Mark Cuban discusses near Kobe Bryant trade between the Mavericks and Lakers
Mark Cuban has recently shed light on how close the Dallas Mavericks came to acquiring Kobe Bryant in 2007. During an appearance on Shaquille O’Neal’s “The Big Podcast,” Cuban, now a part-owner of the Mavericks after selling a majority stake, shared the story.
Cuban said to O’Neal, “Do you realize how close we were to trading for Kobe in 2007?”
O’Neal responded, “I never knew.”
Cuban went on to describe the serious trade talks with the Los Angeles Lakers. “Oh my god. It was literally like this close. I talked to Jerry Buss and worked something out with Jerry because Kobe had asked to leave,” Cuban explained. “Jerry said, ‘okay, if you want to leave, we’ll take care of it, Jeanie and everything.’ So I talked to him, and it was going to be Josh Howard, Jason Terry, and picks—and no Dirk, because I said anybody but Dirk.”
Cuban was confident the deal would go through. “I literally remember telling this dude, ‘guess what? Kobe’s going to be a Mav,’ and I literally thought it was done. Then Mitch Kupchak obviously stepped up and said, ‘we can’t do this,’ talked Kobe out of it, and the rest is history.”
Had the trade happened, Kobe Bryant would have joined the Mavericks in exchange for Howard, Terry, and draft picks. Dirk Nowitzki, the Mavericks’ star, was notably excluded from the deal.
Although the trade never happened, both teams prospered. Bryant remained with the Lakers, winning his first MVP award and leading the team to three consecutive NBA Finals, securing championships in 2009 and 2010. The Mavericks went on to win their first NBA title in 2011, led by Nowitzki, after sweeping the Lakers in the Western Conference Semifinals.
The near trade of Bryant to the Mavericks remains one of the NBA’s great “what if” moments. A pairing of Bryant and Nowitzki during their prime years could have changed the course of NBA history, leaving fans to wonder how many titles the duo might have won together.
