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More Cuban from our Saturday night convo: "It was a mistake and I wish they would have spoken to me first. I'm happy for Luka. And I'm happy for Mavs fans that we've got Coop, even though I recognize that we all still miss Luka. The people responsible for that [deal] are for the most part gone, which I think was necessary."
Before the national championship, several college sports administrators suggested getting rid of the revenue-sharing cap put in place by the House v. NCAA settlement. Billionaire Indiana alumnus and NIL donor Mark Cuban disagrees. Cuban, who is also a minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, thinks the rules should remain in place. “I like the cap,” Cuban told Front Office Sports on Monday night shortly before his Hoosiers won their first national championship. “It’s like the salary cap and the second apron in the NBA. It makes you think more. You have to be more strategic, you have to be more tactical. It protects us from ourselves. That’s the thing about salary caps in sports—you see what happens with baseball, you see the Dodgers versus everybody else.”
Tim MacMahon: “And Cuban will be a consultant for Patrick Dumont. He will not be a principal participant in this. In other words, you know, if Cuban is calling — like a lot of trades in the past have been done by Cuban calling other owners — Yeah, there's a push against that internally. If Cuban’s calling your team, that is not official Mavericks business. That type of thing.”
Indiana football’s dream season has helped land another big donation from the school’s wealthiest alumnus. Billionaire and Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban, a 1981 IU graduate, told Front Office Sports he has made another donation to the school’s athletic department amid the Hoosiers’ undefeated run to the College Football Playoff semifinals. “Already committed for this portal,” Cuban wrote to FOS in an email. Cuban clarified that he lets athletic director Scott Dolson decide what to do with the money, and didn’t say precisely how much he gave. “Let’s just say they are happier this year than last year,” Cuban wrote.
Torre, 40, has collected his share of critics. Bill Simmons, who heads his own sports podcast empire, made fun of his Hudson “media tour”; another Athletic podcast devoted a segment to critiquing his reporting on the topic. Mark Cuban, the former owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has questioned the Clippers story. Inside the Athletic, reporters and editors have discussed whether Torre might push a story too far and whether that could impact their brand.
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Billionaire investor Mark Cuban and several current NBA stars have backed a $4m (£3m) fundraising round for Irish sports tech company Orreco. They join major-winning golfers Padraig Harrington and Graeme McDowell as investors in Orreco, which uses AI to analyse athletes’ movement for signs of injury susceptibility. “This is the first proactive approach to use AI to help reduce injury risk,” said Cuban, a co-owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team who made his billions as a tech founder and appears on US TV show Shark Tank. “It’s great today and only going to get better.”
From your perspective, when you look at Riccardi, Finley, Kidd, is there a preference there with how Dumont would value their opinions? Grant Afseth: I don't know if Jason Kidd's opinions value like clear cut more than everybody else. But I do know from a basketball standpoint, his opinions are valued quite a bit by the ownership group. And I know, Mark Cuban is providing input as well. I don't want to make that sound like Mark Cuban's the GM by any means, or Jason Kidd the GM or whatever. But I just know that while they're getting through this, it's really, really important that the head coach has alignment on what they're doing on the basketball court. So by default, you're going to have to rely on like not only is he respected, but you are by necessity going to have to get through, the season with his input value very heavily. So I think that's, probably, like, I don't want to say like he's clear cut, like more important voice wise than the interim GM, but his basketball input is very heavily valued.
I know you mentioned Patrick Dumont has final say, but is there a clear hierarchy of who runs the team right now? Grant Afseth: But from my understanding I think there's kind of a collection of voices, right now, I think Jason Kidd is somebody that I would definitely look at as someone who has influence on these decisions. Like Patrick Dumont leans on him, like, I think there's, like, almost like, I guess you could say I don't this is a great comparison, but it's almost like a basketball cabinet, if you will, or Council of Multiple Voices.
Not true https://t.co/WCKuiB1aPv
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) December 10, 2025
Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont has taken a patient approach since firing general manager Nico Harrison on Nov. 11. Dumont has relied on Finley, Riccardi, coach Jason Kidd and minority owner Mark Cuban in his front office corps, and has given Finley and Riccardi the power to lead conversations on the franchise's future. A GM search is still expected in the offseason, and Finley and Riccardi are expected to be candidates, sources said.
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The Stars and Mavs are suing one another over a contract dispute where the Mavericks allege the Stars are in violation of their franchise agreement with the City of Dallas that requires both teams to have their headquarters within the city. The Stars have had their primary headquarters in Frisco since 2003. The Stars filed a counterclaim that has since been amended to accuse the Mavericks of the same violation when they changed their principal location to Las Vegas in 2024 during Mark Cuban’s sale of the team to Miriam Adelson and the Dumont family.
Mark Cuban: This has nothing to do with Ant. It was the fact that @NBAOfficials chose not to make an easy call. That's the issue. It's not Adam Silver telling them what to call or not. They just decide themselves. I brought it up to the head of officials when we played the twolves in the playoffs 2 years ago. When Ant hit game winning FTs against us, and obviously stepped over the line. The people in charge of the refs ignored it. They also ignored it in the L2M report. (Something they do a lot of ). But if you speak about it on NBA podcasts, that changes their behavior. So many changes in officiating that have changed the game dramatically, like using contact to create space for a shot. That wasn't in the game till recently. It wasn't a directive from Adam Silver. All the fouls that started getting called mid season 2 years ago and have accelerated further now so that FTs are skyrocketing. That doesn't come from the top. It comes from the officials. I don't even think it's an organized decision. If they make a call, or don't , and they don't want it identified as a miss, they just keep doing it.
Chris Hine: Anthony Edwards has incorporated a step on his free throws in recent years. I asked him why he got rid of it. The reason? Mark Cuban called it out on a podcast as a potential violation. "So now, the refs be like you can't step over the line, so I had to change."
Chris Hine: Anthony Edwards: "After he did what he did this summer, a bunch of dudes was texting me like, bro you gotta change this 'cause they gonna start doing it. Coach (Tom) Crean texted me about it. I was like, I just gotta change my free throws."