Mark Cuban’s NBA team has fired back at an explosive lawsuit filed this week by its former general manager, who alleged that he was terminated last year after telling the billionaire that a team executive had sexually harassed and assaulted his nephew.
In the team’s own filing on Friday, Cuban’s attorneys disputed those claims and alleged that former Dallas Mavericks GM Donnie Nelson had threatened to leak comprising information, including the sexual orientation of a team employee, unless he secured what was, “in effect, a blackmail payment” as high as $100 million.
Nelson’s lawsuit, filed on Thursday, made a number of serious allegations against both Cuban and the Mavericks—which had already faced allegations of a “corrosive workplace culture” following a 2018 Sports Illustrated investigation.
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The central allegation in Nelson’s suit concerned the 2020 All Star weekend in Chicago. A number of team executives had gathered for the event, including Cuban’s “right-hand person” Jason Lutin, according to the lawsuit.
Nelson’s adult nephew was apparently interested in pursuing work in the sports and entertainment world, so he and Lutin had lunch along with other members of Nelson’s family to discuss career prospects, the lawsuit said.
Subsequently, however, Lutin allegedly invited the unnamed nephew back to his hotel room ostensibly to talk about potential jobs. Instead, according to Nelson’s claims, he sexually harassed and assaulted him. The filings did not provide extensive details on the alleged misconduct.
Nelson claimed that his nephew ultimately reported Lutin to the Mavericks and received a settlement from “Cuban and the Mavericks” so that the problem “could be swept under the rug”—but the general manager said he was not told about it.
Lutin did not respond to a text message from The Daily Beast, though on Thursday he called the allegations a “complete lie” in an email to ESPN. “What this man [Nelson] is doing to someone like me is absolutely unspeakable,” he added.
Nelson’s lawsuit claimed that he eventually became aware of the alleged assault and confronted Cuban multiple times about the situation.
He asserted that their relationship then devolved and that Cuban “abruptly fired” him, though the billionaire ultimately offered him a $52 million settlement if he withdrew a complaint he made with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and agreed to certain confidentiality requirements, the complaint said.
(In an email to The Daily Beast, Cuban said that Lutin had previously left the Mavericks because of Nelson but came back after the GM was fired.)
In the Mavericks’ legal response, the team offered a markedly different version of events compared to Nelson.
According to the filing, Nelson approached the billionaire over the summer of 2020 with “purported scandalous allegations from a family member” that he said he could “‘make go away’ in exchange for a long-term employment contract.”
The allegation involved Nelson’s 29-year-old nephew, the response said. Cuban’s representatives told Nelson to contact the police if an assault had taken place, but the general manager insisted that none had occurred, according to the filing.
The team later began conducting an investigation into the matter, Cuban’s attorneys wrote, with the cooperation of nearly all relevant Mavericks employees, who provided investigators with text messages.
“The one curious exception was Nelson,” the filing said. It further claimed that the allegations involving Nelson’s nephew “were not as sensational” as the former GM has now outlined in court documents and that no assault took place. Cuban’s response did not dispute, however, that Nelson’s nephew had received a financial settlement.
Cuban’s lawyers claimed that Nelson’s firing had nothing to do with the situation but rather poor job performance, the “diversion of his time and attention” to dozens of other business projects, and unspecified violations of the team’s human resources policies.
Last November, after his termination, attorneys for Nelson sent the Mavericks a letter demanding a cash settlement, which they later quantified at $100 million or more, the filing said. If the team didn’t comply, the ousted GM allegedly threatened to publicize information that would embarrass the team and other parties, including his former billionaire boss.
In a statement to The Daily Beast, one of Nelson’s attorneys, Rogge Dunn, stood by the initial complaint.
“The Mavericks claim that in August 2020 Nelson approached Mark Cuban and said ‘he could make go away’ ‘scandalous allegations from a family member’ ‘in exchange for a long-term contract,’” he wrote.
“If that allegation is true, the Mavericks would not have continued to employ Nelson for another 10 months and would’ve reported his alleged extortion to police.”
