Miriam Adelson and Kyrie Irving Are on a Collision Course

Alex Shultz
Wed, Jun 12, 2024

In late December, the NBA’s owners unanimously approved the sale of the Dallas Mavericks—for a price rumored to be in the range of $3.5 billion—to Miriam Adelson, the billionaire widow of the late GOP megadonor and casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, as well as to her daughter Sivan Dumont and her son-in-law Patrick Dumont. The Adelson family reportedly acquired 73 percent of the organization and left Shark Tank mogul Mark Cuban with a 27 percent stake.

The purchase was chump change for Miriam, a 78-year-old Republican megadonor whose estimated net worth of $29 billion makes her the 58th-richest person on earth.

Adelson has recently been in the news because her deep pockets are of great interest to Donald Trump; she’s reportedly serious about being one of Trump’s biggest financial backers—perhaps the biggest!—in the upcoming election. Not unrelatedly, she is a fanatical supporter of Israel who, in a right-wing Israeli newspaper she owns, called pro-Palestine rallies “ghastly gatherings of radical Muslim and BLM activists, ultra-progressives, and career agitators.”

“Deny them employment and public office, and defund their colleges and political parties,” she wrote of those who might dare disagree with Israel’s response to Oct. 7, which has killed an estimated 37,000 Palestinians, injured many tens of thousands more, displaced millions, and largely destroyed Gaza. “These people are not our critics. They are our enemies.”

So far, Adelson’s newfound ownership of the Mavs has been muted and uncontroversial. Cuban has skillfully downplayed his exit from majority ownership, posturing as though he’s still overseeing the team’s “basketball operations.” The Adelsons have put forward the image of a passive, discreet, business-oriented family. Dumont is serving as the Mavericks’ official “governor” and has been speaking on behalf of the majority ownership group, a strategy the Adelsons have previously employed when it suits their public image. (Earlier this week, journalist Pablo Torre reported that the NBA insisted that Dumont take on the role of the Mavs’ governor because Adelson’s political reputation is “radioactive.”)

The Cuban-Adelson handoff has further been obscured by the Mavericks’ being very good at basketball. They’re in an early hole in the NBA Finals but may still very well win the championship! Or at least come much closer than anyone expected. Even a Finals loss to the Boston Celtics wouldn’t negate what has been a surprisingly successful season, a major stepping stone for Luka Doncic on his Hall of Fame trajectory and a genuinely redemptive comeback for Kyrie Irving, who has had his first truly drama-free campaign in quite a while.

And yet: It doesn’t change the Mavericks’ (and the NBA’s) self-inflicted conundrum. They’re now in the Miriam Adelson business. The Adelson family has a long history of meddling in investments for ideological ends—a mission to do so, even, when it comes to its pet causes. And should Miriam decide to interpose, it’s not hard to imagine whom she would go after first.

Kyrie Irving has long been one of the NBA’s most outspoken players—a consistent advocate for marginalized and underrepresented groups, though he has also taken several alarming positions on social issues, including refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19, a silly decision that caused him to miss more than half of the 2021–22 season with the Brooklyn Nets. He followed that up in the fall of 2022 by promoting a documentary that pushed ridiculous, antisemitic conspiracy theories, after which he petulantly dragged his feet on issuing a sincere apology.

But much more admirably: In 2014 he was one of the first NBA players to publicly wear an “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirt, expressing his support for the family of Eric Garner. In 2020 he quietly bought George Floyd’s family a house. He helped produce a documentary about Breonna Taylor. He has defended, and donated to, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, including during the Keystone Pipeline protests. (Irving has Standing Rock heritage, a legacy he has publicly embraced.) He has given millions to combat food insecurity and to help victims of police violence.

Irving holds real sway with his peers and was an National Basketball Players Association vice president from 2020 through February 2023. His activism (including the less-than-stellar parts) has been a thorn in the side of the NBA, occasionally compelling the league to confront its mostly unearned reputation as the most player-friendly, social justice–oriented sports organization of its stature. (The Mavericks, as well as an Adelson spokesperson, the NBA, and the NBPA, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.)

Of late, though, Irving has mellowed out a bit. “It’s a whole new generation that’s watching me now,” he told the Ringer. “So I’m aware of that. Very responsible with what I say and what I do and how I approach my day-to-day life.”

That doesn’t mean he’s gone silent on the war in Gaza; he has just adjusted his tack.

In early November 2023, Irving reposted a critique on X of the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel: “The new dumbest thing we’re being asked to believe about this war is that Washington is powerless to stop the genocidal massacre that it is directly funding and supplying the weapons for.” A few weeks later, Irving wore a kaffiyeh during a postgame press conference.

Since then, he has reposted (and liked) dozens and dozens more posts that are highly critical of Israel’s wartime tactics and are supportive of both pro-Palestinian protests and a permanent cease-fire.

In February, Irving reposted a photo of a sign at a pro-Palestine march that read: “If Protesting for Peoples’ FREEDOM Bothers You … Then You Are the Oppresor.” In March, he liked a post citing a protest outside the Dallas office of weapons manufacturer General Dynamics. “Anyone who profits off of this genocide must be condemned, tried, and convicted of aiding in the ongoing massacre of Palestinians,” it said in part. In late April, Irving liked and reposted multiple posts that praised protesters on college campuses. And in May, he liked a post that said: “i hate when celebrities or anyone refers to the genocide of palestine as a ‘very complex situation’ it is not. this is the most documented, clear cut display of colonialism and imperialism in the modern day history of the world. and a widely documented mass murder.”

Irving’s stance hasn’t received much publicity, to some extent because he has avoided directly speaking to the issue. But it’s hard to imagine that his speech or influence hasn’t been noticed by the Adelsons. After all, speech and influence is of the utmost importance to them.

Miriam Farbstein was born in Tel Aviv in 1945 and grew up in Israel; she claims to have conducted “secret military research” for the Israel Defense Forces, as she recounted during a 2022 speech. “I went on to a career in healing, as a doctor and addiction expert,” she said. She moved to New York in the late ’80s, and met Sheldon Adelson before he was rich rich. They married in 1991 and started growing their casino empire in Nevada (and, later, in Macau and Singapore).

Miriam and Sheldon later became a ruthless political duo, concerned primarily with a far-right agenda in the United States and Israel. In fact, Miriam was often even more ardent than Sheldon. In 2016 they gave a talk with “rabbi to the stars” Shmuley Boteach; at one point, Sheldon offhandedly conceded that he couldn’t say “there’s no discrimination in Israel,” an admission that set Miriam off. “What discrimination is there in Israel?” she indignantly asked him off mic. Sheldon backed down. (This was the same man who once called Palestinians “an invented people.”)

The Adelsons were the largest donors to the Republican Party between 2011 and 2020, tossing more than half a billion dollars at GOP causes and candidates, as Bloomberg reported. They were also President Donald Trump’s biggest donors in 2016 and 2020. After Sheldon’s death, in early 2021, Miriam took a brief step back. She’s now prepared to help Trump again in exchange for his help in furthering her extremist ends—namely, but not limited to, Israeli annexation of the West Bank, per New York magazine. Politico recently reported that Adelson is willing to spend nine figures to boost Trump’s election chances.

Adelson doesn’t, in theory, align with all of the Republican Party’s platform—she claims to disagree with the GOP on abortion, for instance. But the party aligns with her slightly more than the Democrats on her No. 1 issue. As New York magazine reported, her “patronage kicked up enough influence for Adelson to secure from Trump the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It helped produce a pardon for Aviem Sella, Adelson’s high-school crush and handler for [convicted spy] Jonathan Pollard. It led to Trump recognizing Israel’s sovereignty in Golan Heights, territory Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War.”

The Adelsons are also longtime propagandists for their causes. They established Israel Hayom, a free-to-read newspaper, in 2007. “Among the newspaper’s first jobs: to create scandal around sitting prime minister Ehud Olmert,” New York magazine reported. Olmert resigned a year later and, in his memoir, blamed the Adelsons (among others) for his ouster. For many years, Israel Hayom was accused of regurgitating Benjamin Netanyahu’s political agenda. “Israel Hayom is Pravda—the mouthpiece of one man,” former far-right Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett once said. The Adelsons’ relationship with Netanyahu eventually frayed over personal and political quarrels, but Israel Hayom still serves as a right-wing news source. In 2018 Miriam assumed the role of publisher, and she regularly scores op-eds whenever she pleases.

“The biggest impact that [the Adelsons] have had is in terms of the Israeli media sphere,” Alex Kane, a senior staff reporter at Jewish Currents, told Slate. “Israel Hayom remains a widely read newspaper in Israel. It continues to push a right-wing agenda in consolidating the rule of the Israeli right and, crucially, pushing the Israeli right’s agenda of domination over the West Bank.”

Then, in 2015, the Adelsons secretly purchased an American paper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Sheldon tried to hide his family’s identity behind a Delaware LLC called News + Media Capital Group. Disturbed Review-Journal reporters took up the uncomfortable task of investigating their own publication. Under intense scrutiny, the Adelsons stepped forward as the new owners of the publication, claiming that they had always planned to reveal themselves in due time. The man who identified himself as the brains behind the Review-Journal purchase? Patrick Dumont.

“That was the thinnest of all possible fig leaves,” Jon Ralston, the founder of the Las Vegas Independent and a veteran Nevada reporter, told Slate. “No one knew who Patrick Dumont was, and most people still don’t know who Patrick Dumont is.”

Sheldon insisted that he and his family would play no role in editorial decisions at the paper, but that wasn’t (and isn’t) the impression of local reporters. In the aftermath of the Adelsons’ purchase, the Review-Journal lost a slew of key reporters and editors, who chose to depart under contentious circumstances. Just like at Israel Hayom, Miriam’s writings have since plastered the Review-Journal. In late February, the paper inexplicably republished her remarks from a December event in Texas, all under Adelson’s byline. At the event, Adelson thanked her “dear friend” Gov. Greg Abbott (whom she has given at least $1 million in donations) and denounced the “betrayal by some in the West” who have not offered a full-throated endorsement of Israel.

In short, it’s hard to imagine that Adelson and Irving aren’t aware of each other.

Another team owner has already duked it out with Irving within the past few years—that would be Brooklyn Nets owner Joseph Tsai, who reportedly prevented the team from sending Irving to his preferred destination, the Los Angeles Lakers. The Tsai-Irving dustup was the extremely isolated, petty dispute between team ownership and star player in which the player didn’t garner much sympathy, given that Irving was on the tail end of missing a bunch of games due to his refusal to get vaccinated, followed by a suspension for his endorsement of the aforementioned antisemitic documentary.

But the past several decades are also littered with countless counterexamples of billionaire team owners and sports leagues enacting punitive, often petty punishments onto players who offend their sensibilities. NFL owners, of course, had an absolute fit when players started kneeling for the national anthem. A few years ago, Sports Illustrated dropped a bombshell story about now-deceased Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, including the allegation that “Richardson indicated that players addressing social issues could be subject to punishment.” And just Google “Marge Schott” for one of the wildest Wikipedia pages you’ll ever read.

The Adelson’s Mavs buy has widely been described as a real estate play, an attempt by the family’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. casino operation to someday expand into Texas via a brand-new basketball arena contained within a brand-new casino resort. (Like Cuban, the Adelsons have been lobbying to legalize gambling in the state.) But Adelson’s accumulation of wealth—including, now, in Texas—is still ultimately in service of her political “speech.” As New York magazine reported, Citizens United, the Supreme Court case that essentially allowed wealthy individuals and corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections, was seen by Sheldon Adelson as matanat el, a “gift from God.” A gambling empire is nice. But it’s not Miriam’s primary motivator.

Surely the NBA knows as much. It seems the league and the Mavericks have settled on an uneasy charade, an unspoken truce. Miriam’s screeds are to be ignored, and for now, at least, the family won’t try to restrict the speech of the Mavericks’ second-best player. Luckily for the Mavs, their second-best player does not seem to want to rock the boat too much, due to his own career considerations. (Though, again, he’s not exactly hiding his views!)

The problem for the NBA is that the members of the Adelson family have repeatedly demonstrated that they’re not interested in being quiet about the issues that matter to them. Miriam is dangerously close to hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy on national television six months into her ownership tenure, which is, at the very least, an uneasy harbinger of things to come.

Where this all goes is still a mystery. So, best of luck to those involved, especially—and I mean this sincerely—to Kyrie Irving.