A Tour Inside Mavs' 'Taj Mahal of Basketball' Plans: On Church, State & Gambling

DALLAS - Over the next five years, the Dallas Mavericks promise to turn a Zombie Apocalypse wasteland into the planet’s crown jewel basketball fantasyland.

“This is a transformative project,” says team president of business operations Ethan Casson. “It will be not only the best basketball arena in the world, it will change the North Dallas community for 50 years.”

Casson and Mavs’ special advisor Mark Boekenheide spent Wednesday afternoon at the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce providing a glimpse into the team’s northern migration to a new arena when its American Airlines Center lease expires on July 28, 2031.

The Mavs plan to play the first game in their new arena - which will be the hub of a 112-acre, multi-billion dollar development - in October 2031. (Considering last year’s 26-56 record and the start to this season, it may take the team that long to again become competitive.)

Says Boekenheide of 2031, “It’s coming up in our rearview mirror, faster than you think.”

As an original Mavs fan who attended the team’s inaugural preseason game at Reunion Arena on Sept. 26, 1980 and who covered decades of games at American Airlines Center, I’m honestly not sure what all this fuss is about. Without luxury suites and with an antiquated scoreboard, Reunion grew visibly stale. But the AAC - only 25 years old and nestled in bustling Victory Park - doesn’t feel old or outmoded in the least.

The Mavs’ visionaries say the AAC no longer works because, in part, residential - instead of commercial - build-up around it doesn’t provide adequate parking garages. But the hoity-toity plans for the new joint in far north Dallas don’t seem to mesh with down-to-Earth MFFL. And - surprise - the bombastic blueprint doesn’t include a casino after all.

“It’s church and state,” Casson says. “A casino is not part of our vision. It’s a basketball arena development project, period.”

To most fans, this is as saddening as it is surprising.

In 2023, Mavs owner Mark Cuban sold his majority stake in the team to Las Vegas casino magnate Miriam Adelson. Her son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, became the new “hands-on” owner. Before the sale went through, a group from Adelson’s Sands company bought 108 acres of land across from old Texas Stadium in Irving.

In the aftermath, Cuban openly pined for the Mavs to build a resort-style home featuring, yes, a casino.

But despite a weekly traffic jam of Texas license plates taking gambling money across state lines to Oklahoma and Louisiana, Bible Belt politicians have staunchly resisted gaming becoming legal in the Lone Star State. Adelson, however, reportedly donated $250 million to Donald Trump’s 2024 Presidential campaign and another $25 million this year to help build his new White House ballroom.

With the land already secured, a management team well-versed in casino development and that kind of Ruby Red Republican political influence, surely …

“Gaming isn’t legal in Texas now and there’s no promise that it ever will be,” Boekenheide told me in a one-on-one interview after the press conference. “We can’t afford to wait around.”

He bristled when I pushed him on the topic, and said no overtures were made to politicians about even taking gaming to a vote of the Texas people.

“We don’t want there to be even an inkling that gaming could be thought of on this project,” said Boekenheide, who is also Las Vegas Sands’ Senior Vice President of Global Development. “We want approval on what our master plan is for, which is sports arena-centric. No gaming. Not happening.”

Cuban, in a story broken by MavsRoundtable.com, initially sued Dumont and the new owners for being “frozen out” of new-arena discussions, though he has since withdrawn the petition. As far as we know, the Sands folks still own the land in Irving, but …

Without a casino, the Mavs are left to build a - stop me if you’ve heard this before - a state-of-the-art arena with cool stuff around it. Transformational?

As of now, the old Valley View mall area - bordered by LBJ Freeway to the south, Alpha Road to the north, Montfort Road to the west and Preston road to the east - is an eyesore straight from a nuclear blast zone. Chain-link fences erected when the area closed in 2023 are leaning, if not fallen over. Rusty signs wobble in the wind. Overgrown weeds, scraggly trees and cracked pavement litter the landscape.

But come 2031 …

“It’s going to be a 365-days-a-year destination,” promises Casson. “You won’t have to be a Mavs fan, or even a basketball fan, to enjoy it.”

I’m not saying the new owners are tone deaf about their new arena, but it sure sounds like the Mavs are planning to build a Rodeo Drive leading up to the Taj Mahal. All glitz. No guts?

The developers toured the 15 newest arenas in America and came away with their own version of “vision.”

In addition to the arena, there are plans for a 5-star anchor hotel, a 7-acre park (Dallas’ Clyde Warren is five acres by comparison) and an affluent vibe drawing inspiration from Highland Park Village, Miami’s Design District, New York’s Bryant Park and Plano’s Legacy West entertainment strip. Also in play: an ice skating rink for Christmas tree lighting, a spot on the lawn for yoga, and residential lofts rising as high as 10 stories.

Not sure I’m convinced that Bubba from Mesquite and his painted face or any of the original “Reunion Rowdies” will fit in, because everything I heard Wednesday sounded more like the setting for afternoon tea at the Adolphus Hotel and nothing like an booze-infused pep rally before Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals.

The Mavs’ plans are oozing with sophisticated style. We’ll see about the sweat-stained substance, which is of course is the engine for every distinct home-court/field advantage in every American sport.

Says Casson, “We’re in the hospitality industry, and we’re going to be obsessed with the details.”