Mark Cuban posted "RIP Nellie" on Sunday. Don Nelson was already coaching and running the Mavericks when Cuban bought the team in 2000.
Dallas Mavericks minority stakeholder Mark Cuban posted "RIP Nellie" on X Sunday afternoon after the Nelson family announced that the Hall of Fame coach had died at 86.
Nelson was already running the Mavericks when Cuban bought the team. Cuban purchased the franchise in January 2000 for $285 million and kept Nelson in both jobs he held, head coach and general manager.
Nelson had come to Dallas as general manager in February 1997 and took over the bench that December, replacing Jim Cleamons. He traded for Dirk Nowitzki on draft night in 1998, and acquired Steve Nash that same offseason. Nash and Nowitzki joined Michael Finley in the lineup, and Dallas won at least 50 games in four straight seasons.
Cuban signed off on a trade with Denver in February 2002 that brought Raef LaFrentz, Nick Van Exel, and Avery Johnson to Dallas. The 2002-03 team won 60 games and lost to San Antonio in the conference finals. Nelson resigned in March 2005 with 18 games left, and Johnson replaced him.
The two men spent the next three years in court.
Nelson returned to coaching in August 2006 with Golden State, which had acquired Stephen Jackson and Al Harrington in a midseason trade and finished 42-40 behind Baron Davis. In the first round of the 2007 playoffs, the eighth-seeded Warriors beat the 67-win, top-seeded Mavericks in six games. Nelson then pursued deferred compensation he said Dallas still owed him.
Retired judge Glen M. Ashworth ruled in Nelson's favor in August 2008 and ordered a lump-sum payment of $6,276,638.46, according to ESPN. The award covered just under $1.96 million in overdue deferred compensation, nearly $147,000 in interest, and roughly $4.2 million in the present-day value of future payments. Ashworth rejected Cuban's counterclaims that Nelson had violated a noncompete clause in his consulting contract by taking the Golden State job and that Nelson used confidential Mavericks information to win the 2007 series.
Nelson accepted the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Basketball Coaches Association ahead of Game 2 of the 2025 NBA Finals. Dallas had traded Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers four months earlier. Joe Vardon of The Athletic reported Nelson's remarks on the deal that night.
"It was a tremendous mistake by the Dallas franchise to trade him," Nelson said.
Cuban has made the same argument since. In a Rule 202 pre-suit petition filed in Dallas County District Court on July 8, he stated that he did not retain control of basketball operations after the 2023 sale and that former general manager Nico Harrison was put in charge, which led to the Dončić trade.
Cuban sold 69% of the Mavericks to the families of Miriam Adelson and Patrick Dumont in December 2023 at a valuation of roughly $3.5 billion. He holds 27% and has had no operational control since Masai Ujiri was named president of basketball operations and alternate governor on May 4. Cuban said in July that he had spoken with Ujiri once, for about 120 seconds.
Nowitzki, Troy Aikman, and Darren Woodson attended the June ceremony in North Texas, where Nelson received the Naismith Legacy Award.
The family has scheduled a Celebration of Life for Thursday at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church in Dallas. An ashes ceremony in Maui for friends and family has not been scheduled.
