Excerpted from THE WONDER BOY: Luka Doncic and the Curse of Greatness Copyright © 2025 Tim MacMahon. Published by Grand Central Publishing, a Hachette Book Group company. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
MINUTES AFTER THE Mavs' 2021-22 season ended, Mark Cuban indicated that Jalen Brunson's return was a sure thing -- casually dropping "obviously after re-signing JB" while discussing offseason plans during a live interview on Bally Sports Southwest. Throughout the Mavs' playoff run, as Brunson's value in the upcoming free agency market seemingly soared, Cuban repeatedly reminded reporters that the Mavs had the guard's Bird rights, meaning the franchise could exceed the salary cap to keep him, as well as offer larger annual raises and a longer contract than other suitors.
"We can pay him more than anybody," Cuban said when asked a follow-up question specifically about Brunson. "I think he wants to stay, and that's most important."
Brunson's eyebrows lifted when he saw Cuban's comments while scrolling through social media in the early morning hours. He had avoided discussing his future contract throughout the season, even as coach Jason Kidd frequently mentioned that one of his goals was to "get Brunson paid." That price went up throughout the playoffs, as Brunson starred in Luka Dončić's early absence and proved himself as the clear No. 2 option for a West finals team. When Brunson saw what Cuban had to say, he thought the billionaire would back it up with a big contract offer, finally making a commitment to the former second-round pick whom the Mavs had repeatedly dangled as trade bait.
"Hey, JB about to get that bag," Dorian Finney-Smith declared that night, taking his turn speaking to the media before Brunson. Brunson still deferred, saying he was just focused on getting to play with this group of teammates and appreciating their accomplishments. He said he'd think about free agency later.
"He's boring as s--- to interview," Jalen's father Rick Brunson had said with a booming laugh the previous month, crediting (or blaming) his son's college coach. "He learned that from Jay Wright. You ask him a question, it's, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom -- same answers. It's a Villanova thing. Jay Wright programmed him. He didn't get that from me."
That was one of the first things Rick Brunson, who played for eight teams during his nine-year NBA journeyman career, blurted out when we sat down in a couple of chairs in a hallway at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City the morning after the Mavs' Game 3 win over the Jazz. As players, coaches, and staffers walked past, several laughed and shook their heads at the sight of Rick Brunson chatting with a reporter. "Uh-oh," some of them half joked.
His son was the breakout star of the playoffs' first round, carrying the Mavs to a 2-1 series lead over the Jazz while Dončić recovered from his calf strain, and Jalen's pops had some stuff he wanted to publicly get off his chest. Brunson had no interest in discussing his pending free agency, but his dad was eager to get the family's side of the developing story on the record.
"We've got to figure out if Dallas wants him. Not words," Rick Brunson said. "Ain't no discount. So don't put it on us. Don't tell me you love me. Show me."
The Brunsons certainly didn't feel love from the franchise the previous summer. Jalen, who had just finished fourth in the Sixth Man of the Year voting, was eligible for a four-year extension of his rookie deal for a total value of as much as $55.5 million. It was a reasonable deal for a 24-year-old who had proven he could be part of a playoff team's core, had a great relationship with the face of the franchise, and consistently lived up to his "immaculate vibes" catchphrase in contributing to the locker room culture. The Brunsons believed it was a mere formality that the deal would be put on the table and planned to pounce on it, ecstatic about Jalen enjoying the security of a guaranteed contract that his dad never had. They'd looked at houses in Preston Hollow and other nice Dallas neighborhoods, as Jalen was eager to get a backyard with grass for his dog to roam.
Father and son had discussed the extension offer they were sure was on the horizon while relaxing on the beach during the Brunsons' annual summer vacation at the Round Hill Hotel in Montego Bay, Jamaica, the homeland of his mother's side of the family. They decided that they'd even accept a little less than the maximum that Dallas could offer if the Mavs wanted to negotiate. Fifty million was a nice round number that would work for them. "I gave 'em a discount!" Rick Brunson said later.
But the Mavs -- communicating through Brunson's CAA agents Aaron Mintz or Sam Rose -- weren't ready to make that kind of commitment. "When I first got the phone call -- [the Mavs said], 'We really want to think about it' -- it f---ed my whole vacation up," Rick Brunson grumbled.
The explanation was that Dallas had just undergone massive organizational change -- hiring a new head coach and general manager -- and wanted time to evaluate the roster. Harrison had said they wanted to wait until training camp opened in September. When that time came, the Mavs still didn't offer the extension.
There were a few major factors in the Mavs' decision to defer. With the Mavs' limited assets, it was likely that Brunson would have had to be included in any package to pursue a co-star for Dončić. If Brunson signed an extension, he wouldn't have been eligible to be traded before that season's deadline. Cuban was also worried about adding to the Dallas payroll, as every single dollar would be multiplied in luxury tax payments in accordance with the league's collective bargaining agreement. For the first dozen years of Cuban's control, he brashly blew into the luxury tax, when the payments were dollar for dollar over the limit. But he had avoided it since the Mavs' 2011 title run, as the tax payments became more punitive. That wouldn't be feasible once Dončić's supermax contract kicked in, but Cuban was determined to limit the damage to his wallet. He also didn't believe there would be much of a market for Brunson if he did hit free agency, privately pointing out that the teams set up to have salary cap space the next summer had all made heavy investments in young guards. Cuban believed at the time that the best deal Brunson could get in free agency was the mid-level exception, which would have been $45.1 million over four years.
Rick Brunson let it be known that his son wouldn't be willing to entertain contract discussions during the season if an extension wasn't offered before the October 21 opener. The Brunsons didn't stick to their guns, though. According to them, they went back to the Mavs' front office in early January -- after Brunson had kept the Mavs afloat during Dončić's absence and seized a full-time starting role -- and informed Dallas's decision-makers that he'd sign the extension if it was put on the table at that point.
"They looked the other way," Rick Brunson said later. "They had every right in the world to do so. I don't blame them for making any business decisions. That's on them."
Speculation soon started to swirl around the league about Brunson bolting for the Knicks in free agency, even though New York would have to dump several players to create enough salary cap space. He would be an unrestricted free agent -- unlike most players coming off their rookie deal, whose teams have the right to match any offer -- because his original agent negotiated for the final year of that contract to be nonguaranteed instead of a team option, a major flub by Donnie Nelson and Cuban. That agent was Leon Rose, Brunson's godfather who was now the Knicks' president.
The Brunsons' family ties with the New York franchise ran deep. New York coach Tom Thibodeau had also known Jalen since he was born. Thibodeau's relationship with Rick dated to the elder Brunson's high school days in Salem, Massachusetts, when Thibodeau coached at Salem State and would work out local teenage prospects. Thibodeau was an assistant coach in New York and Houston when Rick played for the Knicks and Rockets and hired him as an assistant when Thibodeau got head coaching jobs in Chicago and Minnesota. Sam Rose, Brunson's lifelong friend and one of his agents, is Leon's son.
"I just think this New York thing is too tied to his family to overcome," Mavs GM Nico Harrison texted to Cuban in early February.
But the Mavs opted not to act on inquiries about Brunson -- including from New York -- leading up to the February 10 trade deadline. Dallas discussed dumping injured shooting guard Tim Hardaway Jr.'s fresh four-year, $75 million contract, which would have required attaching future draft compensation, a move that would have created enough cap space to offer Brunson a larger extension. Brunson's agents passed on word that a five-year, $87 million offer would be accepted. However, Dallas didn't deal Hardaway. Instead, they meekly offered Brunson the four-year, $55.5 million extension. Finney-Smith excitedly signed his identical extension offer at the time, but Brunson turned it down, rightly believing that he had "outgrown" that number.
"That was a 30-second conversation," Rick Brunson said. "I wasn't on the phone, but how I got the message was, 'You guys wouldn't be interested in that deal now, would you?' That's how it was said to me. I just laughed."
So Brunson played out the rest of the season, steadily building his value. That three-game stint as the Mavs' primary initiator against the Jazz provided a glimpse of Brunson's ability to be the man in high-stakes situations. But Brunson was happy to be Dončić's sidekick, a role he had to patiently earn over the years as the Mavs acquired other guards, such as Seth Curry, Delon Wright, Josh Richardson, and Trey Burke, who cut into his minutes.
The Mavs had a two-pronged challenge in their search for a co-star to complement Dončić. They had depleted their trade assets with the Kristaps Porziņģis trade that had yet to be paid off, and Dončić was so ball dominant that some proven stars wouldn't want to play with him. But maybe the Mavs already had a suitable co-star in the low-maintenance Brunson, who didn't mind operating in Dončić's shadow.
"The main challenge is probably ego," Brunson said during those conference finals. "When a person has the ball in his hands for that long, people can get upset. People want the ball or people say they need a rhythm. I learned how I need to play without a rhythm. I don't need a rhythm.
"It's Luka Dončić. S---'s not changing. It's Luka Dončić. I've come to the conclusion that he's an amazing player, he's going to do a lot of great things, and this organization is going to build around him. I've grown into the mindset of, 'How can I fit that mold? How can I be successful in my role or in whatever role they want me to be in?' My dad also said it's how it's going to be. Certain guys have that aura about them. It's not whatever they say goes, but it's revolving around them -- and rightfully so. I've just kind of learned how I can be effective off of that."
But Rick Brunson, who readily admits that his son had blown past his expectations for him, couldn't help but envision how Jalen would handle the opportunity of having his own offense to run. "It's a great fit [in Dallas], but at the end of the day, my son is no different than the next man," the elder Brunson said in that Salt Lake City hotel hallway. "You try to raise them the right way in terms of understanding the game, but everyone wants what Luka has. I don't care who you are. Everyone wants that feeling of, 'Hey, I can do this, too.' I don't always think the grass is greener on the other side, but we'll sit down this summer and go through all the pros and cons of staying here or going somewhere else."
A week after the Mavs' season ended, Rick Brunson agreed to reunite with Thibodeau, accepting a deal to become an assistant coach for the Knicks. Meanwhile, according to Jalen Brunson, he heard "crickets" from the Mavs in the weeks leading up to his free agency, which caught Brunson by surprise after Cuban publicly expressed such confidence in keeping him. On draft night, a week before free agency officially opened, New York's Rose executed some financially motivated wheeling and dealing -- shedding the 11th overall pick and Kemba Walker's $9.2 million salary. It was apparent that the Knicks were maneuvering to make room under the salary cap to sign Brunson.
"We weren't shocked that they did that," Harrison said that night regarding the Knicks' planned pursuit of Brunson. "Honestly, until he tells us he doesn't want to be here, we're optimistic. We haven't heard otherwise, so we're optimistic. We have to be."
Cuban considered a fair offer for Brunson to be "Fred VanVleet money," or a five-year, $105 million deal, using the then-Toronto Raptors point guard's $21 million salary as the benchmark. (This was a year before VanVleet opted out of the final season of his contract to sign a three-year, $129 million deal with the Houston Rockets.) Cuban had taken a similar approach with Steve Nash 18 years earlier, when Kings point guard Mike Bibby's contract was the line-in-the-sand standard before the future Hall of Famer left Dallas for Phoenix in free agency.
The Knicks needed to trim more payroll to make a competitive offer to Brunson, and in the worst-case scenario, Cuban figured he could get a first-round pick out of them by cooperating in a sign-and-trade deal. That possibility went poof when the Knicks dumped the $19 million combined salaries of Nerlens Noel and Alec Burks in a deal with Detroit a couple of days before free agency opened, sending the Pistons a pair of second-round picks and $6 million in cash. ESPN reported that night that the Knicks were widely anticipated to give Brunson a four-year deal worth more than $100 million.
"Personally, deep down in my gut, I was like, 'Man, I'm out of here [in Dallas]... But I knew I had to convince him that, 'Yo, you're better than this. You can have your own team.'" Rick Brunson, on how he felt the Mavericks repeatedly disrespected his son as free agency approached
The Mavs still scheduled a meeting with Brunson and his representatives in New York on June 30, the night negotiations could (wink-wink) begin. A handful of Dallas teammates who had formed close friendships with Brunson -- including Maxi Kleber, Dwight Powell, and Finney-Smith (but not Dončić, who was with the Slovenian national team) -- planned to attend along with Cuban, Harrison, and other members of the front office. The Brunson family braced themselves for Cuban to attempt to outbid the Knicks in a last-ditch effort to avoid a painful repeat of history by losing their second-best player for nothing. The Mavs could offer up to a maximum of $175.5 million over five years.
"Yo man, I know what [Cuban is] doing. He's going to come to New York and say, 'Here goes a max deal,'" Rick Brunson recalled telling his wife and son. "I'm thinking the guy got money coming off his ass. So he's coming with a max deal and then going to say, 'What you going to do?'"
Jalen Brunson's response, according to his dad: "This, I'm taking it."
"And guess what I said? 'Gotta do it!'" Rick Brunson said.
The Mavs, with the advantage of Texas's lack of a state income tax, could have forced Brunson to make a difficult decision by at least matching the annual salary offered by the Knicks. But Cuban and the Mavs weren't willing to budge. The meeting was canceled, with each side initially claiming the other called it off -- not that it mattered. (Cuban and Brunson agreed that the Mavs canceled the meeting a couple of years later, when they briefly, awkwardly discussed the final days of Brunson's free agency when Cuban appeared on Roommates Show, a podcast Brunson co-hosts.)
Brunson formally agreed to a four-year, $104 million deal with the Knicks that night. They had nearly doubled the extension Brunson was willing to sign the previous summer, as he pointed out to his dad as they relaxed on the beach in Jamaica again days later.
"Personally, deep down in my gut, I was like, 'Man, I'm out of here [in Dallas],'" Rick Brunson, who felt the Mavs repeatedly disrespected his son, said about his attitude as free agency approached. "But I knew I had to convince him that, 'Yo, you're better than this. You can have your own team.'
"But I tell you this, this is a conversation we had: if Dallas offers the same money or more, I don't know if he leaves. Come with the money. Make it hard! You didn't. You made it easy."
The Knicks drew some criticism for a perceived overpay, but Brunson's contract proved to be a bargain. He quickly established himself as a star in New York, breathing life into one of the league's flagship franchises that had been floundering for most of the previous two decades.
Months after it became clear the Mavs had made a massive mistake, Cuban publicly blamed Brunson's dad for meddling in the negotiations. Not that Rick Brunson took offense after his son got much more money and a larger role on a winning team. "Yeah, I'm the f---ing father," Rick said. "You protect your kids, and you tell your kids the truth."
This was a classic case of revisionist history by Cuban. He claimed that the Mavs couldn't have outbid the Knicks because they were never told what the offer was, even though anyone with an Internet connection and casual interest in the NBA was aware of the range in advance of free agency. That reporting factored into the NBA office's decision to find the Knicks in violation of the league's tampering rules, which comes with the slap-on-the-wrist punishment of losing the next year's second-round pick.
"We didn't know what the bid was," Cuban said. "They never gave us a number. Knowing the numbers now, I would've paid it in a heartbeat, but he wouldn't have come anyway. There's just no possible way that it was about money."
Cuban also insisted that Brunson never indicated in January that he would sign the extension at that point, disputing the accounts from father (before free agency) and son (afterward on multiple occasions). Cuban went so far as to queue up the early February texts from Harrison to show reporters during the impromptu courtside media availability, much to the shock of the Mavs' GM. I asked Cuban to scroll up so we could see the texts from early January, matching the extension-talk timeline provided by the Brunsons. Cuban didn't appreciate the line of questioning.
"Bulls---! That's f---ing bulls---, Tim!" Cuban barked at me. "And you are a moron if you listened to those motherf---ers."