On January 4, 2000, Mark Cuban scooped up the Dallas Mavericks for a cool $285 million, transforming a perennial NBA punchline into a playoff contender and, eventually, a 2011 champion. Fast-forward to November 2023: Cuban cashed out his majority stake to casino billionaire Miriam Adelson and her family for a staggering $3.5 billion—a 12-fold windfall that underscored his genius for turning grit into gold. Yet in a deal laced with asterisks, Cuban clung to a 27% minority share and, crucially, operational control over basketball decisions. He strutted into the post-sale era like the eternal shot-caller, courtside charisma intact.

That illusion shattered in February 2025, when the Mavericks pulled off the unthinkable: trading Luka Doncic, the 25-year-old Slovenian savant who’d dragged Dalla

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