In June 2006, the Dallas Mavericks fell to Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals. It was a thrilling series, with Games 3, 5 and 6 decided by a combined six points, but the Mavs came up short.
That’s when owner Mark Cuban came to the rescue.
“We lost [in] ’05-06, guys were dejected,” former Mavericks guard Jason Terry said on The Zach Gelb Show. “I got a random text in the middle of the night. My wife’s looking at my phone like, ‘Excuse me, it’s 2 a.m. Who’s texting you?’ It said, ‘Meet at the jet.’ I said, ‘It’s Mark.’ She says, ‘Oh my God, you better hurry up and get there, it must be urgent.’”
So Terry went. When he arrived, he couldn’t believe what he saw.
“We get to the jet, Dirk’s already on the plane, he’s got a couple of his buddies with him, and we have no clothes or nothing. We’re like, ‘Okay, what’s going on?’” Terry recalled. “[Cuban] said, ‘Man, we’re going to Vegas. We got to get away. We got to talk about the future of the team and the franchise. Let’s go unwind.’”
Terry, then 28, was stunned.
“First of all, I had never flown on a private jet,” he said. “Second of all, the owner is like, ‘Let’s talk about the future.’ That really had me excited about being a Maverick and how much it meant to Mark to really try to win and bring home a championship.”
Terry played for the Mavs from 2004-12. In 2009, he was the NBA’s Sixth Math of the Year, and in 2011 he helped the Mavericks to their first NBA title.
That trip to Vegas? Phenomenal.
“If the walls could talk, I could tell you, but what goes on in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” Terry said, prompting laughter from Gelb. “We had a great time. It was nothing malicious. Just a bunch of guys talking basketball, enjoying themselves. We had a good time, man. It was good because you got to bond. When you’re on a team and your owner is just as bought in with the sweat equity as the guys that are playing, it means that much more to you. I think Mark has been like that since day one since he’s taken over, and he hasn’t wavered yet.”