Would you like sprinkles with that?
Had you stopped by the Dairy Queen in Coppell, Texas, last Wednesday, you would have heard these words pouring endlessly from the mouth of Mark Cuban, maverick owner of the Dallas, uh, Mavericks.
Have the recent struggles of Wall Street really hurt Cuban, who is reportedly worth $1.8 billion, enough to force him to wear a white hat and dish out fries all day?
Has the NBA finally gotten their wish and somehow forced the troublemaking Cuban onto a different career path?
Nope. He just really likes Blizzards.
After a loss to the Spurs, Cuban proclaimed that league director of officials Ed Rush “might have been a great ref, but I wouldn’t hire him to manage a Dairy Queen.” The Dairy Queen Corporate office, quite offended by the owner’s comments, threw down the gauntlet and challenged Cuban to sling burgers for an afternoon.
Cuban, unfazed as always, accepted the challenge, mainly because of his love of the fast-food chain — especially their trademark ice cream/candy concoctions known as Blizzards.
“Actually, I would love to do it for a day,” Cuban said after hearing Dairy Queen’s challenge. “I brought up DQ because I love ’em. ‘Any additional pounds I have are due exclusively to Blizzards and Blizzards alone.”
So what exactly, you’re now asking, is wrong with this guy?
If anyone knows the answer, e-mail NBA commish David Stern. You’ll be well compensated.
Mark Cuban is the most visible owner in the NBA, hands down.
On a clear day you can see his shaggy mop from the top of the Empire State Building.
After only three years with the Mavericks, Cuban has found himself right next to Rasheed Wallace on the NBA’s Most Wanted List, due to his outspoken and sometimes outlandish nature.
Since November 2000, the league has fined Cuban for 1) criticizing officials (four times for a total of $780,000), 2) staging a mini sit-in on the baseline during a game against the Timberwolves ($100,000), 3) confronting officials on the court ($15,000), 4) running onto the court in an attempt to break up a fight during a game against Cleveland ($10,000 plus a two-game suspension), and 5) making inappropriate gestures during a loss to the Suns ($100,000).
Grand Total? $1,105,000. Slightly less than the price the NBA is planning to put on Cuban’s head.
A fortune, to be sure, at least for an impoverished college student like myself, but it’s mere chump change for a Dairy Queen manager like Mark Cuban.
Wait. You mean that’s not his full-time job?
No, Cuban’s got his hands full right now, as he is trying very hard not to grow up. But if you were Mark Cuban, why on earth would you want to?
After cashing in by selling his company MicroSolutions, Inc., to CompuServe, Cuban became a millionaire.
Next, Cuban came up with the idea to transmit Indiana basketball games over the Internet. Before he knew it, his newly formed Broadcast.com was transmitting everything from Hoosier games to live coverage of Bill Clinton’s grand jury testimony and was getting millions of hits per day. After he sold to Yahoo, Cuban was $2 billion richer.
So there’s Cuban, just sitting around his tremendous yet apparently sparsely furnished pad, trying in vain to think of things to spend his billions on. One can only buy so many Ferraris, so Cuban started thinking bigger. Gulfstream V corporate jet? Done. Maybe the state of Rhode Island? It was in his price range, but there was too much paperwork involved. NBA team? That’s the ticket.
Cuban is not some publicity-hungry egotist whose outrageous actions are precisely calculated to propel him into the public eye.
He’s just an old-school superfan, a diehard sports nut, and that’s why he should be revered, not vilified, by the NBA.
True, sometimes he does act a tad unprofessionally, like the time he sprinted onto the court to break up the fight between Wesley Person and Mav Gary Trent. When Cuban was asked about it, he claimed he was just defending one of his boys, acting in the heat of the moment. Cuban’s closeness with the members of the Mavericks, whether real or imagined, is what makes the guy so animated, what makes him so outspoken.
Mark Cuban wants his Mavericks to be successful — end of story.
His continued criticism of the officials, while not necessarily in good taste, stems from his desire to do everything in his power to ensure that his squad has the best possible chance to win.
While most NBA franchises seem to be worried more about the bottom line than team performance, Cuban has assembled a Mavericks squad that is a force to be reckoned with in the tough Western Division by investing his millions in large contracts for the team’s premier players.
Cuban doesn’t seem too concerned about losing money. What’s that, you say? It’s because he’s loaded? Well, don’t think for a second the rest of the penny-pinching NBA owners aren’t in the same tax bracket as Cuban.
No, Cuban just cares a little more, invests himself more fully into his job than do the rest of the number-crunching owners.
And Cuban didn’t accept Dairy Queen’s offer to manage one of its stores because of the publicity it might provide for himself or his team — he did it because he saw it as a fun, unique opportunity. Case in point: while managing the DQ, Cuban wore a custom-embroidered shirt that read, “Tony.” Why? Because he “thought it would be funny.”
That pretty much sums up the guy that the NBA sees as the biggest threat to its public image since Dennis Rodman, who coincidentally lived with Cuban for a number of months prior to Cuban taking over ownership of the Mavs. He just wants to have some fun.
And some Blizzards.
