Jalen Brunson confronts Mark Cuban over parting parents ‘jab’

Jalen Brunson confronted former Mavericks owner Mark Cuban about the “jab” at his parents after he signed with the Knicks in the summer of 2022.

Cuban appeared on the podcast the All-Star point guard hosts with teammate Josh Hart and said “I apologize” when Brunson mentioned how the familial diss bothered him.

“The only thing that I … didn’t like about the whole situation was when Mark said, ‘When the parents got involved, that’s when things got messy,’” Brunson said on this week’s episode of The Roommates Show. “So that was the one thing that I was like, I kind of was like, ‘Damn that was a little jab.’”

Brunson was drafted in the second round by the Mavericks out of Villanova and spent four seasons in Dallas before signing a four-year deal worth $104 million with the Knicks two summers ago — shortly after New York had added his father, Rick Brunson, to Tom Thibodeau’s coaching staff.

Cuban, who sold his majority stake in the Mavericks last year to casino mogul Miriam Adelson and her family, had said in April 2023 that negotiations to retain Brunson “went south, when Rick took over, or the parents took over.”

Cuban initially responded that he “didn’t want to go there” on the podcast, and said “there’s no reason for us to talk about any of that stuff,” and “it wasn’t a jab at all” before eventually expressing his regret to Brunson.