Two years after the fact, with Jalen Brunson holding the Bill Russell Trophy, Mark Cuban has offered his cleanest explanation yet for the decision that now haunts the Dallas Mavericks.
Brunson was named 2026 NBA Finals MVP after carrying the New York Knicks to their first championship in 53 years, averaging 32.6 points across the series and pouring in 45 in the Game 5 clincher. He has averaged 26.3 points per game since leaving Dallas. The Mavericks let him walk in 2022 for nothing, declining to lock him up before he reached free agency, where the Knicks signed him for four years and $104 million.
Asked about it on the "House of Haymaker" podcast, Cuban didn't reach for excuses. "It was really, really simple. We didn't see JB, as what he would become," the former Mavericks owner said.
He framed it as a timing problem. "He showed that star potential when Luka [Doncic] got hurt, and he won those games against Utah for us, but we were trying to get a star to put next to Luka, and JB's star had not risen yet," Cuban said. In four seasons in Dallas, Brunson averaged more than 15 points only once, in 2021-22 — the year that ended with the playoff run against Utah that Cuban now points to as the missed signal. Dallas held a roughly $55 million extension option and chose to wait.
The Brunson family has not let the slight go quietly. After the title was secured, Knicks assistant coach Rick Brunson — Jalen's father — delivered a four-word message in Cuban's direction: "Tell Mark, thank you!" ESPN's Tim MacMahon, who reported the line, framed it as a possible olive branch to settle a long-running public feud between the family and the franchise.
Not everyone is willing to file it under hindsight. Media critic Pablo Torre went as far as to joke that the misread was so glaring Cuban shouldn't be allowed on "Shark Tank," a jab at the billionaire's reputation for spotting value.
The numbers make the case on their own. Brunson arrived in New York viewed as a quality starter, not a franchise centerpiece, and turned into the engine of a title team. The Mavericks have spent the seasons since cycling through options and watching the player they developed become exactly the kind of No. 1 they had been searching for elsewhere.
The admission lands differently now that Cuban no longer controls the franchise, having sold his majority stake. The Brunson decision has become shorthand in Dallas for a run of departures that gutted a contender, and Cuban's "real simple" framing — that the Mavericks simply didn't believe Brunson was a star yet — is unlikely to comfort a fan base watching him win Finals MVP in another team's colors.
