NBA denies discriminating against new Mavs owner for being a Donald Trump supporter

Popular sports personality Pablo Torre was on his podcast “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” where he reported on how Miriam Adelson’s political leaning affected her purchase of the Dallas Mavericks.

Adelson is a noted republican donor who in 2020 gave $172 million to GOP initiatives and according to Torre’s podcast has given $100 million to Trump’s campaign since his conviction.

This reportedly caused NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to place restrictions on her ownership of the team.

“Her political reputation was apparently so radioactive that the NBA and commissioner Adam Silver would not allow her to be the governor of the team,” said Torre, “So Miriam’s son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, an executive at her casino company, was appointed governor of the Mavericks instead. And the reason why the ostensibly left-leaning NBA insisted on this is obvious once you step just a foot outside of sports, because nobody donated more to Donald Trump in 2020 than Miriam Adelson.”

Torre’s guest Liz Weil also speculated that Adelson’s ownership of the Mavs was part of a plan to expand gambling in Texas.

“The real play here has always been to bring gambling to Texas. That’s a plan they’ve been working on really aggressively since 2020, and they don’t want sports betting where you’re sitting on your couch and betting on your phone. They want you to come to a casino. So in particular, that’s what they’re lobbying for. That’s what they’re spending tons of money all over the capital, all over the state, not hiding it whatsoever,” said Weil, “So I think buying the team gets her a tremendous amount of political capital, It gets you a tremendous amount of publicity.”

Adelson was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and attended medical school at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Medicine. In 1986 while a physician assistant at Rockafeller University she met her second husband Sheldon Adelson and the two were married in 1991 and remained so until Sheldon died in 2021.

The Adelson’s fortune stems from hotels and casinos with the family’s net worth at an estimated $29.5 billion as reported by Forbes.