Mark Cuban accuses Mavericks owners of freezing him out in proposed arena move

DALLAS — Mark Cuban has accused Dallas Mavericks owner Patrick Dumont of excluding him from key business opportunities in a proposed move of the team from downtown, according to a court filing. The Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday that Cuban alleges Dumont has engaged in “adversarial business practices” in his bid to relocate the team approximately 10 miles north of downtown to the former site of a Dallas mall. A Mavericks spokeswoman told The Associated Press that the team would not comment, and Cuban did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Cuban, who sold his majority stake in the team in 2023 to the families of Miriam Adelson and Dumont, claims he was unaware of the move and that Dumont gave then-general manager Nico Harrison full power of the basketball side without his knowledge. The Dallas Morning News reported that Cuban said in the filing he was unaware of Harrison's plan to trade superstar Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers in February 2025 until it was too late to intervene. The shocking trade backfired on the Mavericks, and Harrison was fired in November after the team's poor start to the 2025-26 season. Cuban owns 27% of the Mavericks, and the filing reported that the Adelson and Dumont families can buy an additional 20% of Cuban's stake. The filing by Cuban comes just over a month after the Mavericks signed a development agreement to acquire approximately 104 acres in north Dallas, part of a plan to build an arena that would open in 2031. The Mavericks' lease at American Airlines Center expires in 2031, and the team has been downtown since it debuted as an expansion franchise in 1980. Cuban said his businesses were “contractually entitled to participate” in the move to the new site, which the filing describes as “a unique business opportunity.”