Mark Cuban points finger at league over lost Mavericks power

Mark Cuban says he doesn’t regret selling the Mavericks. What he does regret is how he went about it.

“I don’t regret selling the team, I regret how I did it,” Cuban said on the DLLS podcast, via CBSSports.com and AllDllls.com. “Would I still sell the team? Yes, for all the same reasons I’ve said 100 times. Would I do it the same way? Absolutely not. I would have put it out to bid, but I didn’t so it doesn’t matter.”

The Mavericks are now controlled by Miriam Adelson and her son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, who serves as team governor. That wasn’t what Cuban envisioned when he sold a majority stake. He kept 27% of the franchise — more than enough to remain governor — but said the league stripped him of the title.

“I did have it in writing,” Cuban said. “… There was a clause in there that gave me the right to be in every meeting, every trade discussion, everything, and the NBA took that out.”

Adam Silver pushed back on that back in March, saying it was up to Cuban and Dumont to decide his role. Cuban isn’t buying it. “Who the hell do you think took it out?” he said. “I’ve got a letter from my lawyer saying the NBA made us remove it.”

Cuban added that he has a good working relationship with Dumont and talks with him regularly. What he doesn’t have, he admitted, is a relationship with GM Nico Harrison — who pulled the trigger on the trade that sent Luka Doncic to the Lakers.

“We all were hurt when Luka got traded — me as much as anyone, because I felt like I let people down by not being there,” Cuban said. “But what’s done is done. And we got (Cooper Flagg) — the basketball gods were looking down on us and he’s the real deal.”