NBA NOTEBOOK: Could Mark Cuban’s unusual $3.5m Mavericks sale delve team into chaos? And why Ime Udoka’s ugly spat with LeBron James is NOT a good look for the Rockets coach

• Mark Cuban is selling his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks
• But he will still retain control of the team’s basketball operations
• DailyMail.com provides all the latest international sports news

Last week, the Adelson family – who run the Las Vegas Sands casino company – confirmed that it was in talks to buy a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks from owner Mark Cuban.

That news was surprising enough on the face of it, as Cuban has been one of the NBA’s most front-facing and successful owners since buying the franchise in 2000.

But beneath the headlines of the proposed transaction was a far more interesting nugget of information.

‘Cuban keeps shares in the team and full control of basketball operations,’ The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported.

That sort of arrangement would be curious for any outgoing owner, let alone one as hands-on as Cuban, whose reported $3.5billion sale is said to be part of an effort to bring legalized sports betting to Texas.

Mark Cuban will remain in control of the Dallas Mavericks’ basketball operations

Miriam Adelson heads a new ownership group that will soon take over the Mavs 

While some owners simply delegate tasks and hire the best people to work for them, Cuban has taken an active involvement in the Mavs. 

Aside from the fact that he’s a fixture courtside for Dallas games – a rarity among owners – there are plenty of examples of his direct involvement throughout the years.

When the team was trying to sign DeAndre Jordan in 2015, he flew down to Houston and stayed at a hotel just minutes from the center’s home to try and make his pitch.

‘I had my driver take me to his house,’ he wrote on his messaging app, Cyber Dust.  

‘It’s inside a small gated community but the gate was wide open. So we drove in and I literally walked right up to his door.’

Three years later, when the team was trying to get Luka Doncic in the NBA Draft, Cuban directly called Hawks owner Antony Ressler to work out a trade, he said on ‘All the Smoke.’ They eventually got their man by offering a top-five protected pick in next year’s draft, in addition to Trae Young.

And last week, former Mavs forward Chandler Parsons detailed on ‘Up and Adams’ how he would text Cuban for investment advice while on the team, and still does to this day. 

‘Most owners don’t have their relationship with their players,’ he said.

All of this is to say: does this sound like an owner who’s going to enjoy giving up any sort of power to the Adelson family?

While the concept of a team being controlled by a minority owner is rare, there is some precedent for it – and the results have reportedly been less than ideal.

Premier League team Crystal Palace is run by Steve Parish, who is said to own ‘only’ 10 percent of the club, while the Sixers’ Josh Harris and David Blitzer also hold stakes, and businessman John Textor owns a majority stake of more than 40 percent.

But Parish and Textor – who owns several other clubs, and invested in Palace in 2021 – have not had a smooth relationship, as the pair fell out in January and are barely on speaking terms, according to The Guardian.

Steve Parish and John Textor, Crystal Palace’s majority owner, have clashed behind the scenes

Textor was reportedly dissatisfied in the delays he saw in purchasing Lyon after Parish had initially blocked him from switching his shares in Palace to holding company Eagle Football Holdings. He also had ‘grown frustrated at Parish’s hands-on approach.’

Of course, there is no concept of multi-club ownership in the NBA, and it’s not a given at all that Cuban and his new stewards won’t get along just fine.

But Parish’s issues with Textor could wind up looking like a cautionary tale, and there’s probably a reason we haven’t seen this arrangement in the NBA to date.

Maybe Cuban is savvy enough to make it work.

Warriors looking short of ammo for real run at title

In a league of big twos and big threes, the Warriors decidedly have a big one – and their supporting cast hasn’t been good enough to help out Stephen Curry.

Klay Thompson and Andrew Wiggins are shooting worse than last year, 2021 first-rounder Jonathan Kuminga hasn’t quite panned out as hoped and Chris Paul is still a great passer but not a championship needle mover at 39 years old.

All of those ingredients have Golden State 9-11 – good for 11th in the West – with the team in the middle of a 3-7 skid.

The current construction of the Warriors’ roster doesn’t look like a true contender at all

Curry is still one of the sport’s best players, but a repeat of his 2022 championship heroics with this same group is looking increasingly unlikely.

A trade for an All-Star like Pascal Siakam, as Bill Simmons proposed, would give the Warriors a much-needed new look. 

Viral clip of the week: Ime Udoka’s trash-talking with LeBron James not a good look

Ime Udoka is only eight years older than LeBron James – far less than the gap between some of the league’s rookies and its elder statesmen.

But Udoka is a coach, hired by the Rockets to lead an extremely young group of players, and there are certain lines that shouldn’t be crossed by those with that title – especially when speaking to arguably the greatest player of all time.

So there was understandably a strong reaction among NBA fans and media to seeing Udoka appear to tell James to ‘stop crying like b***hes man’ during a game against the Lakers.

Udoka was eventually ejected after also appearing to call James a ‘soft a** boy,’ though he may argue that such language is fairly commonplace between players. It is, but coaches should do their best to rise above it.

Especially for someone whose maturity and decision-making has recently come into question, it’s not a good look.

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