Mac Engel: Dallas Mavericks may not win NBA title in '25 but will compete for NBA's Awful PR trophy

Mac Engel, Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Mar 3, 2025

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Mark Cuban alienated and irritated a lot of fans in his 20-plus years of owning the Dallas Mavericks, but he never put together the type of run this current ownership group is still on.

All of the goodwill and warm feelings generated by the Mavericks’ run to the 2024 NBA Finals, and signing free agent Klay Thompson, have been thrown into an incinerator in a month that feels more like a decade.

On Monday morning, Mavericks season ticket holders were greeted with the good news that the prices of the 2025-’26 tickets are going up by eight percent. There is never a good day to announce a ticket price hike, but to do so now is a case of first-ballot, Hall of Fame terrible timing.

Nearly one month to the day after the team traded its most popular player, Luka Doncic, to their most reviled rival in exchange for one injured superstar, one solid prospect and one future draft pick, the Mavericks decided the best path forward to winning back angry fans is to raise raise ticket prices.

Give them this: It’s an outside-the-box move.

Trading Luka is a basketball move. Raising a ticket price is a business move. They are not linked, but they’re together.

The team said in a statement that the overall price increase will be 8.61%; the hike, the club said, “reflect ongoing investments in team and fan engagement.”

That could mean anything from cleaning the toilets, to sending season-ticket holders home with their own Roddy Beaubois jersey.

According to the team, full-season ticket holders will “save 15 to 23 percent” compared to projected market prices next season.” And, “mini-season ticket holders will save 11 to 20 percent.”

Please note that these “deals” are based on projections of market prices. They’re guessing.

The NBA approved the sale of the Mavericks from Cuban to Patrick Dumont in the final week of December of 2023; two months later, the team raised ticket prices. And here we are again.

As much as irate Mavs fans do not want to see this, this hike is consistent with other clubs around the NBA. It’s just expensive to attend an NBA game, or to buy a carton of eggs.

According to Bookies.com, “Families will spend $320.31 on four of the cheapest available tickets, a parking spot, two beers, two sodas, and four hot dogs at an NBA arena (in 2024-25). The cost indicates a modest increase of $11.67, or 3.6%, from 2023.”

The Mavs are banking on this area’s continued population growth will continue to keep the American Airlines Center full. More than 8.1 million people live in the DFW metro area, making this one of the largest population centers in the United States.

Using Bookies.com calculations and formula, attending a Mavericks game ranks 14th in the 30-team NBA this season. Expect the Mavs to remain right around there, at least, in 2025-26.

The other 29 NBA franchises, however, will not be not be announcing ticket price hikes 30 days after trading away one of the best players in the world.

Dealing Luka has generated a backlash that Dumont, and team president Rick Welts, did not fully anticipate, or failed to accurately predict. Other than making himself available the day after the trade was announced, team GM Nico Harrison has not made himself readily available to discuss a trade that will define his career, and potentially run him back behind a shoe counter.

This is one of those scenarios where AI, GhatGPT and Google would have all failed to help the Mavericks; a computer would not have believed this trade would have happened.

Since the trade, the Mavericks are 6-6 and currently 32-29. That’s good for 10th place in the Western Conference, the last spot for the play-in round.

In that time, the Lakers are 10-2 and are now 38-21, second in the West.

The Mavericks have also been crushed by injury; centers Anthony Davis, Daniel Gafford and Derek Lively are all out, as is forward P.J. Washington.

The Mavericks with those four players along with Kyrie Irving and Thompson will be a matchup problem for any team in the playoffs. That lineup could reach the NBA Finals.

Speaking of NBA Finals, that’s the time to announce a ticket price increase, not a month after trading away the second most popular player in the history of the franchise.

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