Mark Cuban’s club starts the 2023-24 season with pressure to win — the right way.
Six years into leading the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association, Cynt Marshall laughs when discussing how she got there.
In February 2018, Marshall was occupied with another conversation when she felt vibrations from persistent notifications on her phone. Believing it was one of her four children, and without checking, Marshall gave the phone to her husband, Kenny. “One of the kids needs money,” she remembers saying. Reading the text message and realizing it was Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who Forbes says is worth $5.4 billion, Marshall’s husband immediately returned the device.
“You need to get off that call,” Kenny advised her. “This dude doesn’t need any money.”
Ultimately, Marshall would join the Mavs and become the NBA’s first Black female CEO. “When I heard about it,” Marshall tells Forbes, “I said, ‘Okay, but I won’t be the last.’”
This week, NBA clubs ramped up operations with annual media days and training camps as players return to work. The Mavs, worth $3.3 billion, according to Forbes, will be under a lot of pressure to win, with All-Stars Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, whom the franchise re-signed to a $126 million, three-year contract.
Marshall spoke to ForbesBLK about her journey from an AT&T executive to CEO of an NBA club. Also, the Mavs boss addresses the team’s loss of corporate partners and the $750,00 fine, levied by the NBA, for sitting players last season that should have been in the lineup.
As the Mavs try to dethrone the reigning NBA champion Denver Nuggets, Marshall leads a reshuffled business unit. In January, the team added former LIV Golf and Major League Soccer executive Matt Goodman as chief operating officer. The move followed the promotion of team executive Theo Hodges to chief revenue officer. Marshall’s executive staff is now 50% people of color and 50% women. C-suite makeup is a part of Marshall’s fairness, equality and engagement initiative, or FEE, that she hopes will protect the franchise from past workplace misconduct allegations.
“I have to do a great job so that people won’t even think twice [about hiring] somebody that looks like me,” Marshall says.
Additionally, Marshall talks about the future of the NBA’s local TV rights. The Mavs are one of more than 40 professional sports teams carried by Diamond Sports Group-owned Bally Sports regional networks. In March, the company filed for bankruptcy protection and is now shedding expensive sports contracts to save money. It’s unclear if the Mavs are on the chopping block. If so, it negatively impacts the club’s revenue of over $360 million.
“It’s a changing industry,” says Marshall. “But I’m excited about what can happen with us. [There’s an] opportunity to have more people watching our games internationally because we’ll be able to stream all over. I’m just waiting for us to be turned loose because the answer is out there.”
Watch the video to see the ForbesBLK leadership interview with Dallas Mavericks CEO Cynt Marshall.
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