It was an eventful first face-to-face encounter between legal representatives of Dallas' NBA and NHL teams.
The two professional sports teams that share an arena in downtown Dallas are locked at the horns in a nasty legal battle that, according to their first public face-off, has no cordial resolution in sight.
The NBA's Dallas Mavericks and NHL's Dallas Stars represent half of the major American sports teams in the Metroplex, but they're the only two who compete within the Dallas city limits at the center of one of America's biggest markets.
That could change soon, however, as both sides are planning on how and where to move their operations when the 30-year lease on their shared American Airlines Center expires in 2031.
Last week was the first time the two sides' legal teams met, and the Dallas Morning News reports that things got heated. Mavericks and sports business writer Brad Townsend described the summary judgment, hosted on the campus of SMU, as "the first public glimpse of bad blood" between the franchises.
Legal representatives for either side took turns bashing the other with "sporadic fireworks" headlined by the Stars' co-counsel going as far as to mis-speak in the Mavs' association to the city (the intentional sarcasm is deafening).
"Your honor," Frank Carroll said, "we ask that you deny the Las Vegas Mavs’ — excuse me, Dallas Mavericks’ — motion for summary judgment and grant the Stars’ motion."
The Mavericks are owned by the Miriam Adelson and Patrick Dumont families, which also have heavy operational involvement in the Las Vegas Sands Corp that houses casinos and resorts around the world.
Dumont has a vision for Dallas to one day construct a basketball-specific arena that is tied to a casino, but the first and largest hoop to jump through is getting gambling legalized in Texas. That movement hasn't picked up much steam since majority ownership of the team was sold by current-minority owner Mark Cuban in late 2023.
The initial objective of this meeting is to discuss the lawsuits both franchises filed against one another on back-to-back days in October of last year.
As Townsend explains: "The Mavericks allege the Stars breached a clause in both teams’ 1998 franchise agreement with the City of Dallas, before American Airlines Center’s 2001 opening. The clause requires the teams’ corporate headquarters to be within Dallas city limits. The Stars have had their headquarters and training facility in Frisco since 2003."
As the Mavs have an idea for a venue that, best-case scenario, would be ready for the 2031-32 season, the team alleges that the Stars had agreed to stay at the AAC until 2061. That claim has been "strongly denied" by Stars president and CEO Brad Alberts.
More disagreements fall in which franchise has responsibility for the renovations to the AAC.
"As the court has recognized, this is a very important case, not only for the Mavericks, but for the Stars as well,” Mavs lawyer Chip Babcock said. “But more importantly for the city. This structure is magnificent. It is absolutely magnificent.
"The situation we find ourselves in is because of this impasse between our ownership of the operating company and the Stars claiming ownership of it.
"It [AAC] is not being maintained. It’s not being improved. It has problems that any building this age will start to encounter that are not being addressed. So somebody has got to be in charge, or in six years, we, the citizens of Dallas, are going to face with this magnificent building the same problems we’re facing with city hall today, where a different group of people responsible for the building didn’t keep it up."
The Stars countered with one of the toughest blows of the event: calling out the Mavs' recent roster decisions that have shook the public perception of the team over the last year.
"Your honor, Mr. Babcock said 'Someone has to be in charge,'" Carroll said. "Well, who they’re alleging should be in charge is DSG [Dallas Sports Group]. And so who is DSG? Well, it’s a Vegas corporation that traded Luka [Doncic] for a bag of magic beans."
"Injured bag of beans," Babcock added.
That trade is at least one piece of history both sides can agree went wrong.
The hope is that there won't be more disagreements as this feud begins to take shape, but the tones expressed here suggest otherwise.