Textor have clashed behind the scenes
Textor was reportedly unhappy with the delays he saw in the Lyon purchase after Parish initially prevented him from switching his shares in Palace to holding company Eagle Football Holdings. He had also “become frustrated by Parish’s hands-on approach.”
Of course, there is no concept of multiple club ownership in the NBA, and it’s not a given that Cuban and his new managers won’t get along.
But Parish’s issues with Textor could end up looking like a cautionary tale, and there’s probably a reason we haven’t seen this deal in the NBA to date.
Maybe Cuban is smart enough to make it work.
Warriors lack ammunition for a true title run
In a league of big twos and threes, the Warriors definitely have a big one, and their supporting cast hasn’t been good enough to help Stephen Curry.
Klay Thompson and Andrew Wiggins are throwing worse than last year, 2021 first-round pick Jonathan Kuminga hasn’t delivered as expected, and Chris Paul is still a great passer, but not a championship driver at 39 years old.
All of those ingredients have Golden State at 9-11 – good for 11th in the West – with the team in the midst of a 3-7 run.
The Warriors’ current roster construction doesn’t look like a true contender at all.
Curry remains one of the game’s best players, but a repeat of his 2022 championship heroics with this same group seems increasingly unlikely.
A trade for an All-Star like Pascal Siakam, like Bill Simmons proposed, would give the Warriors a much-needed new look.
Viral clip of the week: Ime Udoka’s trash talk with LeBron James doesn’t look good
Ime Udoka is just eight years older than LeBron James, far less than the gap between some of the league’s rookies and its elder statesmen.
But Udoka is a coach, hired by the Rockets to lead an extremely young group of players, and there are certain lines that those with that title should not cross, especially when talking about arguably the greatest player of all time.
So, understandably, there was a strong reaction among NBA fans and the media to see Udoka appear telling James to “stop crying like a shitty man” during a game against the Lakers.
Udoka was eventually banned after appearing to also call James a “soft guy,” although you can argue that such language is quite common among players. It is, but coaches should do everything they can to overcome it.
Especially for someone whose maturity and decision-making abilities have recently been called into question, it’s not a good look.