Pirates fans dreaming of Mark Cuban again after Mavericks' Luka Doncic trade mess

The Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers just pulled off one of the NBA's most shocking trades in recent memory, and there's no way Mark Cuban is happy about it.

Less than two years after Cuban sold his majority stake in the Mavericks ownership, the team sent shockwaves around the sports world and traded franchise icon Luka Doncic to the Lakers for Anthony Davis. Cuban has stayed on as a minority owner since 2023 but does not participate in day-to-day basketball operations – clearly, considering he was once quoted as saying he would sooner divorce his wife than trade Doncic.

Will the Doncic trade anger Cuban enough to send him looking for a new challenge in which he can be involved in day-to-day operations again? And could that new challenge await him in his hometown of Pittsburgh – namely, with the local baseball team whose current majority owner is universally hated for his refusal to spend the money required to put a watchable product on the field?

Probably not; but as Pittsburgh Pirates fans, we can dream.

Pirates fans dreaming of Mark Cuban again after Mavericks' Luka Doncic mess

Cuban, a Pittsburgh native, has made public comments as recently as this past August shutting down any notion of him taking another run at buying the Pirates after his bid was rejected by then-owner Kevin McClatchey. Still, Pirates fans have been imploring Cuban to purchase his hometown club for nearly two decades, ever since his last bid to buy the team was beat out by current owner Bob Nutting.

Nutting's penny pinching has all but run the organization into the ground, prompting outcry from the fanbase to the point of staging in-person protests and erecting billboards pressuring him to sell the team. But as long as Nutting keeps getting his cut of the revenue share from the league, broadcast rights holders and more – as he does currently – he has no incentive to sell the team, or to spend more money on it than he has to. The problem is, a professional sports team cannot be run like any other business. Cuban clearly understands that; Nutting clearly doesn't.

How great would it be if the Doncic trade pushed Cuban over the edge, causing him to storm out of Dallas in anger and prompting him to make an aggressive bid to purchase the Pirates? Admittedly, it's a long shot at best, considering Nutting has no motivation or intent to sell; but Pirates fans deserve an owner who cares about winning and Cuban could be that.

More Pirates content from Rum Bunter