Dallas Mavericks CEO Cynt Marshall leaves with respect, positive impact on organization

Dallas Mavericks CEO Cynt Marshall walked into the Mavericks’ 2024 Holiday Party on Dec. 21 excited to boogie to her beloved “Cupid Shuffle” at some point while singing to the top of her lungs on the dance floor. To her emotional surprise, it was actually a 65th birthday party/retirement soiree for the Mavs’ adored outgoing CEO with the likes of head coach Jason Kidd in attendance.

“I stood in a receiving line for over an hour and a half,” Marshall told Andscape in a recent phone interview. “Some people were in the back dancing. I like to dance. So, they were looking for me to dance and do the ‘Cupid Shuffle’ and sing ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.’ And they kept looking for me, but they didn’t realize I was out there with all these employees lined up one by one telling me about how their lives are better and what kind of impact I hand on them.

“And it just had me in tears. And then they had this whole video they did for me and said I can’t even watch the full video probably until I’m just sitting down somewhere by myself; it’s going to make me really cry. And that’s all I ever wanted. That’s all I ever wanted here. It’s all I ever wanted in any of the 17 jobs that I’ve had is to make lives better for people.”

The Mavericks then-owner Mark Cuban hired Marshall on Feb. 26, 2018. This was about a week after Sports Illustrated reported allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct against former team executives and that executives weren’t responsive when women complained of workplace violations. Previously, Marshall was senior vice president of human resources at AT&T and chief diversity officer. With the Mavs, she made history becoming the first Black female CEO in NBA history.

During her tenure, Marshall was credited for quickly changing the Mavericks’ workplace to a much more positive and inclusive environment while hiring women and people of color in leadership roles. The author of “You’ve Been Chosen” helped build a deeper connection with the Mavericks and the Dallas-Fort Worth area through philanthropy, social justice outreach and activism while guiding the franchise through the coronavirus pandemic. More recently, the Richmond, California, native helped launch a new TV partnership that began this season allowing approximately 10 million Texans to watch Mavs games for free. Moreover, she oversaw $30 million in recent upgrades to the American Airlines Center.

Today is Marshall’s last day as CEO of the Mavericks. She will serve as a consultant for the Mavs through December 2025. Marshall will be replaced on Jan. 1 by former Golden State Warriors president and former Phoenix Suns president and CEO Rick Welts.

“Cynt Marshall is a force of nature. I like to say her superpower is bringing people together, but the truth is she has many superpowers,” Mavericks’ governor Patrick Dumont said in a statement. “Cynt has always gone above and beyond in everything she has done, and her leadership of the Dallas Mavericks is no exception. She is an indelible fixture in the history of this franchise, and we are eternally grateful. The positive impact she has had here will be felt for a very long time.”

The following is an exclusive Q&A with Marshall in which she reflects back on her biggest challenges turning around the Mavs under turmoil, how she was initially scrutinized by some Mavs employees for being an African American woman in sports, the door she opened for women and people of color, what impact she hoped she made, her biggest triumphs and what is next in retirement.

I want to take you back first to taking the job and I’m sure people, with what was going on in the organization, probably thought you were crazy doing that. I don’t know if people thought they might be using you to put you in that position, but how do you reflect on that and what people were saying about you taking that position?

I’ll just tell you a quick story about one of our very senior employees who came to me [recently]… He says, ‘When you came here and we saw the energy, the focus and just all that,’ he said, ‘I looked at somebody and said, this will probably last about two months. She doesn’t know basketball. Nobody can sustain that level of energy for a long time.’

‘But Cyn, it wasn’t even just about that. I didn’t think Mark Cuban would just continue to let you run things and do what he needed to do. I just didn’t think that was sustainable. And here we are almost seven years later…’ And that’s when he started crying. He said, ‘We have a great workplace. Mark just partnered with you to do what you wanted to do and what we wanted to do. It has been the best seven years of my career and I thought it was going to last two months.’ And then he just went on to just talk about different things that we’ve done and all that. And then he just thanked me for saying yes to coming to the Mavs.

And that kind just sums it up in terms of what some people thought. And it’s not for bad reasons. They just thought what they thought. They didn’t think I would be here a long time. Of course, we had the one very senior person who said it was a PR stunt by Mark Cuban, and I would last 90 days because I didn’t know the business of basketball. I was a woman. He had his whole reasons, and that guy, I consider him a friend now. People just had their thoughts and my thought was Mark asked me to do something. I prayed about it. I knew I didn’t know the business of basketball. He told me, don’t worry about it, that they would teach it to me. And that’s why it’s so ironic to me that one of the very first people to call me and reach out to me was Rick Welts.

We knew what we needed to do, we had our plan and I knew what I needed to learn. We’ve been on this journey to create a great place to work and we’re on that journey and we are better now than we were almost seven years ago. And that’s because we have just a lot of great people around here on and off the court that are committed to the fans and each other and the community. It’s beautiful. So, we did it and we’re still doing it.

Were there challenging times in the beginning with the Mavs where you weren’t embraced and maybe even second-guessed taking the job?

My colleagues embraced me. There was some skepticism around here in the Mavs organization. Mark, obviously, people trusted him. Some people were just trying to wait it out and see what happened. Some people thought I would be gone after we finished the investigation, but he didn’t hire me to come in and do an investigation. He hired me to be the CEO. But some thought, ‘Okay, well somebody else will come in and run it later, run our business.’ There was some skepticism and we dealt with it. I heard remarks like, ‘You don’t know this or you don’t know that…’ But over time I gained people’s respect and surely they had mine because these people are amazing and it just worked.

I still get some of that to this day where I know I am not respected like somebody who knows the business of basketball or some man who’s been in the business a while will be respected. And I just can’t let that bother me because that’s somebody else’s baggage, that’s not mine. I have a job to do and that’s to lead an organization. And I have a philosophy about how I lead. I have a philosophy about bringing people together, make sure I have the right people on my team, and we run it like a business and we engage the community and we just do what we need to do. So yes, I’ve dealt with skepticism and I still deal with some of that, but it hasn’t stopped me for a second.

I was raised in an environment where there weren’t a whole lot of people who look like me at senior levels. And that’s just something I’ve had to navigate my entire 44-year professional career. And the skepticism, it’s there, it’s always there. But you have to know who you are and whose you are more importantly. And that’s what guides me. And I always ask the Lord, and I’ve done this for 44 years, I have two questions I always ask: ‘Lord, what is it you want me to do?’ I want to be very clear about what I have to deliver for the business and deliver for the shareholders and all that. And then, ‘Who is it that you want me to touch?’ Because I figured there are some people that I need to touch and I’ve been chosen to be in a certain place for a certain reason as crazy and as strange as it seems, and this was unusual.

You have a woman who worked at AT&T for 36 years. Some people like to talk about the last two years of my last job, the HR/chief diversity officer combination. And then I had the HR piece two years before that. But I spent my first 32 years of my career working all over our business in line technical jobs, running businesses, running states, whatever. And so, I do know how to run a business and I do know how to rally people together to lead business and to do what we need to do. So, if somebody’s skeptical that I don’t know how to run a basketball business, that’s okay. That just doesn’t bother me. I understand why people would be skeptical. People are still skeptical now wanting to know did we really run a good business or was it just a community step. It wasn’t just a community step. That’s an aspect of running a good business, but that skepticism really doesn’t bother me. And I probably dealt with less of it than people would imagine. It really was not. It was not an issue.

What was the biggest challenge when you got there?

The biggest challenge was trying to instill a new culture, a values-based culture, while purging an old culture because there were still people here when I got here. Remember, I came in at the time of an investigation, the [Sports Illustrated] story had just broke. So, there were still people here who were a part of that culture, who led that culture and who thought that culture was okay. And it wasn’t. So, part of the challenge was to come in with a set of values, a vision. And my vision was we would lead, set the standard in the NBA for diversity and inclusion in all aspects of our business. That’s literally the vision we laid out and that we would have these set of values and you know what they are: character, respect, authenticity, fairness, teamwork and safety, both physical and emotional.

I came in with a 100-day plan with those 200 initiatives and all that. There were people internally that didn’t embrace it at high levels. There were people that told their people when I had one-on-ones with every single employee, to not talk to me. And one employee just flat out told me how badly he wanted to talk to me. He started crying and he said, ‘But I’ve been told that this is just a PR stunt by Mark Cuban. We’ve all been told that and just don’t talk to you.’ And then when I went and talked to that leader about it, he admitted that yes, he told his people that because he didn’t like the changes we were talking about and he didn’t think there was anything wrong with the culture. And I just said we could disrespectfully agree to disagree.

“We worked through all that and we did have to make as some personnel changes so we could get on with really instilling a culture that I believe undergirds a great place to work. And so, we did it. And so, it was heavy lifting. We had to put a code of conduct in place, ethics and all that. And we’re not perfect. We, we have issues and all that, but the commitment I made to these people is that we would do what we could to make sure that we didn’t tolerate that kind of misconduct and the things that some of them had dealt with in the past, and that we would operate off a set of values, a code of conduct and we would truly run our business like a business. And that’s kind of the whole operational efficiency thing, having a business plan, having a budget, being profitable, all that kind of stuff.

There were some people who couldn’t even embrace that. They’re like, ‘Why do we need a budget? Why do we need a business plan?’ Basically, we don’t need to make money, we just need to have butts in the seats. Just stuff that I was just surprised that I heard. But fortunately, the majority of these people who were here are fabulous people who were committed to having a career in sports, and they wanted the kind of workplace that I was talking about. And that’s what I was hearing when I had my one-on-ones. And so, I remember calling in my chief ethics person and my chief human resources person one day, one night, and I was just crying. I was approaching the end of all my one-on-ones, and I said, ‘I know you guys are here and you’re supporting me and all that. I need to make sure you’re all-in because these people deserve to have the career in sport that they sought out to have just like we had our career in telecom and communications. They deserve that.’

And I was so committed and all-in to working hard. And remember I signed a three-year contract [initially]. I said I’m working hard the next three years to give these people truly what they deserve and what they came here to get. It was all about delivering for them. And there were some people that just, they didn’t want to embrace that. And so, we were trying to instill that new culture and trying to purge the old one at the same time. We still had an investigation going. And so, we had some rocky moments during that time, but we got through it. So, instilling a new culture while purging an old culture was the biggest challenge that I had in this job. And every now and then something crazy will pop up and I’m like, ‘We don’t do that anymore.’

Did you think you had any resistance because you were a Black woman initially from some of those people?

Yes, I had people who just said that. I had the one guy admit to me that he [didn’t believe in me because] I was a woman who did not know sports, and a Black woman on top of that. When I first started working in my career when I was 21 years old, and I would run into issues and I would just laugh and say, ‘I don’t think these people understand that I’m not a triple threat to be young, female and Black. That’s kind of like a triple blessing.’ And so, I can’t control how people perceive that. I just got to deliver the goods and love these people and get the job done. So yes, but race in my opinion hasn’t been really an issue. I’ve had just issues period in my life.

At the arena people come up to you and they make stereotypes. Somebody thought I was an usher one time. That was because probably I had on a black St. John suit. I don’t know why they thought I was an usher. So that kind of stuff, it doesn’t bother me. It exists in my life. Being a woman was the bigger issue for some people and not being respected because I wasn’t one of the good old boys in sports, and that’s okay.

But I’m telling you, when I walked in here and we had our general manager, we had our coach, we made a commitment that we would be one and that we would operate as one. And they respected me, I can honestly say that. And we all three reported to Mark. They respected me. We worked together as a team, we attended each other’s meetings, events, all that kind of stuff. And so, I got no resistance from the people who I had to partner with and my colleagues when I got here. They were just wonderful. Some other people had issues, that’s okay, that’s my life. I am a Black woman. I’m not a young Black woman anymore, but I am a Black woman. And there are things that come with that.

When did you also start noticing the impact you women who were motivated and inspired by you getting that historic NBA position?

NBA [commissioner] Adam Silver and [deputy commissioner] Mark Tatum asked me to speak at a women’s conference that they were having at the NBA. All the teams sent somebody, they had all the women there from the league office, and they asked me to be one of the speakers. And so, I actually spoke that day. I did this whole thing with the crowns and tiaras and all that kind of stuff, and the place was electric. Adam was into it; everybody was into it. I had people dancing and all that. [The NBA] asked me to come and do it, which to me said it was just a signal that we want this inclusion.

Our workplace promise here that I laid out at the Mavs is every voice matters and everybody belongs. We really try to live that. It was as if the NBA was also saying that we want you to be included Cyn, and we want these women to know that they’re all included, and they are valued here at the NBA. After that presentation, so many women were coming up to me just saying how they truly felt included, how they were all appreciating what Adam and the team were doing that day. Then it was later when I went to the Black Enterprise Women of Power Summit, when the NBA of course sent a contingent of people, and these Black women wanted me to spend time with them after one of the sessions and just the questions they asked, the mentoring that occurred that day. At some point, I took my shoes off and we were sitting on the floor just talking about all kinds of stuff. That turned out to be an annual thing where they looked forward to spending that kind of time.

But it was that first one where I knew, okay, this is impactful to people. I’m just working. I’m just sitting there working. I got my sleeve rolled up. We got the business plan. We’re doing what we’re doing to serve the players, the fans, all that. And I don’t really stop to think about my personal impact and what it means to other people to see me in this position. I just don’t stop to thinking about it until I’m in those kinds of moments where I’m mentoring and advising and then it hits me. ‘Wow, I better just keep doing this, right? And I just better just live, right?’ Because people are watching. And it’s not a weight or anything, it’s just a recognition that people are watching and I’m having an impact, and that’s not something actually that I seek to do.

I never sought out to kind of be this big role model in trailblazer. But I do seek to have impact and to have a positive impact on people’s lives. And when I’m in those kinds of moments, that’s when I realized that the Lord is using me in that way. So, it was at that first NBA women’s conference and then the subsequent Black Enterprise Women of Power Summit.

When you reflect back, what do you think you’ve accomplished and what are you most proud of?

We established a great culture to work in. We established a great way to run a business because it’s not mutually exclusive. And we really did establish a place where every voice matters and everybody belongs. People want to work for the Dallas Mavs. And again, like I said, it is not perfect. We got our issues like anybody else. So, I feel good about the fact that people on the business side are very proud to wear this logo. What I’m the most proud of is that we are running our business like a business. We are successful, we are profitable. We can hold our results up to other teams in the NBA. We have a great business planning process.

I’m very proud of our Dallas Mavericks advisory council that I started when I first got here. I led a council like this very similar in my early years at t where we bring in 25 to 30 people, we put them on a council, we change out every two years. In fact, we just established the next cohort. And they advise us. We meet with them quarterly, we share different plans that we have, our marketing plan, different aspects of our business. And they are advisors for us, and they cross the business community, the faith-based community, different entrepreneurs, top leaders in Dallas. It’s just a cross section of people and a cross section of diverse people. It’s to the point now where people actually are asking can they be a part of the Dallas Mavericks Advisory Council.

Why leave now? Was there a moment that led to the decision? Was it the recent change in ownership?

When [Cuban] told me at the end of last year that he was selling the team, I thought, I love these people. I love what we’re doing. But I had to really start thinking, is it time for them to have somebody else as a CEO that could take it to the next level? It’s probably time in my life to start thinking about the things that I’m not able to do because the job is consuming and everything. And I have said for a long time that from ages 65 to 75 I want to take those 10 years and run really hard for kids and for education and permanence and stability for our kids. All four of my kids are adopted. And I really want to dedicate those years of my life to that.

And so last year when Mark sold the team, I just had my 64th birthday, and I said, ‘Okay, well, 65 is next year.’ And so, Mark and I, we talked. I told Patrick when I had my first meeting with him at the end of January of this year, I told him, I said, ‘Did Mark tell you that this is my last season with the team?’ And he said, ‘No, he didn’t tell me that because we wouldn’t have bought the team.’ And then we laughed. I said, ‘No, you would’ve bought the team. He said, ‘Yeah, but I mean, no, he didn’t tell us that.’ And so, I told him that was my last season.

And he says, ‘Well, I don’t really want to hear that, and you’re too young. What are you going to do?’ And then I just started rattling off all this stuff that I told him I was planning on doing around my book tour. I’d never officially went on a book tour when I wrote my book in September 2022. The stuff with my corporate boards. But more importantly, the stuff that I wanted to do with kids and dedicate at least 10 years of my life being very intentional about making life better for some kids.

We just still have so much to do. We had obviously, thank goodness, a deep playoff run. And so, the end of the season now at this point is June where we started our business planning process. And then we ended up deciding that it is going to be the end of the year. And then we decided we would announce it in enough time for him to do a search and for people to come forward and for him to find people because I want to make sure to leave it in good hands. And then if he didn’t find somebody by December 31, I had already agreed I’d stay on until we felt like we could pass off my baby and leave it in good hands. We are leaving it in great hands.

So that’s kind of how it worked out. And hopefully we’ve had a textbook kind of transition and announcement and all that. And the way I describe this next 10-year phase of my life is I call it the three Bs: ‘Books, boards and better.’ I will hopefully go on a book tour for ‘You’ve Been Chosen,’ because people like it. They’re asking me to come and talk about it. So, I’ll do that and then hopefully write two other books, on one on leadership and one on motherhood. I want to write one on motherhood and about my mother putting two books in my hand at an early age. A math book in one hand, the Bible in the other. And I hope to call it, ‘A Math Book and the Bible,’ but we’ll see what the publisher says.

I want to talk about my mother, but then I want to talk about my path to motherhood. And there are all these different paths. And mine was of course, with four second trimester miscarriages, a death of a daughter at six months old, and then the Lord blessed us to adopt four kids. So, I just want to talk about the different ways families are made and then my journey as a mother and raising kids because it’s more than a notion whether you are working full-time or not. Raising kids is a full-time job by itself. So, I want to talk about motherhood, then I want to write a book on leadership in my 44 years as a leader.

I’m on four corporate boards, two public, two private. I want to just pour into those more and help them just with my corporate experience and running a business and really listening to, learning from and loving the people. I feel very committed to making sure corporations serve everybody. They’ve asked me to be on those boards to really add value and help them make their business better. And now I will have more time to do that. I’m on Yahoo’s board, I’m on Chime’s board. So, I’ll have time to really devote to them because I could barely make half the meetings because of my schedule, and they didn’t seem to mind that. But now I get to pour into that.

But the ‘better’ part is what I’m really excited about. I want to wake up every day knowing that something I did the day before significantly changed a kid’s life for the better. They won’t know it’s me. They don’t need to know it’s me. But I want to know that my actions just made somebody’s life better, some young person’s life. I don’t know if that’s being a college president because I’ve been approached about that a lot. I don’t know what that is in the education space or in the adoption and foster care space, but something I’m going to do will significantly impact lives of children and make their lives better. So, books, boards and better. That is where I’m headed January 1.

I will still be a very active consultant for a year for the Mavs. I’ve made that promise to Patrick. I’ve just made that promise again several times to Rick. I am not going anywhere. I’m not leaving Dallas. I love these people. I love the community. I’ll be involved in the business community and nonprofits. I’ll just have more time for that kind of stuff. And then I’ll still be at games.

I don’t plan on being at a lot of games from January to April because I have all these kids that my husband and I and my family send to college around the country. And every year I tell these kids I’m going to try to come and see them on campus and I don’t get a chance to. So, I hope to spend January to April going around loving on these kids who we are sending to college but I never really get to see because I want it to be more than just a check. And fortunately, my sister spends a lot of time talking to these kids and advising them, but some of them don’t have parental support. I actually want to be able to show up from January to April. Minus [NBA] All-Star Weekend, January to April is very busy in our basketball world. So, I haven’t been able to make those trips. So, I already told Rick and Patrick, I hope to be able to go and see these kids January to April, and then I’m going to come back in the arena ready for the playoffs and ready for that Finals run.

What kind of impact and legacy do you hope that you’ve left there?

It’s the legacy that I talk to my kids about all the time. I tell them when I am laid out somewhere in some beautiful suit looking gorgeous, all I want them to be able to say about their mother is she left it better than she found it.