For nearly a quarter century, Mark Cuban has been a familiar face at Dallas Mavericks games. He purchased the team in 2000 when they had young, talented players Dirk Nowitzki and Steve Nash. The Mavericks eventually lost Nash, but Nowitzki became a legend in Dallas sports. The Mavericks reached the NBA Finals in 2006 and won a championship in 2011. After some lean years, they're hoping to rebuild around Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.
They're going to be doing it under a different owner, however. As NBA insider Shams Charania reported, Cuban is selling a majority stake in the Mavericks to Miriam Adelson, a physician and casino heiress of Las Vegas Sands. The valuation of the sale is worth $3.5 billion.
Here's where the deal takes a fascinating turn: Cuban will still retain full control of basketball operations for the Mavericks. He'll also keep an undisclosed amount of shares in the team.
Typically, when an owner sells their stake, they're removed from most, if not all, team activities. But Cuban has always prided himself on doing things a bit differently.
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It's a wild financial gain for Cuban, who bought the Mavericks in January 2000 for $285 million. In April of the previous year, he sold the company he founded, Broadcast.net (formerly AudioNet), to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. Mark famously hedged his share of the $5.7 billion through options, locking in $1.4 billion in proceeds. Had he not done this, his Yahoo shares would have lost 90% of their value in just a few months.
With today's sale and his other portfolio of assets, Mark Cuban's net worth is $6.5 billion.
Cuban also recently announced that he's planning to leave Shark Tank, the hit show that features entrepreneurs pitching their products to wealthy investors. To date, Cuban has invested about $20 million in 85 deals across 111 episodes.
Cuban's plan is to film season 16, then call it quits. That will put him at a dozen seasons for his Shark Tank career. While there's speculation that the combo of leaving Shark Tank and the Mavericks is positioning Cuban for something big, he's offering a different explanation.
"I have three kids, 14, 17, and 20. They are getting close to that age when they will be on their own. I want to try to have my summers to spend family time with them before they want to talk to me even less than they do today."
For that reason, he's out.
