Mark Cuban explains why he decided to sell the Dallas Mavericks while speaking with Shaquille O’Neal (Image credit: Imagn)

For years, Mark Cuban was not only the owner of the Dallas Mavericks but the guiding force behind many of the team’s biggest decisions. Early last season, Cuban decided to sell his majority stake in the team to the Miriam Adelson Family, marking the end of an era.

While Cuban is still a minority owner in the team, and his passion for winning basketball is as strong as ever, during this week’s episode of The Big Podcast with Shaq, Cuban explained wy he decided to sell his majority stake in the team.

As he explained, why teams like the LA Lakers have been run by the Buss family, he didn’t want to put his kids in a position to wind up begrudglingly running the team one day. At the same time, rather than bringing someone in to run the team for him, Mark Cuban decided to take matters into his own hands and sell. He said:

“I sold the team for two reasons. One, my kids are 15, 18 and 21 now, It puts a lot of pressure on them as I get older to make a decision. Are they going to run the team? It’s worked out for some families and others, the kids just hate it, leave it, you know, resentful. I don’t want to put my kids in that position.

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“And second, you know, I talked about being the tech guy and the media guy, having an edge when I first came in, like I knew nobody else did. So I always had an edge. But so what’s happening now? You saw it with Golden State, now with Boston, build all around the arena, and the arena becomes a central point for some bigger real estate development. I don’t know s**t about that.”

Mark Cuban willing to own NBA team alongside Shaq despite selling majority stake in Mavericks

While Mark Cuban has sold his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks, it sounds as though the business mogul is willing to dive right back into ownership under one condition.

On The Big Podcast with Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal, who was a part of ownership rumors before Mat Ishbia buying the Suns, Cuban explained that if Big Diesel wants to get into NBA ownership, he would consider joining him.

Of course, Mark Cuban made it clear that he would want to clear it with his business partners first, but if he gets the green light, he envisions an ownership trio that includes himself, O’Neal and LeBron James:

“We get me, you, LeBron. … We go to HBO. We get them to do a behind-the-scenes show and put up a chunk of the money. Or we go to Disney since they’re an NBA partner and we get them to put up a ton of the money for it. We might have something there. Viva Las Vegas…or Seattle.

“I would because, you know, I’m the type of owner that I let people run it. Like I do have the ability to run it. But if I ever owned a team, I would want to be more like Jerry West used to do. Just sit there with my arms crossed. … If I’m gonna say something, I’d say something around the team and closed-door meetings.”

The potential partnership could align both with LeBron James’ plan to take ownership of a franchise and the NBA’s expansion plans, which have Las Vegas and Seattle named as two likely destinations for expansion teams.

With the league’s media rights deal sorted out, expansion talk will likely ramp up throughout the 2024-25 NBA season. Given that, it will be interesting to see if anything comes of Mark Cuban and Shaquille O’Neal’s talks.