Former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban still believes his team should have won a second title during his tenure.
Cuban appeared on the DLLS Mavs Podcast and let loose an unprompted comment about the Mavericks’ loss to the Miami Heat in the 2006 NBA Finals. According to Cuban, that series was “stolen” from the Mavericks, and that nothing will ever convince him otherwise.
“I’ll take that to my grave that it was stolen from us,” Cuban said.
The assertion from Cuban is hardly a new one. Dwyane Wade infamously got 25 free throw attempts in a 101-100 overtime win in Game 5, a tally which matched the Mavericks’ entire team total. Cuban was fined $250,000 for confronting the officials on the floor after that game. He was so convinced that the series was fixed that he actually hired a former FBI employee to look into it.
Nearly 20 years later, Cuban is never going to let it go. Fair or not, the Heat shot 207 free throws in that series compared to Dallas’ 155, and the way Game 5 ended was more than enough to launch plenty of conspiracy theories. Of course, there are also many who argue that the Mavericks are actually benefitting from some conspiracies these days.