Who are the Mavs’ leaders behind the Luka Doncic trade?

DALLAS — For more than two decades, there was a singular face on any major move made by the Dallas Mavericks: Mark Cuban.

But it’s a new era in Dallas, and Cuban is no longer a majority owner of the franchise. So when the shocking news came down Saturday night that Luka Doncic had been traded, many Mavericks fans likely had the same question: Who decided that?

For starters, it wasn’t Cuban. While he’s still a minority owner in the team, Cuban — who once said he’d sooner divorce his wife than let Doncic go to another NBA franchise — confirmed to WFAA that he wasn’t involved in the call.

Of course, that’s no surprise. Cuban hasn’t been part of day-to-day basketball operations since selling off his stake in the team to the Adelson family of Las Vegas.

Instead, Patrick Dumont, the son-in-law of casino magnate Miriam Adelson, has been the Mavericks’ “governor,” the NBA’s title for a team’s primary owner (Cuban was previously the governor). Dumont and the rest of the Adelson family purchased a majority stake in the Mavericks from Cuban back at the end of 2023.

Longtime NBA and Mavericks reporter Marc Stein on Saturday night reported that Harrison — not Doncic — was the driving force behind the trade, saying it was Harrison who “made the call to abruptly change the direction of the franchise with one of the most stunning trades in league history.”

Furthermore, Harrison told ESPN’s Tim MacMahon that he believes “defense wins championships,” when explaining the trade. Dealing for Anthony Davis “gives us a better chance,” Harrison told MacMahon.

While the move to land Kyrie Irving two years ago was certainly a pivotal moment in the last few years of the franchise, nothing compares to the Doncic trade, making it — by far — the biggest impact Harrison has had on the Mavericks.

So, who is Harrison? And who are the Mavericks’ owners that fans might not be familiar with yet? Let’s explain.

The Mavericks general manager took the job in the summer of 2021, replacing longtime Dallas GM Donnie Nelson. Harrison was a unique choice for the job — he wasn’t working in an NBA front office role. Instead, Harrison had been a longtime executive for Nike. Harrison’s role heavily involved working with the brand’s sponsored athletes across the NBA, a skillset that many believed would serve him well as a general manager.

While Dumont is the official “governor” of the Mavericks, his mother-in-law, Miriam Adelson, received much of the attention when the Adelson family purchased the Mavericks in late 2023. The Adelsons, who made their fortune owning the Sands casino corporation in Las Vegas, are one of the wealthiest families in America.

Dumont was the president of the Sands before taking the role as Mavericks governor.

Miriam Adelson is perhaps best known as the widow of the late Sheldon Adelson, the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of the Sands.

Sheldon passed in 2021 at 87 years old.

Following her husband’s passing, Adelson took over majority control of Las Vegas Sands Corp. 

As of 2023, she and her family are estimated to have a net worth of $35 billion — making her the fifth-richest woman in the world, according to Forbes.

Adelson was born Miriam Farbstein on October 10, 1945, in Tel Aviv to Jewish parents who escaped Poland in the 1930s for what was then known as the British Mandate of Palestine. Her grandparents and extended family were reportedly killed in the Holocaust. 

She was raised in the Israeli city of Haifa. As with all Israeli citizens, she served her mandatory army service with the Israel Defense Forces upon turning 18 years old, working as a medical research officer. During that time, she worked with sex workers in Israel who were suffering from addiction. That work would inform much of her later life. 

She earned a bachelor’s degree in microbiology and genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, then received her MD at Tel Aviv Univeristy’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine. Later, she would work as the chief internist in the emergency room at Tel Aviv’s Rokach Hospital. 

In 1986, she came to the United States to study heroin addiction treatment at New York’s Rockefeller University.

Around the same time, she divorced her first husband, physician Ariel Ochshorn, with whom she had two children.

In 1988, while at Rockefeller University, she met and began dating Sheldon Adelson — a Boston native born to Jewish immigrant parents, and a burgeoning businessman — shortly after the end of his own first marriage. The two were reportedly set up on a blind date.

The same year the two started dating, Sheldon purchased the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, which he expanded in 1989 to also include the Sands Expo and Convention Center — at the time of its construction the only privately owned and operated convention center in the U.S.

The two married in Jerusalem in 1991. As the lore goes, it was while honeymooning in Venice that Miriam came up with the idea of turning Sheldon’s Las Vegas property into a mega-resort destination modeled after Venice, and featuring replicas of that city’s canals and palazzos. 

In 1996, Sheldon demolished the Sands Hotel and Casino. Three years later, the Venetian opened on those hallowed grounds.

Sheldon’s success in Vegas would only foreshadow his success in Asia. In the ’00s, he expanded his casino and convention center empire across the Pacific Ocean, opening China’s first Las Vegas-style casino — the Sands Macao — in 2004. In 2010, Sheldon would open Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, further growing his Asian casino footprint.

Those investments paid off. According to Forbes, Sheldon increased his net worth by $15 billion to $37 billion in 2013 alone, largely off the success of his Asia casinos.

More recently, the family — through their Las Vegas Sands Corp. — has been pushing, unsuccessfully so far, for casinos to be able to legally operate in Texas. Mark Cuban openly has shared that same vision, even previously name-dropping Las Vegas Sands as a potential future partner for his interests in such operations.

As the Adelsons’ pockets grew deeper, so too did their political influence — particularly among Republicans.

During the 2020 election, the Adelsons were the single largest individual financial supporters of President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, donating $75 million to a super-PAC that spent heavily on ads supporting his return to the Oval Office. 

Throughout the 2020 elections, the couple reportedly donated more than $172 million in all in support of GOP initiatives.

Just two years earlier, in 2018, the couple was reported to have spent $113 million in support of Republican causes during the mid-term elections. 

The Adelsons also donated $20 million to Trump’s original presidential campaign in 2016 after originally throwing their support behind Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — a move Trump openly mocked until the Adelsons switched their support to him.

In 2018, President Trump presented Miriam Adelson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom — an honor bestowed upon those who have made “especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors,” according to the White House.