SHOWTIME Basketball
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban hit the lottery when he landed Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki in a multi-team trade on NBA Draft night back in 1998. Both players went on to win the only NBA Championship in Mavericks franchise history and both players went on to be inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame.
Earlier this week, new broke that Mark Cuban is selling off a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks to casino mogul Miriam Adelson at a valuation of $3.5 billion… That announcement that came a day after Cuban announced he was leaving Shark Tank at the end of next season… In that same interview, Mark Cuban talked about what his problem with Elon Musk is.
And now we have a return to normalcy with Dirk Nowitzki talking basketball and how influential Mark Cuban has been on his life and career. On the All The Smoke Showtime Basketball podcast, Dirk sat with Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes. Stephen Jackson hit Dirk with the Mark Cuban quote ‘how you do anything is how you do everything.’ And from there he asked about their relationship.
Nowitzki says “Mark (Cuban) obviously has been a big influence on my career and my life as well. He bought the team in my second year and we’ve developed a great friendship and relationship and he was always my number one supporter when stuff was going right uh even off the floor he was there helping me out with stuff. An so he was a big influence for me and he was always loyal to me. We’ve had a great friendship I mean I say this all the time… how many owners go to their best player’s bachelor party in Vegas? But he he was there.”
Dirk Nowitzki went on to say “We had a special bond and relationship. At the beginning he was literally so fired up when he bought the team. He was at every practice. at every road game. He was sitting in the player section on the plane. And so he was he was constantly around. And his energy and you know his savviness, how he carries himself kind, and also obviously carried that over to the team. So he was uh he was a big influence on me and on the Mavericks.”
Nowitzki continued, saying “yeah, he changed everything. You know when when when I first got here we were doing the bare minimum. We were staying in Marriotts and all that. We had the flights that everybody had, the old planes. And he was like ‘okay, we need to change some stuff around I want free agents to come here and look at at Dallas as the spot to be.”
“He just started turning everything around and money at that point, in the beginning, didn’t matter at all. He bought a new plane, he built a new arena, we started to stay at these nice hotels. We started having good catering. We didn’t even have any food when I first got there.”
They even started rolling out catering for the visiting teams. As Dirk Nowitzki tells it, that visiting team catering was a way for Mark Cuban to show the visitors ‘we take care of you guys when you’re here.’ It was a shot across the bow of the other owners and a signal to potential free agents of how great things were in Dallas.
Mark Cuban will retain operational control of the Dallas Mavericks despite selling off a controlling stake in the team. But it remains to be seen what his plans are for the future. He has, however, already responded to speculation that he’s selling part of the team in preparation of running for President next year.