Deep pockets, shallow skin and all, I’ve always liked Mark Cuban.
Can’t believe it’s been 15 years since he bought the Mavericks and resurrected our basketball team from zombies to champions. As a writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram at the turn of the century I was fascinated by this cocksure billionaire buying the team from the bumbling Ross Perot Jr.
So in February of 2000 I went to Cuban’s sprawling mansion to get to know him. What was he like back then? Like this:
(Below was originally published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
Mark Cuban has enough dollars to afford the world's largest living room. Even more valuable, he has enough sense to know how to live in it.
One of the countless "oh-my-gosh!" gaudy rooms in his $16 million, 24,000-square-foot mansion, the formal room is as big as a high school gym.
It has an intricately designed marble floor, ornate wood columns stretching to a 20-foot ceiling, a fireplace big enough to hold a Hyundai and two blinding crystal chandeliers.
But nothing says more about the new owner of the Mavericks than the only furniture in the room: a $1.99 plastic yellow Wiffle-ball bat.
"This is home plate," Cuban exclaimed, pointing to the corner, "and anything off the chandelier is an automatic homer."
Ricardo Montalban and Tattoo must share one of the five upstairs bedrooms because Cuban's life is pure fantasy.
"He's a walking shot of adrenaline," Mavericks coach Don Nelson said. "He's as alive as anyone I know. His enthusiasm is contagious; you can see it in the players and feel it in the arena."
When he's not ringing in the year 2000 playing Wiffle ball or multiplying his Internet fortune, the 41-year-old billionaire co-founder of Broadcast.com is attempting a trick more difficult than pulling a rabbit out of his hat or pulling video clips out of cyberspace - pulling the Mavericks out of the ditch.
"He knows it's a challenge, but he's not in this for anything less than a championship," said Cuban's lawyer, Steven Stodghill. "He'll treat the team like he does his company. His only focus will be the bottom-line success on the court."
A combination of John Stockton's ordinary looks, Doogie Howser's premature genius and Richie Rich's obscene wealth, Cuban has transformed himself from a high-school dropout with arthritic hips into one of the most powerful men on the Internet and one of the most fascinating personalities in the NBA.
Before even officially being approved by his peers as Mavericks owner, Cuban already has stiffed Scottie Pippen, humbled Michael Jordan, signed Dennis Rodman, bested Bill Gates, challenged Jerry Jones, fired Kevin McCarthy, targeted Ted Turner, lambasted Donald Trump, attracted Michael Keaton and breathed life into a stale Reunion Arena and a bewildered Mavericks fan base by delivering what's been missing for the better part of 10 years: hope.
"We needed a breath of fresh air, and Cuban came in and opened all the windows," Mavericks assistant coach Donnie Nelson said. "He wants to win and win now, and you can feel that he won't sit around twiddling his thumbs to get what he wants."
Since Cuban's takeover was announced Jan. 3, actual attendance has increased almost 1,000 per game, the team has gone 12-6, and fans in the Mavs Club have skyrocketed from six the game before the announcement to more than 1,200 for Wednesday's game against Seattle.
Where once there were Reunion Rowdies, there are now Cuban Crazies - shirtless fans with "WE LOVE CUBAN!" painted across their chests.
But not everyone is infatuated with Cuban's cavalier actions, blunt commentary and cozy catering to players. His brash entrance into the league has been denounced by national media as one big public-relations circus. And initially scheduled to be granted formal approval of ownership by his 28 peers during this All-Star Weekend, Cuban will have to wait until at least March 1 while squeamish owners - some of whom view him with similar disdain as the Tom Hanks character in Big - deal with raised eyebrows and red flags.
"I'll always play within the rules," said Cuban, whom some owners see as a potential threat to leave the NBA should professional-wrestling boss Vince McMahon conjure up a future XNBA. "But as long as he can help us win, I don't care if a player got into some trouble five years ago or that he has every orifice pierced."
Since MarkCuban.com is under construction, consider this his temporary black-and-white website. To take a voyeuristic virtual tour of Cuban's world, just point and click on the man who has built a better mouse, and now intends to build a better Mavs.
Cuban was born to be a blue-collar worker in Pittsburgh. But with a shove from his father and a little ingenuity, he managed to grow up using his brain instead of his body. Cuban, the oldest of three sons of Russian Jewish immigrants Norton and Shirley, loved watching the Pittsburgh Steelers win and hated seeing his father work long, hard hours in the family's Regency Products upholstery shop.
His father, who lost an eye in a workplace accident, taught Cuban early the difference between wants and needs.
"He wanted bigger and better things for us," Cuban said. "He wanted us to use our minds instead of being bent over all day pulling seats out of cars."
By high school, Cuban was an admitted geek. He wore "funky" glasses and his bottom teeth, now capped, were an embarrassing shiny silver.
"I was voted most likely to do nothing," he joked. "I didn't kiss a girl until I was 16. I was just a short, dorky kid who couldn't get a date."
Cuban was obsessed with college before even girls. Anxious to jump-start his money-making potential, he stopped going to high school classes and discreetly enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh. Slipping through the cracks by "acting like I knew what I was doing," Cuban even joined a fraternity and took enough courses so that when he went back for his high-school graduation, he was a college sophomore.
After transferring to Indiana's business school - "because it was the cheapest" - Cuban began inventing ways to make money and friends. He made $1,100 from a chain letter, won a scholarship for which he unethically applied, organized and started an infamous cafeteria food fight with a drop of his napkin, and opened a bar - Motley's Pub - though he wasn't old enough to drink.
Armed with an Indiana University business degree, tired of the Pittsburgh winters and starving for "money and women," Cuban headed to Dallas in 1982.
Fired from his first computer job because he wouldn't vacuum the carpet, Cuban started his first company in '83 - MicroSolutions - before he bought his first personal computer.
Teaching himself Lotus 1-2-3 programs well enough to integrate his clients' software programs, Cuban sold the company to CompuServe in '90 for $5 million. Five years later, with an assist from college buddy Todd Wagner, Cuban launched an idea that would earn him as much money in four years as Bill Gates made in a decade. And he did with a simple, yet seemingly preposterous premise: convincing customers to use their $4,000 computers as $6 radios to listen to radio broadcasts over the Internet.
In the business world, those who doubted Cuban's acumen long ago logged onto Broadcast.com and downloaded a disk full of crow.
"A lot of people told us we were idiots," said Wagner, co-founder of Broadcast.com. "But the only hard part was coming up with the idea. Working together was easy."
Five years later, executing an Internet search for Cuban is like looking up God in the index of The Bible. It might not be a direct connection, but his fingerprints are everywhere.
Cuban is hesitant to pinpoint his net worth, but suffice to say he has enough cash and clout to tell Regis Philbin to stick a sock in it.
"I've already got more money than I can ever spend," Cuban said. "Making money is no longer a huge motivation for me. Getting a successful return on my spending is."
Cuban paid $280 million for the Mavericks with a one-time wire transfer.
Already a multi-millionaire, sale of Broadcast.com last year netted him six million shares of Yahoo! stock. As of Friday, that deal alone left him with $2.1 billion in assets.
"Believe me, I know it's obscene," said Cuban, who recently sent his parents on a vacation to Antarctica. "I could've never predicted the Internet would explode like this and leave me with this kind of money. But it did happen, and, since it did, I'm going to enjoy it. But it won't change me. I was just as happy living six guys in a three-bedroom apartment, going to clubs with $20 in my pocket and pouring cheap champagne down girls' throats."
Those who know him best say the wealth hasn't ballooned Cuban's ego. Several fans in the Mavs Club, in fact, were shocked to find out last week that the zealous fan spouting detailed player analysis was Cuban himself.
"He doesn't wear his wealth on his sleeve," Wagner said. "That's because it wasn't an inheritance; we earned it as the long fulfillment of a dream."
Added longtime friend Danny Bollinger: "I knew Mark four years before I ever knew he had a nickel. He may be rich, but at heart he's still a basketball freak and a computer geek."
His healthy bank account attracts 20 to 30 business propositions in his e-mail every day, from guys needing money to sell pizzas online, to an offer to sell him an island in the Mediterranean next to one owned by Magic Johnson, to outright pleas for unconditional financial help.
"It tears at me, sure," Cuban said. "But it's not like I can sit around all day sending checks out to the whole world."
The new Mavs owner is the most fascinating Cuban since Elian Gonzalez, the most intoxicating since hand-rolled cigars, and the most colorful since Fidel Castro.
"One day he gathered the staff together at AudioNet [renamed Broadcast.com in 1997], looked us in the eye and told us all we'd be millionaires if we did exactly what he said," said Wally Lynn, former radio talk-show host and one of Cuban's first hires. "Boom. It was like the whole room was hypnotized."
You won't find Cuban wearing a suit ("I am what I am"), playing golf ("I don't have the time or the patience") or visiting the post office ("I don't remember the last time I licked a stamp or sent a fax"). You might, however, see him behind the wheel of his '96 Lexus SUV, taking off in his 14-seat jet, in an upcoming episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, at Dallas' Del Frisco's steakhouse in front of a pile of onion rings, or at, of all places, 7-Eleven, grabbing his favorite lunch: a tuna sandwich, a MET-Rx protein bar and bottled water.
"He's always on the go," friend and Broadcast.com employee Jeff Swann said. "You could get up at 2:30 in the morning and e-mail him with a great idea. By the time you go to the bathroom and head back to bed he's already responded saying he had that idea yesterday."
Cuban, who recently received an inquiry from Michael Keaton seeking Internet advice and good seats to a Mavericks game, checks his e-mail at least 10 times a day.
He refuses to carry a wallet (wadded-up $100 bills literally fall out of his pockets) and professes a love for beer though the previous two Mavs owners - Don Carter and Ross Perot Jr. - probably didn't empty a bottle between them.
"[Carter and Perot] may not have been big drinkers or partiers," said Cuban, who buys approximately $2,500 worth of drinks for fans in the Mavs Club after each home game. "But I'm going to make up for them both."
On his first road trip with the Mavs, Cuban found himself in Washington for Michael Jordan's first game as Wizards boss.
During Dallas' blowout victory, the two exchanged playful trash talk with Jordan once flipping Cuban the bird.
"I thought I might be intimidated, but in the end he was just another guy wanting Internet advice," Cuban said in a rare public humbling of Jordan. "I may not be the Jordan of the Internet, but I'm at least on the All-Star team. I told him he made some terrible moves - like jordan.com - and he took notes."
Cuban, who seems to be in on a joke none of the rest of us get, didn't flinch when he fired public-address announcer Kevin McCarthy or hired renegade free agent Dennis Rodman.
Asked if Ted Turner served as a role model, he calmly labeled the media mogul a "target to shoot for," and referred to billionaire Donald Trump as "a major jerk."
"I got invited to his house, and I wound up sorry I went," Cuban said. "I respect him as a businessman, but I want to be nothing like him as a person."
Cuban said he admires Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, but also isn't afraid to go after him.
"The Cowboys may be America's Team, but we'll be the Internet's Team," he said. "And that means we'll be the World's Team, because the Internet is all about connecting the world."
Cuban's skills may be better-suited for "He Got Money" than "He Got Game," but the man who loves basketball can also play a little.
About an hour into a two-hour interview on his sun-drenched court, Cuban hit 14 consecutive 3-pointers.
Not bad for a guy who takes medicine for arthritis, can only spread his legs about hip-width because of college rugby injuries, and whom one peer described as having a game similar to 7-foot slug Jon Koncak.
"I was never flashy or spectacular," Cuban said, "but I could hold my own."
If there was any doubt Cuban is a goal-oriented hoops junkie, it was erased when one of his shots wedged between the rim and backboard. After two unsuccessful attempts in his black jeans and clumsy Doc Marten shoes, he ran and jumped and flicked the ball free, sending him into the leaping ecstasy of a man who had just slammed a million-dollar deal.
"You didn't think I could do it, didja?!" Cuban yelled before crumbling to the ground in laughter.
Actually, yes we did.
Mark Cuban is finished shooting hoops and talking life. As he strides back to his mansion, he nonchalantly flings the basketball high atop his expensive Spanish tile roof. As the ball takes one big bounce earthward, he snares it in stride like a giddy little-leaguer catching his first pop fly.
After all, Cuban has the dollars to buy happiness.
And the sense to know he doesn't need to.
A native Texan who was born in Duncanville and graduated from UT-Arlington, Richie Whitt has been a mainstay in the Metroplex media since 1986. He’s held prominent roles on all media platforms including newspaper (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dallas Observer), radio (105.3 The Fan) and TV (co-host on TXA 21 and numerous guest appearances, including NBC 5). He currently lives in McKinney with his wife, Sybil, and two very spoiled dogs.
