Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has a funny story about his first years as an NBA owner. And his colleagues being petrified he would be like Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones or former New York Yankees boss George Steinbrenner.
Mark Cuban has been one of the most memorable owners in NBA history. Unlike most owners who sat up in press boxes or would sometimes go unnoticed in front-row seats during games, you rarely missed Cuban at Mavs games the last couple of decades.
The tech entrepreneur was always relatable to regular fans. Because he showed up to Dallas games in jeans and a t-shirt. And just like common fans, he rooted his team with a furious passion that earned him technicals and cost him a bunch of money in fines. But in the end, it worked out as he helped to turn the lowly Mavericks into one of the better franchises in the game.
Earlier this year, he sold majority control of the team at a high point. And banked $3.5 billion in the process. Now, he can often be seen in podcasts regularly regaling hosts with tales of his 20-plus years as an NBA owner.
And recently, he offered up a hilarious story about how terrified his fellow owners were about his unique approach to leading an NBA franchise.
NBA owners feared Mark Cuban would be as hard to deal with as Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones
“The hardest part when I took over the Dallas Mavericks was the other owners,” Cuban recalled in a chat with GQ Sports. “They hated me. The Board of Governors consists of the 30 owners of NBA franchises. And we each own a third of the NBA entity itself. We get together two or three times a year to discuss everything that’s going on. All the other 28 teams sat in a room and started grilling me about whether I was going to be like Jerry Jones, what my goals were, and whether I was going to be like George Steinbrenner. They wanted me to be like them.
“They wanted me to sit up in the suites and sign the checks. I literally remember walking into one of my first Board of Governors meetings and asking David [Stern] afterward, ‘Are we allowed to talk?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I want you to talk.’ I replied, ‘Are you sure? Because it doesn’t look like anybody else here is going to talk,'” Cuban said. “He said, ‘No, Mark, that’s one of the reasons you’re here. You’re a tech guy, you’re a media guy, you understand things that these guys don’t know.'”
“So I said, ‘Okay, you asked for it.’ Everybody else was in a suit and tie. I walked in wearing jeans and a T-shirt. And they were all staring at me and I didn’t shut up for 24 years. I got fined a lot, but I didn’t shut up.”
Long-time Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and legendary Yankees boss George Steinbrenner built reputations for being brash, bold, and rubbing fellow owners the wrong way. Steinbrenner even incurred a ban from MLB for paying a gambler to damage the reputation of Hall-of-Fame player Dave Winfield.
Related: Mark Cuban shockingly says NBA has banned him from his traditional seat at Dallas Mavericks games