The Mavericks are 2-7. Vultures are circling. Our Tim Cowlishaw and Mavericks fans are calling for general manager Nico Harrison’s dismissal.
And on Friday, the two most prominent figures from the Mavericks’ glory years and 2011 NBA championship run – Dirk Nowitzki and Mark Cuban – weighed in on the Mavericks’ early season struggles and “roster composition,” as Cuban put it.
Franchise icon Nowitzki, in his role as an Amazon Prime studio analyst, said: “I feel bad for my Mavs fans. This has been a disastrous start. Obviously, there’s a hole at the point guard and playmaking position… at shot creating, at shot making. They can’t shoot, they can’t make plays…nobody can make shots. It’s been tough to watch”
Dirk:
“I feel bad for my Mavs fans. This has been a disastrous start. Obviously, there’s a hole at the point guard and playmaking position…at shot creating, at shot making. They can’t shoot, they can’t make plays…nobody can make shots. It’s been tough to watch” pic.twitter.com/GcCD38dshX
— Oh No He Didn’t (@ohnohedidnt24) November 8, 2025
Mavericks
Longtime Mavericks governor-turned-27% minority owner Cuban was more expansive during a 10-minute stint as a guest on “The Stephen A. Smith Show” on SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio channel.
Some of the questions and answers, edited for clarity and brevity:
Q: Are you shocked by the Mavericks’ start?
Cuban: You know, I’m not thrilled with the composition of the team. I think we’re imbalanced. We don’t have enough depth at point guard. We don’t have somebody who’s a creator that gets other people shots or enough of that. And so I didn’t think we were going to crush it and start off 8-0, but I didn’t expect 2-6 [as of Friday].”
Q: Thoughts on Cooper Flagg:
Cuban: He’s the real deal. I’m so excited for Coop. You know, he’s going kind of through the Giannis treatment that J-Kidd did in Milwaukee, where he’s playing some point guard, creating.
He literally may be the best passer we have on the Mavericks right now. And so getting the ball in his hands and having him understand time and place and circumstances and situations, he understands it, right? I think the next step in his evolution is getting the matchups on defenders that we need like because we don’t have enough 3-point shooters, there’s not a lot of space for him, and because there’s not a lot of space for him, and we’re playing him at point guard.
Q: Your thoughts about what this team would be if Kyrie Irving were healthy, or when he gets back.
Cuban: I think we’ll be better. Obviously, him, AD and Dereck Lively all being on the court would be better, but we still have those shortcomings. We have Klay as a three point shooter. D-Lo (D’Angelo Russell) can shoot some threes, mostly off the dribble and that’s it. PJ is a good 3-point point shooter, but we can’t really run five out. We have to go small ball with PJ or small ball with Coop at the five, believe it or not, in order to run five out to really create space.
And that makes life more difficult for us. And other than Coop and to a certain extent, D-Lo, we don’t have that point guard that can get us into our offense and create shots at the end of the game, when the pressure really builds up and, you know, teams are all playing all out. I think that really hurts us. And so even with Kai back, there’s still going to be some of those issues, even though he’d obviously help us with additional shooting, creation and scoring.
Q: Anthony Davis’ impact last year and what’s needed from him this season.
Cuban: That first first half [of his first game], when he was healthy, playing against Houston, and he was making threes, he was getting every rebound, he was pushing the ball up the court, and he’s pounding his chest screaming, ‘I am here!’ You know, the crowd is going berserk. Max Christie is making everything.
When (Davis) he is that player, we’re obviously better. But you can’t ask a big that’s not meant to bring the ball up the court every every play, to do that all the time. That’s really, really hard, and it’s difficult. But we really didn’t have him and Kyrie at all. So between those two together, we’re always going to be in every game, but still, our roster composition, even with everybody healthy, still has some shortcomings and and that’s the issue.
But there’s no question. AD is like an incredible Hall of Fame player. You know, you know are on off with him right now. His net rating is really spectacular, but you can’t play him 48 minute, and that’s the problem.
Q: You sold a majority stake of the franchise (to the Adelson and Dumont families) in December of 2023. You have said that if you were still in charge you would not have traded Luka Doncic. What has it been like for you, seeing him average 40-11-9 so far this season?
Cuban: I mean, I’m happy for Luka because he’s a great guy. He’s just a really special human being. His family’s great, his dad . . . It’s just painful, you know, as a Mavs fan and as somebody who you know, potentially, if I would have done a better job of just defining my role in advance, might not have happened, and so it hurts me. I know it kills Mavs fans everywhere, but I’m happy for Luka.
Q: You’ve repeatedly stated that you don’t have operational control, even though at the time you sold the franchise we thought you’d still be in charge. Refresh our memory of what happened?
Cuban: Yeah, so I put in the contract that I had to be in all the meetings and all the conversations, and the league took that out, saying, ‘No, that’s up to the governor, the majority owner, to make those decisions in real time.’ So they took it out. And I made the decision not to get a contract because I didn’t want a job, right?
I mean, just at this point in my life, I didn’t want a job, and so that was my mistake. I should have done it differently, but we are where we are, and there’s no point in rehashing it. There’s a lot of things in my life I’d do differently. That’s one of them.
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