Mark Cuban has pulled off some big trades during his time as Mavericks owner, but in a recent interview on the Mixed Signals podcast, he opened up about two that never materialized, and both would’ve changed the NBA forever. According to Cuban, the Mavericks were “right there” on deals for legends Kobe Bryant and Paul Pierce, but things unraveled late in the process. One was stopped cold by an opposing GM. The other collapsed during the trade call when a third team made a last-minute demand for another first-round pick.
“I thought we had traded for Kobe, and their general manager talked them out of it,” said Cuban. “A bunch of free agents that we thought we had, but didn’t happen. It’s just the nature of the beast. If you own a team long enough, you realize 99% of the trades you think you think you have done don’t get done. We had a trade for Paul Pierce, and it was done, and then you have to do this thing called a trade call, and it involved a third team. The third team didn’t know the details of the trade, and they said ‘If we’re gonna approve this, you have to give us another first-round pick, and the Paul Pierce trade got killed.”
Boston Celtics star Paul Pierce would have been a Maverick if not for that third team rejecting the deal. That extra first-round pick was a price the Mavericks were unwilling to pay. In the case of former MVP Kobe Bryant, Cuban says it was the Lakers GM who reneged on the deal, and he’s talked about it before. Fortunately, they had success with Kyrie Irving thanks to an unlikely source.
“Shams was my guy,” Cuban added. “I would tell him, ‘I can’t give you details, but I’ll give you something else at some point in the future.’ But the flipside of it was, he would help educate me about other things that were happening around the league, so we had a great relationship. He knew when not to ask, and I knew when not to ask about other teams because he wouldn’t tell me. But there were certain things he would tell me as they related to players and what their interests were. He was a big help with us getting Kyrie when we traded for Kyrie because he had a great relationship with Kyrie’s agent.”
NBA trade deals are often more complicated than they seem. Even if agreements are made vocally, they can be called off anytime before they’re officially recognized by the league, which involves a group call of all of the team executives.
For the Mavericks, the intricacies of such a big trade got in the way of their quest to pair Dirk Nowitzki with an NBA legend, and it must hurt Cuban to know how close he was to pulling it off. With Kobe (5x NBA champion) or Pierce (1x NBA champion) alongside Dirk, his team would have been unstoppable. Fortunately, they were still able to win a title before the end of the Nowitzki era.
Today, the Mavericks have a different regime running the show, and Mark Cuban plays a very minimal role in the organization. He could only stand by and watch as the Mavs traded away Luka Doncic and remade their identity around Anthony Davis, Klay Thompson, and rookie forward Cooper Flagg.
While we will never know all of the stars that the Mavericks were closing in on, they serve as a reminder of how thin the line can be between what-ifs and NBA history. For Cuban, those misses were painful, but they also highlight just how unpredictable team building can be, even when you’re doing everything right.
