New Mavs owners with casino ties preach patience on gambling in Texas as they plan for new arena
DALLAS (AP) — New Dallas Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont, part of the two families with casino ties that bought the club late last year, says the timing is uncertain for when legalized gambling might come to Texas.
Dumont also says the timing doesn’t matter as it relates to prospects for a new arena that would include a casino resort, because his family and that of the widow of Las Vegas Sands Corp. founder Sheldon Adelson are committed to Dallas long term.
“We’re patient,” Dumont said Friday in his first meeting with reporters since the December purchase, a few hours before the Mavs faced elimination in Game 4 of the NBA Finals against Boston. “We think long term. We’re not people who think in the short term.
Dumont is the son-in-law of Miriam Adelson, who is still the majority shareholder in Las Vegas Sands even after selling $2 billion in stock to take majority ownership of the Mavericks from Mark Cuban.
For the first few months after the $3.5 billion purchase, Dumont and Adelson were occasional courtside visitors at home games.
As the club surged into the playoffs and won three series to reach the finals for the first time in 13 years, Dumont — who lives in the Las Vegas area — became a constant presence, joined from time to time by his mother-in-law.
“This has been a hard-fought year, a hard-fought playoffs, for all the road that we had to go through,” Dumont said of Mavs, who were fifth in the Western Conference and have been the lower seed in all four postseason series. “It’s been unbelievable to be a part of, but really we’re looking to the future as well.”
Cuban, outspoken with a hands-on approach in his nearly 24 years as owner, is the alternate governor now. The 65-year-old still attends just about every game, and still sits close to the Dallas bench.
After the sale was completed, Cuban said he would have a strong voice in basketball operations. But he wasn’t quoted in news releases announcing recent contract extensions for general manager Nico Harrison and coach Jason Kidd.
The Mavs went from one of the worst franchises in sports in the 1990s to perennial playoff qualifiers under Cuban, winning the franchise’s only championship in 2011.
Cuban was honored by the Adelson family at a 2017 gala in Las Vegas, and Miriam Adelson spoke highly of him at the event.
“I’ve known Mark for a really long time,” Dumont said without addressing the specifics of Cuban’s role in basketball decisions. “And he and I have always had a great relationship. And so I love having him involved with the team. I think his record stands for itself.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said his sense that the ownership change and the relationships between all parties “is going very well.”
“Patrick appreciates Mark’s ongoing engagement, particularly on the basketball operations side where he’s been very hands-on for many years,” Silver said.
Casino gambling faces significant obstacles in Texas because leaders of the Republican-controlled state Legislature say they don’t believe most voters want gambling, and therefore it isn’t a high priority for lawmakers.
While proposals in the most recent legislative session in 2023 went further than before, there’s still a long way to go. The Legislature meets every other year, which means there are four more regular sessions before the lease at American Airlines Center expires in 2031.
“When we bought the Mavericks, we weren’t really thinking about casino gaming,” Dumont said. “Dallas is a great community. It’s a growing economy. It’s very positive for business. So when we had the opportunity for Mark with the Mavericks, that was an easy decision.”
Dumont believes the region is somewhat lacking as a tourist destination. While Las Vegas Sands no longer has casino operations in the Nevada desert, it has five properties in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau and one in Singapore.
“If you look at what we do, we’re ground-up developers in scale, and we develop tourism assets for both business and leisure tourism,” Dumont said. “We feel like this is an opportunity that’s very good, not only for us, but for the tourism industry as a whole. Now, as part of that, we need casino gaming because of the scale of our investments.”
A major player in the Republican Party, Adelson pumped more than $2 million last year into a political action committee, called Texas Sands, which donated lavishly to state legislators and swarmed the GOP-controlled state Capitol with lobbyists.
“It’s something we’re thinking about, we’re working on,” Dumont said. “We’re spending a lot of time explaining to people what it means in terms of investment, the scale of those investments. Over time, hopefully we’ll be successful.”
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AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds contributed to this story.
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