The Dallas Mavericks’ Luka Doncic era was far too short for Mavs fans’ liking, as they decided to trade him to the Los Angeles Lakers out of nowhere last month, causing fury within the fan base. Mavs fans couldn’t believe that Nico Harrison would elect to trade the player who took them to the NBA Finals last season, but internal concerns got so bad to the point that they decided to move him.
Harrison had concerns about Doncic’s leadership, impact on culture, injuries, and conditioning, and without consulting anyone except for the ownership group, he made this move in the middle of the night on a random Saturday. Since this move, fans have called for Harrison’s job, and plainly, most fans wish that Mark Cuban still ran basketball operations.
Cuban would have never made this trade, and he has made this clear since it happened. He saw how successful the team was by being loyal to Dirk Nowitzki as he led them to the team’s one and only NBA Finals win in 2011, and Doncic was on track to do the same thing.
While Cuban’s time as majority owner of the Mavericks will be remembered for helping bring the team their first title in 2011 and passionately cheering on his team, he was far from perfect.
Cuban was dead wrong about major issue from Doncic’s time in Dallas
Dallas’ roster construction during the early days of the Doncic era was flawed, and they could never get a good enough roster around him to compete for a title until last season. Depth was a major issue for the Mavericks for most of the Doncic era, but Cuban doesn’t seem to see that.
In a social media exchange with a former Mavericks employee named Gavin Mulloy, Cuban talked about many things, from thinking he would get to run basketball operations when selling the team to pricing at games, he briefly dove into the fan-pushed true narrative that Doncic needed more help.
“Then the whole “get Luka some help” nonsense started,” Cuban said. “Nonstop online. Then it seemed like it turned into more fun for people to complain than to enjoy the Mavs or the NBA.”
While Cuban is right that complaining from fans on social media can sometimes get out of hand, it’s undeniable that the Mavericks needed to surround Doncic with more talent. They didn’t surround him with the right talent to get the team beyond the finish line until the year that they made the NBA Finals.
In every season before that, Doncic led the team to far better performances than they were due, but Cuban doesn’t see that. The “get Luka some help” narrative that Cuban is referring to that fans pushed was 100 percent true, and if he doesn’t see that, that’s a major issue.
If Dallas were more aggressive with putting more talent around Doncic early in his career, they would have been in a much better position to compete for titles. Cuban tried with the Kristaps Porzingis trade, but that didn’t end up working out, and they had to jump ship in 2022 when they traded him to the Washington Wizards for Spencer Dinwiddie and Davis Bertans.
Doncic still led this team to the Western Conference Finals that season, and it was abundantly clear from early on that he had the potential to be an all-time great. Dallas just couldn’t get good enough rosters around him to be a contender in the West until the Kyrie Irving trade, which was followed up by trades for P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford a year later, and rather than continuing to build around him, they punted on his potential in the middle of the season.
The Mavericks not being aggressive when trying to build around Doncic was one of the biggest flaws of his time in Dallas, and things keep getting worse when observing the details around the edges.
