Mark Cuban’s podcast appearance with Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart yielded a revealing moment about what the Mavericks thought of Brunson upon drafting the point guard.
Hart, jokingly, asked the former Mavs owner why the team drafted “the little fat-headed kid from Villanova,” referencing Brunson, and Cuban didn’t quite disagree with that assessment.
“We traded up to get Luka [Doncic] and we get [to] the number 31 [pick],” Cuban said, recalling the 2018 draft. “And all the scouts were like, ‘JB, JB, JB, JB. He’s a winner, yada, yada. Little bit chubby, not quite as fast, not super athletic, but he’s a winner, he’s a champion. You can’t put a value on that. That’s our guy.”
Brunson took that in stride, laughing along with Hart after Cuban dropped “chubby” as a descriptor.
The current Knicks superstar spent the first four years of his career in Dallas before moving to New York.
That came just after Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau hired Brunson’s father, Rick, to his coaching staff, leading Cuban to say in April 2023 that “Rick took over, or the parents took over.”
Brunson brought up those comments on the podcast, leading Cuban to apologize.
“The only thing I … didn’t like about the whole situation was when Mark said, ‘When the parents got involved, that’s when things get messy,” Brunson said. “So that was the one thing that I was like, I kind of was like, ‘Damn, that was a little jab.”
The Knicks lost a 2025 second-round pick over tampering as a result of that negotiation, but after Brunson emerged as a bona fide superstar, that was more than a fair price to pay.
Brunson inked a four-year, $156.5 million extension in July, leaving $113 million on the table he could have received by waiting until next summer to sign.
“I apologize, if it put you in a certain way, that wasn’t the intention,” Cuban said. “But it was hard to deal with. It was a unique negotiation in a lot of different ways.
“There’s definitely no hard feelings at all. But it’s always interesting when your dad and I walk by each other, you know, it’s just like he gives me the eye, I give him the eye, then we smile and then keep on walking, right? And so all is well and ends well. … I’m happy for you, the king of New York, and I’m happy for us.”
