Cuban 'fully expected' to keep running Mavs after ownership sale

Former Dallas Mavericks majority owner Mark Cuban revealed some behind-the-scenes details about the team's sale in response to a critical Facebook post about him.

Gavin Mulloy, a former event and venue manager for the Mavs, wrote "Cuban should be run out of Dallas" on his own Facebook page Friday, according to Ben Sawyers of WFAA. To Mulloy's surprise, Cuban left a comment on the post saying that he expected to continue running Mavericks basketball operations after selling most of his stake in the team to Miriam Adelson and her family in December 2023.

"I fully expected to run basketball. The NBA wouldn't let me put it in the contract. They took it out," Cuban wrote, per WFAA. "I thought (the Adelsons) would stick to their word because they didn't know the first thing about running a team. Someone obviously changed their mind."

Cuban also commented that he "lost hundreds of millions of dollars" during his 23-year tenure as majority owner. He bought the team for $285 million and eventually sold most of his stake for about $3.5 billion.

"I found it extremely interesting that someone would jump into my Facebook post on my personal page, who I'm not even friends with," Mulloy said. "I never in a million years thought Mark Cuban was gonna jump in a Facebook thread and start answering questions."

The Mavericks provoked a huge backlash from fans by trading superstar Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in early February, a decision that general manager Nico Harrison has continued to defend. Cuban said during a recent podcast appearance that he wouldn't have made the move and "was just as dumfounded as everybody else."