Jalen Brunson settles score with Dallas Mavericks over comments about parents

Jalen Brunson had some unfinished business to attend to with Mark Cuban. On the latest edition of his podcast, the New York Knicks star took aim at the former Dallas Mavericks owner for comments he previously made about his family.
During this week’s episode of “The Roommates Show,” which Brunson hosts alongside teammate Josh Hart, the All-Star point guard brought up a previous remark that rubbed him the wrong way. After Brunson inked a four-year, $104 million deal with the Knicks in the summer of 2022, reporters asked Cuban a year later why the Mavericks didn’t re-sign him.
“Where it went south was when Rick took over, when the parent took over, or parents took over,” Cuban said in April of 2023. Rick Brunson had served on Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau’s coaching staff in the past and joined New York shortly before his son was acquired.
The slight dig at his father did not sit right with Brunson, who said on Thursday: “The only thing that I … didn’t like about the whole situation was when Mark said, ‘When the parents got involved, that’s when things got messy.’ So that was the one thing that I was like, I kind of was like, ‘Damn that was a little jab.’”
Cuban expressed hesitancy at first to discuss such a delicate topic, asserting that he “didn’t want to go there” on the podcast while adding: “there’s no reason for us to talk about any of that stuff.” The 66-year-old claimed that his comment “wasn’t a jab at all,” but nonetheless apologized to Brunson for the way it impacted him.
“I apologize, if it put you in a certain way, that wasn’t the intention,” said Cuban, who is now a minority owner of the Mavericks after selling his majority stake in the team to billionaire Miriam Adelson and her family. “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.”
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Though the Knicks were docked a 2025 second-round pick for tampering in Brunson’s negotiations, the signing has nonetheless been a resounding success for New York. The 28-year-old averaged a career-high 28.7 points, 6.7 assists and 3.6 rebounds last season en route to finishing fifth in the NBA MVP vote.
Brunson swiftly cashed in on the dominant performance, signing a four-year, $156.5 million contract extension in July – despite having the opportunity to secure a far more lucrative deal had he waited another year.