“We’d gotten calls for years about …

“We’d gotten calls for years about Dirk,” he tells me, “and you say, ‘No, Dirk’s not on the table. We’re not going to trade Dirk.’” Cuban reminisces about some other potentially big Mavericks acquisitions that never came to fruition. He was rehearsing for his stint on Dancing With the Stars when he learned that Jerry Buss had talked Bryant out of demanding a trade to the Mavericks in 2007. In 2013, Dallas thought it had Paul Pierce in a three-way deal, but the third team torpedoed it. “Every team asks every team if they’d be willing to trade their star player,” he says.