Mavericks former player Jason Terry recalls what occurred after a loss in 2006 NBA Finals

Jason Terry, who retired from the NBA in 2018, recently said in a radio interview with CBS Sports’ Zach Gelb that he received a mysterious late-night text message from Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, during the following days after that loss in 2006 NBA Finals.

“I got a random text in the middle of the night,” Terry says in the interview. “My wife’s looking at my phone, like, ‘Excuse me, it’s 2 a.m., who’s texting?’ And it said, ‘Meet at the jet.’ And I said, ‘It’s Mark [Cuban].’

Terry’s wife told him he’d better hurry up and meet with Cuban because she was firmly believed the situation “must be urgent” for him to text him in the middle of the night. When Terry met Cuban at the billionaire’s private jet, he saw that his teammate Dirk Nowitzki was already on the plane with some of his friends.

“We have no clothes or nothing and we were just like ‘OK, what’s going on?’” Terry said confused, adding that Cuban responded: ”‘We’re going to Vegas, man. We got to get away. We’ve got to talk about the future of the team and the franchise and let’s go unwind.’”

“And I said ‘Wow. That’s never happened,’” Terry says.

“We had a good time. It was good because you got to bond,” he added, not going further to what actually happened.

Terry was very impressed by Cuban’s gesture, the way he was connecting with the players, how much he cared about their relationships and how obsessed he was with winning really flabbergasted Terry, who stated that he had never met someone with such a strain of leadership.

“When you’re on a team and your owner is just as bought in with the sweat equity of the guys playing, it means that much more to you,” Terry says in the interview. “Mark has been like that since day one, since he’s taken over and he hasn’t wavered yet.”

Cuban, after bought the team, wanted to build a team that would win multiple championships and his moves prove exactly that. In 2000 he signed Dennis Rodman and even attempted to approach and convince Michael Jordan to join his team instead of the Washington Wizards a year later. In 2011 he finally achieved his goal when Nowitzki and his teammates managed to beat 4–2 and lift the Larry O’Brien trophy.