Mark Aguirre, one of the first faces of the Dallas Mavericks franchise, will finally be able to watch his jersey lifted to the rafters at American Airlines Center.
Team Governor Patrick DuMont announced
on Monday that Aguirre’s Number 24 jersey will be retired on Jan. 29 before the Mavericks host the Charlotte Hornets.
At 6’6” and 230 pounds during his playing career, Aguirre had the Mavericks’ record for most points in a season with 2,330 in 1983-84. That mark lasted for 40 years until Luka Dončić broke Aguirre’s record with 2,370 points in 2023-24.
Even 45 years after he was drafted No. 1 overall by the Mavericks in 1981, Aguirre remains in the top five of virtually all major offensive categories in Mavericks history. He ranks third on the Mavericks’ all-time points list with 13,930, trailing only Dirk Nowitzki and Rolando Blackman. He’s one of the greatest Mavericks in franchise history and was a pillar of the 1980s Dallas teams that pushed the mighty Los Angeles Lakers’ Showtime era to the brink in the playoffs.
Mark Aguirre is a three-time NBA All-Star, earning all three of his All-Star nods during his time with the Mavericks. He went on to win two NBA Championships with the Detroit Pistons in 1989 and 1990. He averaged 24.9 points, 5.8 rebounds and 3.8 assists over his first seven seasons in the NBA with the Mavericks, including a whopping 29.5 points per game in his third year.
“Wow, this is too much for me,” Aguirre said when he was given one of his green No. 24 jerseys by Dumont at Monday’s announcement and told no Maverick will ever wear it again. “My kids always wanted to witness this. Was this ever going to happen? I’ll talk to them all night tonight. Daddy’s jersey is retired. Wow, man. This is big. This is huge.”
The move is a long time coming. Aguirre helped build the Mavericks into a force in the Western Conference in the franchise’s young years. As the team tries to slough off the skin of its fourth era with Dončić as the leader on the floor and move into a fourth with Cooper Flagg as the new face of the franchise, retiring Aguirre’s jersey might serve as a reminder to fans that this franchise knows how to remember its past, even in the face of change. It knows how to honor. It knows the importance of saying Aguirre mattered — even if the ending got messy, with Aguirre assigned the role of fall guy for a team in decline.
“The way this came to be is, we were talking about great Mavericks, and we realized we have such a strong history as an organization,” Dumont said. “Is there anybody whose jersey we should retire. And we realized there was one really strong candidate. And there were others. But this one came to the front. He’s such a talented player. He meant so much to the history of the team. He was a No. 1 pick. And we felt like it was the right time.”
