Mark Cuban calls out the NBA for ‘petty’ decision regarding his seating at Mavs games

Mark Cuban owned the Dallas Mavericks for more than two decades. For much of that time, he could frequently be seen behind Dallas’ bench cheering the team on during its road games.

However, Cuban did not attend the Mavericks’ NBA Cup victory over the Denver Nuggets at Ball Arena back on Nov. 22.

According to him, the NBA informed him that he cannot sit behind the team’s bench, and he will only be attending Dallas’ home contests moving forward. The Mavericks’ home arena is none other than American Airlines Center.

“The NBA got really, really, really petty and said that I can’t sit behind the bench anymore,” Cuban told Marc Stein.

Now that Cuban is a minority owner of the Mavericks rather than the majority owner, he is no longer as involved in the basketball operations department as he once was. He implied to Stein that it’s been a bit of an adjustment for him to get comfortable with his new role.

“It’s been up and down,” Cuban said of adjusting to his new place in the Mavericks’ hierarchy. “I’ve had moments of both — times where I was like, ‘OK, this is what we need to do, but I’m not the boss.’ And then there have been other times where I’m like: ‘I’m glad I’m not the boss.’

“The only time I feel any regret is when the NBA pisses me off. Maybe it would be different if we were losing and things weren’t going well, but things are going well. It’s nothing specific to the Mavs. I can’t go into NBA meetings anymore and give them s— for being petty.”

Fortunately for Cuban’s sake, it doesn’t seem as if the Mavs have a marquee matchup on the road in the near future. The next time Dallas is scheduled to play a team above the .500 mark away from home is on Dec. 27, when the Mavericks will take on a Phoenix Suns squad that’s riding a five-game losing streak.

The Mavericks won their first title as a franchise when Cuban was earlier on in his tenure owning the team back in 2011. Dallas eliminated the Miami Heat in six games in the 2011 NBA Finals despite the Mavericks entering the series as the underdogs.

The team came the closest to winning a title since 2011 a season ago. The Mavericks, led by Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, represented the Western Conference in the 2024 NBA Finals. Doncic and Irving both looked off their games in the championship series, however, and Dallas was eliminated by the Boston Celtics in five games.

At 9-8 so far in the 2024-25 campaign, Cuban’s Mavericks have room for improvement, but the team seems to be trending in the right direction. Dallas has won three of its past four contests, with wins coming over Western Conference heavyweights such as the Nuggets and Oklahoma City Thunder in that stretch.