As Masai Ujiri weighs Cooper Flagg’s future alongside an aging Kyrie Irving, Mark Cuban insists the superstar’s legacy grants him ultimate authority over his next career move.
DALLAS - There is a delicate deal to be balanced when you run an NBA team.
You need to be able to hard-line view your players as commodities, as puzzle pieces, as assets.
But you are also wise to warmly view them as partners, as people, and as something other than - as someone once horrifyingly said - "meat on the hoof.''
Enter the Dallas Mavericks, their plan to build around Cooper Flagg, and what that means for Kyrie Irving.
Irving, sat out the entire 2025-27 season to focus on recovering from a knee injury. He's now 34, and the debate centers on whether his greatest value comes as a building-block teammate of Flagg's ...
Or as a tradeable asset.
The Mavericks are under new management led by GM Masai Ujiri, and it is his call to make. The nine-time All-Star point guard Irving would surely be attractive to a team that feels like it's one player away from greatness (like the Detroit Pistons or the Houston Rockets?) ...
But Ujiri and others inside Mavs HQ have also openly stated that there is an attraction to seeing what the Flagg/Irving combo might look like on the floor together.
And Mavs man Mark Cuban would like a word here.
"The first thing you do is talk to Kyrie. You do whatever Kyrie wants, because that's what Kyrie has earned," Cuban said during an appearance on the "House of Haymaker" podcast."He's not just some guy. He got us to the Finals — not alone, obviously — but he's a Hall of Fame-caliber superstar who plays his heart out every minute of every game. He's also one of the best people you'll ever meet.''
In other words, the exact opposite of "meat on the hoof.''
Cuban's position is sweet, nice, respectful and humane.
But does that make it right?
Any potential trade involving Irving - and really, any decision at all - must wait for clarity regarding his health.
"I am definitely close to being over at 100-percent in terms of my ACL recovery," Irving recently said.
That would be a start.
But the next step after that?
We disagree with Cuban, who believes the next step is to not only give Kyrie a vote ... but to essentially give him veto power over any decision.
Or ...
You survey Irving for his opinion. And you can survey Flagg as well.
And then you - that is, Ujiri - makes a decision that isn't based on what is best for Kyrie; he makes a decision that reveals the best way for the Mavs to be contenders again.
Once upon a time, Cuban's 2011 Mavs won an NBA title. And as the then-owner, he (and then-GM Donnie Nelson) made a two-year series of extremely difficult roster decisions, saying goodbye to centerpiece players on that championship team.
Most notably, Tyson Chandler was not retained. (Nor were J.J. Barea, DeShawn Stephenson and Caron Butler). A year later, Jason Kidd and Jason Terry were gone, all of these moves ushering in an era during which the roster features the likes of Lamar Odom and Delonte West.
So ... if Kyrie gets to decide his Dallas fate because he "almost won a title,'' why didn't Chandler, Barea, Kidd and Terry get to do the same?
The answer?
Cuban juggled the emotions and the talents and the budget ... and ended up treating those players as "commodities, as puzzle pieces, as assets.''
Cuban now says, "You ask Kyrie, 'What do you want to do?' And that's what you do." But he lived a different reality when he was actually the decision-maker.
And in the end, today's Mavs, like those Mavs, can't be run as an emotion-driven democracy. Everybody doesn't get a deciding "vote.'' And that goes for Mark Cuban and it goes for Kyrie Irving and most everybody but Masai Ujiri.
