Jalen Brunson, Mark Cuban discuss free agency saga as Knicks star opens up about ‘little jab’ from Mavs owner

Dallas Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban discussed Jalen Brunson’s 2022 free agency with Brunson himself during an appearance on “Roommates Show,” the podcast hosted by Brunson and his New York Knicks teammate Josh Hart. While both parties said there were no hard feelings, they offered contrasting perspectives on how the negotiations went down two years ago.

Some background: 

• Brunson, who left the Mavericks to sign a four-year, $110 million deal with the Knicks that summer, has said publicly that he initially wanted to stay in Dallas. Both he and his father, Rick, who joined Tom Thibodeau’s staff as an assistant coach in New York shortly before Brunson signed there, have said that he would have signed a four-year, $55 million extension with the Mavericks had they been willing to offer it before the 2021-22 season or early that season. Brunson also said, in an appearance on the All The Smoke podcast, that, after seeing Cuban tell Marc Stein in an interview on Bally Sports that they could “pay him more than anybody,” once it actually became time to pay up, “it was crickets.” 
• Cuban has publicly blamed Brunson’s father, Rick, for his departure, saying that “it went south” when “Rick took over” and “there was no negotiation” in the summer. Cuban has also implied that Rick, through Brunson’s agent, Aaron Mintz, demanded two days before the trade deadline that the Mavericks dump salary so they could renegotiate and extend Brunson’s contract.
• The NBA stripped New York of its 2025 second-round pick after finding that the team had “engaged in free agency discussions involving Jalen Brunson prior to the date when such discussions were permitted.”  

On “Roommates Show,” Brunson and Cuban say they’ve already had “a couple” of private conversations about all of this. Brunson starts telling his side of the story by reiterating that, on the app then known as Twitter, he’d seen the interview Cuban had done night that Dallas’ season ended. 

“That was like the main thing I saw from the thing that he did: ‘We can pay him the most money,’” Brunson said. 

“And that’s a fact,” Cuban said.

Brunson went on: “So I saw that, and obviously you go into free agency and you start seeing all these moves that the Knicks are making and all that stuff, and then obviously my dad going to the Knicks as an assistant coach. So then I’m like, ‘All right, that’s interesting.’ Like, that’s something that, like, is very unique, and, like, I just don’t know — how could I live with myself if I didn’t at least explore that option? That’s one, OK. And so we go into free agency, right, and then I have a meeting with the Knicks, and then after the Knicks there was a scheduled meeting with the Mavs. Is everything I’m saying factual so far, Mark?”

Cuban said it was “kinda, sorta” factual, but, when the Mavericks were asked to fly to New York for a meeting, they wanted to know where things stood — and Brunson’s side would not tell them.

“We were like, ‘OK, but what are we going to discuss? We need to have some reference on what we’re going to be talking about if we come to New York,’” Cuban said. “We’re like, ‘We want to keep him, we want to keep him, but we’re not going to just show up in New York for you just to say no.’ And, like I told you, there was a time where it was, ‘OK, what is the number? Give us a feel.’ [The response was,] ‘Well, can’t talk to JB, he’s going to a wedding.’ And that was pretty much the last we heard.”

Brunson said that he got an offer from New York, and he was under the impression that Dallas simply declined to make an offer of its own. “Once we got the number from the Knicks and everything — like I said, I’m going to keep saying this: From Jalen Brunson’s point of view, I didn’t hear anything else from the Mavericks. And it wasn’t from the Mavericks, it was my agent saying to me, ‘Oh, they’re not giving us a number,’ all that and the third. And so, yeah, I just, at that point I just chose the Knicks.”

Cuban, echoing what he told the Dallas Morning News, ESPN and The Athletic in April 2023, said that Brunson’s camp wouldn’t tell Dallas what New York’s offer was, so it didn’t have a real opportunity to re-sign him. “We weren’t hearing back from Aaron,” he said. “We were like, ‘Give us a range. What’s a number?’ We put up a number, they said, ‘Too low.’ And then we were like, ‘Well, where do we need to be?’ We were hoping we’d have a home-court advantage, right? He’d been here, you know, four years. At least give us that opportunity.”

Then Cuban said something that he hadn’t said previously: At the last minute, Brunson’s side asked for a full max. 

“And then when it came down to it and it looked like you were going to the Knicks, it was like, ‘Well, really, the only number that’s going to make it work is a max-out contract,’” Cuban said. “And that was the last of it. ”

Cuban said that he and Brunson “have always gotten along” and “there’s no grudge to hold,” even though “it didn’t work out the way I thought it would.” Brunson pointed out that the Mavericks made the NBA Finals this year, so things have “worked out great” for both sides. Cuban said that he’s happy for Brunson, but he “really, really, really” thought they were going to reach a deal two years ago, especially after “a bunch of us,” including Brunson’s now-wife, Ali, were walking and talking following a playoff game in Utah.

The “only thing” that Brunson said he “didn’t like about the situation” was Cuban talking about his father’s involvement.

“I kind of was like, ‘Damn, that was a little jab,’” Brunson said.

“It wasn’t really,” Cuban responded. “No, I didn’t want to go there here, right? It wasn’t a jab at all. I mean, there’s no reason for us to talk about any of that stuff, but it wasn’t just a jab, JB. For real.”

Brunson said that he “felt a certain way” when he heard about it, but he has since gotten over it. 

“And 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.”

Brunson then compared his exit to Isaiah Hartenstein leaving New York for the Oklahoma City Thunder this summer, reiterating that “it’s over and done with” now. 

“And I’m happy — literally I’m happy for you,” Cuban said. “I mean, like, when you got married — we still keep in touch, I’m always sending you congrats and this and that, so, I mean, there’s definitely no hard feelings at all. But it’s always interesting when your dad and I walk past 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. And so, yeah, all’s well that ends well.”

To recap: Brunson and Cuban didn’t address the talks between the two sides about a contract extension (nor the fact that Cuban had called the assertion — made by both Brunson and his father — that his camp had approached the team about it during the first half of the 2021-22 season “an absolute 100% lie”). Neither Cuban’s point of view on Brunson’s free agency — that Brunson’s camp shut the Mavericks out of negotiations and they didn’t have a fair chance to re-sign him — nor Brunson’s point of view on his free agency — that his agent brought him an offer from New York and he never heard from Dallas — seem to have changed in the last two years, but they’ve now expressed those points of view to each other for the public to see. 

If there is anything genuinely new here, it’s that, according to Cuban, Brunson’s camp communicated to the Mavericks that they could keep him by offering the max. In hindsight, that would have been a smart move, but it would have seemed insane at the time, as he hadn’t yet become the superstar he is today.