The Mavericks' Maverick
Zirin, Dave
The Mavericks' Maverick By Dave Zirin Illustration by Patrick Martinez When it comes to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, no one is neutral. Some view him as a preening shmoe and a rich fool....
...But almost everyone in the basketball universe gives the flamboyant forty-eight-year-old billionaire a measure of respect...
...Cuban seems therefore to be very much a political work-in-progress...
...Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Tribune wrote that Cuban proves "it's OK to be vapid as long as you're loud...
...The way of the populist does not live easily with the way of the libertarian...
...Cuban is effusive about Rather: "Dan [is] a living encyclopedia...
...Cuban touts the credo of the wealthy: that anyone can make it in America with desire, moxie, and elbow grease...
...I don't know how many times I have read it, but it got to the point where I had to stop because I would get too fired up...
...But he has also made clear that he could use information that the site uncovers to buy and sell stock...
...As he said to Slate Magazine, "It was incredibly motivating to me...
...It encouraged me to think as an individual, take risks to reach my goals and responsibility for my successes and failures...
...Cuban also abhors Hatch for saying that computers storing pirated downloaded music should be destroyed...
...A journalistic conflict, you say...
...On a Salt Lake City radio station, Cuban said that he thinks the senior Republican is "the digital Joe McCarthy...
...This site is for the profit of its owners, and we will buy and sell stocks that are discussed, before they are made available on the site...
...Cuban is Homer Simpson, the child of working class Pittsburgh parents who became, as USA Today wrote, "the luckiest man from the dot-com era...
...He has bankrolled a website, Sharesleuth.com, the goal of which is "to create a new line of defense by using investigative journalism techniques and a worldwide network of amateur and professional stock detectives to identify suspect companies...
...Horowitz's people were aghast that Cuban had produced the critically praised film The War Within, about the mental makeup of a suicide bomber...
...Others believe he's brought fun to the game...
...It will be fully disclosed and explained...
...He may be loud, but vapid he is not...
...Cuban made his estimated $1.8 billion when he and partner Todd Wagner sold their company, Broadcast.com, to Yahoo...
...But this hyper-libertarian bootstrap mentality comes into conflict with Cuban's Pittsburgh populism...
...for $5.04 billion when it was earning only $100 million in revenues...
...If we can uncover companies whose stock is public and that can be bought or sold and that allows us to pay for more in-depth research and effort, I'm good with that...
...Cuban wrote last spring...
...This is seen in Cuban's confused battle against corporate corruption...
...Horowitz's website, FrontPage, blared this headline about Cuban: "World's Most Annoying Sports Fan Now Jihadist Propaganda Producer...
...Cuban takes a lot of criticism for his nontraditional ways...
...How are we ever going to understand what's going on right now if we don't see these people [homicide bombers/terrorists] as human beings?'" Cuban just launched Dan Rather Reports, which gives the former anchor of CBS Evening News complete editorial independence...
...Cuban's favorite all-time book is, you guessed it, The Fountainhead...
...Sounds good...
...When Bush was planning the most expensive inauguration parties in history two years ago, Cuban wrote, "Could there be anything more confusing and shocking than to read that our country was offering $35 million in aid to the areas affected by the tsunamis, but that the cost of inauguration parties would be about $40 million...
...Most owners resemble Montgomery Burns...
...But he is starting to earn the right enemies, and his contributions as a mini-movie mogul are great...
...Cuban has a peculiar blend of politics: Call it Ayn Rand Populism...
...But if he also keeps aggravating the Orrin Hatches and David Horowitzes of the world, he can storm the court whenever he likes...
...Not anymore...
...No doubt he will continue to aggravate many an NBA fan...
...In the decade before Cuban took over the Mavericks, the team went 199-507, one of the worst records in professional sports over that period...
...Hatch raised Cuban's ire by sponsoring the Induce Act, a bill that would allow a company to be sued if it was found to have induced individuals to download Internet music illegally...
...Today, it is a perennial championship contender...
...He is a laid back, very likable, devout guy, with regular values that could be those of the religious Christian or Jew next door...
...His independent film streak earned him an enemy last year: David Horowitz, the radical turned reactionary...
...Cuban was smart enough to cash out, but many in the media called it dumb luck...
...In media notes provided by the movie's publicists, director and co-writer Joseph Castelo's answers to questions are mortifying...
...The literary muse of bootstrap billionaires is Ayn Rand, the sleep-inducing author behind Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead...
...FrontPage couldn't stand that the lead character, Hassan, "does not have a scary-looking Mohammed Atta-esque visage...
...Cuban was the executive producer of the Enron documentary, The Smartest Guys in the Room...
...It didn't take me long to realize this man has forgotten more about history than I would ever know...
...Dave Zirin is the author of "What's My Name, Fool...
...Does anyone else think that this is wrong...
...The free-spending, freewheeling Cuban, who wears Mavs jerseys to games, sits in the stands, screams at refs, revs up the fans, pampers his players, and e-mails with the hoi polloi, has changed the way people view owners of pro teams...
...He also was behind George Clooney's McCarthyism drama, Good Night and Good Luck, and the powerful look at sexism in Hollywood, Searching for Debra Winger...
...Not in this world...
...Sports and Resistance in the United States...
...And Cuban has taken on Orrin Hatch, the rightwing Senator from Utah...
...I loved it...
Vol. 71 • January 2007 • No. 1
