Dallas Mavericks - Dinge, die keinen eigenen Thread verdienen

[Fo' Fo' Fo']

mittlerweile bin ich auch soweit, dass ich avery richtig vertraue. während den ersten 20 spielen - das habt ihr ja mitbekommen - hab ich seine spielweise noch richtig kritisiert und mich teilweise sogar drüber geärgert. aber es klappt momentan einfach so super, da kann man sich nur freudig zurücklehnen.

"Das Fähnchen in Wind des Erfolges" - Halter

 

[Francois]

@ ne1

Vielleicht ja, aber ich habs einfach schon zu oft gelesen, als das ich es noch witzig finden könnte. Meißtens irgendwelche 14jährigen BB Fans die sich ihr Ego am Fan sein aufbauen. Es nervt halt gewaltig, werde aber weitere Posts unterlassen.

 

[ne1]

... ich fands nicht so schwer zu erkennen dass es in diesem fall nur eine art parodie sein sollte auf die vorangegangenen beiträge. naja, whatever.

 

[Mister Birdman]

About Dirk

Nochmal ein Kommentar zum Vorherigen ...

Ich meine, man sollte das mit dem "in der Crunchtime ist er nicht im Rhytmus"-Gelaber über Dirk (PO's usw.) sein lassen, bloß weil er weniger Würfe als andere Scoring-Leudens nimmt und Terry wie Howard (inkl. Stack) das mit übernimmt. Ich meine, in der Crunchtime-Statistik ist er nach wie vor auf Platz eins (zumindest nach nba.com, aber das die manchmal ... aber naja). Zumal es ein Unterschied ist, wenn die Scoringlast auf einen oder zwei Spieler haftet, als wenn ein ganzes Team voller Scorer ist. Hat Nowitzki ne Off-Night, ist halt ein anderer (oder mehrere) da! Und ich denke, so hat sich das auch der superreiche Cuban gedacht ...

Zur History: Die Lakers waren u.a. Meister, weil sie zwei dominate Player hatten, die aber nur dann gewonnen haben, wenn sie zusammen gespielt haben (One-Two-Punch eben ...), doch mit "the Glove" und "Mailman" ist auch die Teamchemie flöten gegangen. Wer war dann Meister?! Pistons und Spurs! Und warum?! Teambasketball, viele Scoring-Options und bei den Spurs auch ein (stiller) Superstar ... D-Now ist nix anderes ... und schauen wir uns die letzten Finals an ... Duncan war im Arsch ... ein ganzes Team hat die Lasten des "Ausfalls" verteilen können und Tim was back right now !!!

Ach ja, zwar macht er weniger Punkte, aber hat mal einer auf seine Wurfquoten geschaut. Ich denke, sein Schnitt ist ein Ergebnis von reiferen Entscheidungen und Leadership und das ist für mich eine Steigerung und kein Rückschritt !!! ... das vergessen wohl manchmal einige ...
Zudem weniger Turnovers und Fouls (nun kann man sich streiten ... Cleverness oder zu passiv) ...

Aber ist ganz einfach ... er hat einfach dieses Jahr andere Aufgaben im Team ... Howard kümmert sich mehr um die Defense und so auch um die Rebounds, dazu ist mit Diop ein reiner Defensivspieler am Start & Dampier ... es ist nicht Dirks Job mehr, überall zu sein, dafür hat man doch einen/zwei Center ... und mit Daniels, Howard, Stack ein paar Swingman ... D-Now ist also um so mehr ein Leader ... um ihn ist das Team aufgebaut ...


... so viel dazu ... ciao for now
Mister "ejected" Birdman

 

[Conroe1]

unser coach ist ein kleiner komiker. zum thema all star break:

Avery Johnson said he wouldn't give players any detailed instructions for things to do during the All-Star break. "I've seen coaches lay out all those cute plans," Johnson said. "And nobody [follows it]." ... Johnson added he feels like it takes about a week for a player to get out of game-playing shape. "But it's different for some players," he said. "Dirk thinks he's out of shape after an hour."

:laugh2:

 

[ne1]

hier mal ein interessanter artikel von www.dallasbasketball.com

natürlich sind die jungs voreingenommen, aber vor allem der teil unten über nowitzki passt ziemlich gut in die diskussion über ihn, die hier gerade am laufen ist.

Bag Of Tricks
Stops And Go's With 41-11 Mavs

By Mike Fisher -- DallasBasketball.com
They get stops. They've got centers. And they're loaded with go-to guys -- especially one with a newly stuffed bag of tricks.
Three top trends to emerge from Wednesday's going-into-the-All-Star-Break 103-97 victory over Washington -- three trends that speak volumes about how the 41-11 Mavs have developed into the best team in the West:
THE STOP SIGNS: While the NBA is printing up its "KOBE 81'' T-shirts, and the stamp of "KOBE 62 IN 3 QUARTERS'' is still clogging Dallas' resume, somebody oughta make room for another marking:
With a few notable exceptions, the Mavs now stop the opposing star.
The Mavericks have all sorts of defensive numbers to trot out, including a 36-3 record when holding their opponent below 100 points this season. (The Dallas Mavericks have held 39 of 52 foes under 100?! Wow!) But let's go a little deeper. Since the NBA is a game of stars, let's hand the stage over to the luminaries.
Ray Allen. Kobe Bryant. Dwyane Wade. Gilbert Arenas. In terms of do-it-all scorers, that's about the best of the best (Kobe, Wade and Arenas are three of the NBA's top five scorers), and in the last two weeks, the Mavs have tackled them all. Their recent lines against Dallas:
# Allen: 6-of-18, four turnovers, 17 points

# Bryant: 5-of-22, four turnovers, 24 points

# Wade: 6-of-13, four turnovers, 16 points

# And Wednesday, Arenas: 4-of-22, six turnovers, 12 points.

So on a typical night against the Mavs, a superstar shooting guard can be expected to be hassled into 28-percent marksmanship and into turning it over 4.5 times.
Said Jason Terry: "The defining character of a championship team is getting stops when you need to and that’s something we’ve been working towards all year long.''
Don't misunderstand; we saw what Kenyon Martin did the other night in Denver. We're aware that where Wade didn't score, Shaq did, and where Arenas didn't score, Caron Butler did. But shutting down the athletic shooting guard/small forward types is a great challenge in this league, and increasingly, talents like Adrian Griffin, Josh Howard, Marquis Daniels, Devin Harris (and Wednesday, even Jason Terry) are giving those people fits.
At least give the Mavs this: Dallas is no longer the place where opponents' shooting slumps go to die.
THE TRADITIONAL BIG MEN: Now, we loved the free-wheeling nature of the Don Nelson offense. Only real problem with it was, once Dallas moved to the postseason, the reins tightened. Nellie started calling plays then. ... subliminally signaling to his team that the playoffs ARE different, that things HAD changed.
Coach Avery Johnson? He runs plays. NOW. And he does so fearlessly -- or did you not notice that in the final important Mavs possession of Wednesday night, Dallas structured its way into giving the shot to ... Erick Dampier?
"Dampier had another great catch and finish for us,'' said AJ, and how often has that sentence ever been uttered in Damp's career?
Don't look now, but the franchise's belief that it must get traditional center play to advance to championship level is being rewarded. And not just by DeSagana Diop, whose jovial personality, off-the-bench success and sing-songy name is making him a Mavs folk hero. It's Damp who has become the anchor again -- even when he's seemingly the third-string center!
We've argued in this space that the Mavs must collect 7-0, 265-pound bodies, as opposed to discarding the ones who occasionally fumble passes or mope through games or get paid too much. And now Dallas goes into the break with not one, not two, but THREE such centers: Diop, who is in a bit of a slump but still deserves credit as a premier shot-blocker; DJ Mbenga, who for the second straight game came out of mothballs early as the second center in the rotation; and Dampier, the ousted starter who embraced his role as the backup. ... and now embraces his role as the backup-to-the-backup.
"No matter when I'm asked to come in the game, I'm going to do it,'' Damp said. "And I'm going to try to do it with energy.''
Energy? Damp? Yup. By sitting out early, he avoids the early fouls that disturb him physically (and maybe mentally). So Wednesday, when Diop got two early whistles, in came Mbenga (he of the five-blocks-in-15-minutes effort a game ago). Only after Mbenga ate up multiple whistles did Damp enter.
Once off the bench, Dampier contributed nine rebounds. (Over the past six games, he is averaging 10.2 rebounds per). He played 23 minutes -- his minutes per game has in fact not changed all year -- free to do so without the burden of foul trouble. And by gosh if he didn't get the outcome-sealing basket, with 53 seconds left, when he rolled to the hole off a screen for Dirk Nowitzki and then received Dirk's pass for the layin.
A nice, traditional big-man play. But a new development in Dallas.
THE GO-TO GUY: Where once Dirk Nowitzki was deferential to a fault, he is now simply unselfish.
The Mavs, in truth, have an assortment of go-to guys. This is a roster stocked with cold-blooded offensive weapons with favorite moves that have, to the Dallas fan who had witnessed the bulk of this 41-11 season, become burned into memory:
Devin beats his man off the dribble. J-Ho slices inside for a one-hand floater. Stack from the corner. JET spotting up outside. 'Quis from mid-range. And on and on.
But it is five-time All-Star Dirk Nowitzki who carries the load, while doing so with efficiency and generosity. Witness his line against the Wiz: 25 points on 8-of-14 shooting, seven rebounds and four assists. Efficiency. Unselfishness. Greatness. And the sort of thing Dirk does every night.
And, interestingly, it is Dirk Nowitzki whose individual offensive weaponry is suddenly anything but predictable.
While other Mavs possess the aforementioned offensive trademarks, Nowitzki is unique. In recent games, we've seen either the development of or even the unveiling of a trio of traits that are contributing to Dirk's MVP season. They are:
1) The left-handed finish. Traditionally, when near the basket, Dirk goes to the right hand. In recent weeks, we've seen him work his way inside and rather than loop his way to the front of the rim with his right hand (his usual habit), he'll remain on the left side of the basket and finish with the left hand.
2) The unorthodox mid-range jumper. Where the left-handed layup is a basic, this weapon is anything but. It's become a pet shot for Nowitzki: he drives into the lane, from right to left, and then rather than a jump-stop (planting two feet and squaring up), he launches himself off one foot -- the wrong foot -- and then twists to his right, while airborn, to square up for the shot. Like everything else he does, Dirk makes it look so easy. But try it. And more important, try defending it. Guarding Dirk on this shot is like opposing a left-handed boxer for the first time; by the time you figure out where the punch is coming from, you're on the mat.
3) Initiating contact and creating space. It's the least exciting thing in Dirk's bag of tricks. But this newfound skill is his most effective inside tool. Once upon a time, Nowitzki shunned contact. This year (and especially in the last two weeks) he is using his 7-0, 248-pound frame to subtlely push people around. ... just a little bit. Watch Dirk inside: What looks like his familiar fadeaway is actually something quite different: Dirk, with the ball, prepares to shoot only after he leans into his defender to nudge him back. The separation created eliminates the possibility of a blocked shot, and often, the defender who a half-second ago was in Dirk's face has now been pushed back four feet from him!
Add it all up: The Go-To Guy. The Traditional Big Men. The Stop Signs. And it equals being "the best in the west.''

 

[Aldis]

Wirklich cooler Artikel...aber mit dem Erfolg kommen natürlich auch Erklärungsversuche. Ich seh`s wie hier schon angesprochen:

Zum Glück ist Basketball in erster Linie ein Mannschaftssport. Leute wie Kobe&Co. können zwar einzelne Spiele gewinnen, ein Superstanding bekommen sie aber nicht hin und schon garnicht nen Championsring. Die Vergangenheit (insbesondere Surs&Pistons) haben ja gezeigt, dass es ohne gut funktionierendes Team nicht geht. Dabei sind Leute wie Stack, Howard, etc. eben nicht "nur" Roleplayer, sondern wichtige Bestandteile im System von AJ.

Ich bin schon tierisch auf die Spiele gegen die Spurs&Pistons gespannt.


Und nur all zu gern erinnere ich mich an die Preseason, wo wir selber noch alle tiefgestapelt haben....mal sehen, jetzt sollen Dirk&Terry erstmal den 3-Pointer gewinnen und da ne lustige Show abliefern.... :love3:

 

[mystic]

Hier gibt es einen weiteren Artikel über Nowitzki und die Mavs.

Nowitzki's game has far-reaching effects

German's versatility redefines the way 7-footer's play


12:12 AM CST on Friday, February 17, 2006

By EDDIE SEFKO / The Dallas Morning News

Humility prevents Dirk Nowitzki from saying it, so we will.

The giant German has helped revolutionize the NBA, or at least his little corner of it, as it is played in the new era of athleticism over brute strength.

The power forward began morphing into a new animal with Karl Malone, who still had the power game, but gradually moved the position from the low post to the wing. Then, along came Nowitzki, who rewrote the rules of the position and extended it beyond the 3-point line.

There was a time when NBA 7-footers who made a living on the perimeter were known as softies or less-desirable names. Think Brad Sellers.

Nowitzki, along with Kevin Garnett, has converted the position into something different.

Maybe it should be the shower forward for the way he can sprinkle in 3-pointers whether he's covered or not.

Or perhaps, it should be the tower forward for his ability to stand above all those smaller defenders who try to hack at him.

"He's unique," Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said. "I don't know if I'd say he's revolutionized it. But there are a lot of people out there who want to be like Dirk. And I think in the future, it's inevitable that you'll see more guys who are as big as Dirk and Kevin Garnett who can shoot like they can."

Dirk shoots to thrill

While Amare Stoudemire ensures the prototypical power forward isn't going to go extinct, the movement clearly is toward more versatile players at that position. The same can be said for every position in the NBA.

Sunday's All-Star Game, which will be Nowitzki's fifth straight, is a great example. Fans and coaches had to vote for centers, forwards and guards, but the lines blur more now than ever from position to position.

Stan Van Gundy lamented playing Dallas as much as any team when he was coaching Miami. The Heat has the NBA's most difficult matchup in Shaquille O'Neal. But Van Gundy listed Nowitzki as the next toughest player to defend because of his rare versatility.

"The game goes more to the perimeter-type of big guys now," Nowitzki said. "Every power forward almost can shoot the little 15- or 16-footers and put the ball on the floor. Even the centers now are very mobile and can take their guys in a variety of ways.

"With the rules now, the league goes away from the back-to-the-basket, 10-dribble post-up, like Charles Barkley."

Ahhh. Finally a way to get back at all those hollow insults that Barkley hurls at the Mavericks from the safety of that TV studio.

Consider some of these numbers that document Nowitzki's status:

•He's made 831 3-pointers in fewer than eight seasons, including his first season that was shortened to 50 games by the lockout. In his first eight seasons, all-time leader Reggie Miller had 1,035. No. 2 Dale Ellis had 625. The only forward among the top 10 all-time, Glen Rice, had 1,086 through eight seasons.

•Nowitzki has 12,419 points in 574 games, a 21.6-point average. In his first eight seasons, Garnett had 11,877 points in 611 games, a 19.4-point average.

Sharing the load

The interesting thing about Nowitzki's trip to this year's All-Star Game in Houston is that his numbers say he's doing virtually everything he's done before, and more.

But he's also doing less in many ways. His playing time is down slightly, and it will go down further if coach Avery Johnson has his way. Nowitzki's rebounding is lower than it's been since his second season. And he's not afraid to allow teammates to take on larger roles.

These things are by design.

"Once everybody came back and we had the whole team [healthy], we asked: Is every individual guy willing to drop down his average and do all the other things, because we have so many scorers and so many guys who can make plays and score for themselves?" Nowitzki says.

"I think we've all sacrificed. We know [how many guys] can get 30 every night. But it's all about winning and playing together. We've had four or five guys in double figures every game, and we're a tough team when that happens."

Nowitzki knows that he can make another half-dozen All-Star games, and some skeptics will continue to think of him as a soft 7-footer who happened to be able to shoot 3-pointers better than anybody else his size in the history of the game.

Come to think of it, that's not such a bad legacy.

But he wants more. And if people want to label him, so be it.

"I think if you're a jump-shooter first, you'll always be considered soft first," he says. "I never really cared about being called soft. I just tried to go out and help my team win. If that meant getting 15 rebounds or driving to the basket, then that's what I'd do.

"But I don't consider guys who elbow you in the face tough. Tough, to me, is going out every night and playing for a team no matter if you're sick or hurt. You want to be out there with your teammates and get the job done. That's my definition of tough."

 

[TheFreshPrince]

Ähm das is genau der Artikel, der dein Vorredner auch gepostet hatte.

 

[Michael_jo23]

sorry, hatte den überlesen und nur von ne1 gesehen

 

[Mavs Man]

Zwei nette Artikel :thumb:

Ich kann die Kritik gegenüber Dirk/Dallas überhaupt nicht verstehen.
Mich beeindruckt ein Win, bei dem 5-6 Spieler zweistellig Punkten mehr, als ein Win, bei dem Nowitzki 35 Points macht.

Heute Nacht:
Harris und co. gegen die Rookies.

Go Devin, Have Fun!

 

[TheFreshPrince]

Sagt mal weis eigentlich einer seit wann Barkley so negativ gegenüber Dirk eingestellt ist?
Ich hab eben auf Premiere ein Interview von 99 gesehen, wo er ihn über den grünen Klee lobt, was is en in der Zeit passiert, hat Nowe sich an seine Tochter rangemacht?

 

[Korn]

Wieso denkst du er ist negativ gegen ihn eingestellt? Wenigstens hat er ihn als All-Star Reservist gewählt. Habe mal gehört er wollte Dirk nach Auburn holen, aber er wollte lieber in Deutschland bleiben. Vielleicht ist er deshalb nicht son Fan von ihm. Außerdem zählt für Barkley nur Defense und Nowitzki ist halt mehr Offense als Defense.

 

[Giftpilz]

Außerdem zählt für Barkley nur Defense und Nowitzki ist halt mehr Offense als Defense.

Wäre nur schön gewesen, wenn Barkley da nicht zwei verschiedene Maßstäbe ansetzen würde - er war schließlich selbst dafür berüchtigt, dass er sich in der Defense seine Kräfte gerne geschont hätte (außer für die Teile, die sich in den Statistiken wiederspiegelten), um in der Offense besser glänzen zu können. Die ständige Kritik soll ihn angeblich ja sogar zu diesem Ausspruch veranlasst haben: "As long as Larry Bird is in the league, I won't be the worst defender in the NBA."

 

[Whitehead]

Habe mal gehört er wollte Dirk nach Auburn holen, aber er wollte lieber in Deutschland bleiben.

Davon hat er die ganze Zeit waehrend des 3-pt. shootouts gefaselt. Er meinte, dass, wenn Nowe nach Auburn gegangen waere, waere er heut ein besserer Spieler, vor allem in der Defense.

Insgesamt hat er Dirk aber gelobt. Barkley sagte halt das uebliche, wie groesstes offensives Missmatchproblem in der NBA, verbesserte Defense, Vergleiche mit Bird usw. Er haelt ihn in der Offense sogar fuer einen besseren Spieler als Bird, nur als gesamter Spieler sieht er Bird Vorne.

 

[Bratfisch]

PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: MARK CUBAN (1/5)

fuer alle fans der mavs ein interessantes interview mit cuban, nicht nur ueber basketball... (ich geb zu, es hat etwas ueberlaenge, aber meiner meinung nach lohnt es sich sehr)

A candid conversation with the Mavericks’ outspoken owner about his feuds
with the NBA, his high-tech fortune and how he’s conquering Hollywood

Six years ago Mark Cuban was just another multimillionaire dot-commer largely unknown to the public. But after he sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion (pocketing $1.9 billion for himself), he went on a shopping spree. He bought a 24,000-square-foot Dallas mansion, a 6,000-square-foot New York condo and a $41 million Gulfstream jet. But cool toys don’t make you famous. It took another of his purchases to achieve that: In 2000 he shelled out $280 million for the Dallas Mavericks— at the time the highest price ever paid for a basketball team—and promptly became one of the most colorful owners in sports, ranting and raving at referees and being hit with more than $1 million in fines by the NBA.
Cuban paid a lot of money for a joke of a team that hadn’t made the playoffs in 11 years, but he has turned the Mavs into contenders and introduced a new level of marketing savvy— and in-your-face antics—to a league that has been losing ground among fans. His crowning mouth-off came when he said of Ed Rush, the NBA director of officials, “I wouldn’t hire him to manage a Dairy Queen,” for which he was slapped with the biggest NBA fine ever, $500,000. In response, Dairy Queen invited Cuban to run one of its restaurants for a day.
Now Cuban is getting even more heat by taking on the Hollywood establishment. He has invested heavily in two high-definition TV networks, the Landmark movie theater chain and five independent movie companies, including Lions Gate Films and Rysher entertainment. Armed with these new companies, he’s rewriting the Hollywood rule book. He has partnered with Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh for six movies, one of which, Bubble, will be released simultaneously this month in Cuban’s movie theaters, on DVD and on one of Cuban’s HD networks. It will be the first time this has been attempted, and if it works, it could forever change the way movies are released.
The concept is risky and controversial. However, Cuban has made a fortune taking on difficult challenges. The son of a Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania car upholsterer, Cuban sold plastic garbage bags door-to-door at the age of 12; at 15 he attended stamp collectors shows, buying on one floor and selling at a profit on another. While majoring in business at Indiana University, he and some friends bought a pub and ran it until a wet T-shirt contest starring a 16-year-old got him in trouble with the authorities.
After graduating, Cuban drifted to Dallas and took a job servicing computers, which led to his first company, MicroSolutions, a systems-integration firm, which he sold seven years later to CompuServe. A multimillionaire at 31, Cuban dabbled in acting before cofounding Broadcast.com, an online gateway to the broadcasts of hundreds of college and professional athletic events and radio stations around the world. Video streaming came next. When Cuban and his partner took the company public, the price of a single share of stock jumped in an afternoon from $18 to $62, a Wall Street record at the time. Now he has emerged as one of the nation’s most influential movers and shakers in the fields of technology and—improbably—entertainment. PLAYBOY sent writer Diane K. Shah, who last interviewed Derek Jeter for the magazine, to Cuban’s homes in Dallas and New York City to talk to the voluble tycoon. Shah reports she found him “the consummate salesman, aiming to please and easy to like. He comes across as affable, at times self-effacing— a straight shooter but not the terror he sometimes appears to be at Mavs games.”

PLAYBOY: Of your many ongoing business roles, the one most people probably
know is the crazy guy in the T-shirt who leaps out of a courtside seat at Mavericks games to scream at referees.
CUBAN: A lot of people say owners should sit in the skybox and chomp on a cigar. But when you build a company, there are organizational dynamics. Who are the leaders? How do people interact with each other? How do they deal with pressure? You can’t get that sense from the skybox. If you’re removed, you don’t know how to make decisions.
PLAYBOY: That may explain why you sit behind the Mavs bench, but not the $1.2 million you’ve been fined for yelling at refs.
CUBAN: I’m in the game. I’m in the game.
PLAYBOY: But what do you have against the refs? Do you blame them for your team’s losses?
CUBAN: Maybe at the beginning, but I learned very quickly. I learned that some officials call traveling and others don’t. Some guys will call technical fouls more often, which will come through in the scouting reports for individual
refs. That’s not a deficiency; it’s a personal proclivity. But when you see that somebody who never called defensive threeseconds is suddenly calling it
a lot, and you see that a whole lot of refs across the league are doing it, you can tell they were instructed to do so. I asked why. That’s how I got fined for the Dairy Queen remark. I thought we needed to have somebody come in and take an independent look at the system.
PLAYBOY: How did the league react to that?
CUBAN: A common refrain is “Hey, we’ve made it this far without you.” But I think it’s my job as your partner to be aggressive. If I’m upset about something, I’ll let you know. You can tell me you don’t like the way I communicate—that’s your privilege, and we can agree or disagree—but I would be a far worse partner if I shut up.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel you’ve made any inroads?
CUBAN: Yes. A perfect example is the playoff series with Utah, right after I bought the team. John Stockton went to the line with 2.9 seconds left in
the game and gave Utah the lead. When he finished shooting his free throws, there were 2.2 seconds left. The clock is stopped for free throws, so
something was obviously wrong. I went and pounded the scorer’s table—a lot
was at stake. After the game the officials confirmed the mistake. These things happen, right? But people asked NBA commissioner David Stern if he was going to suspend or fine me for ranting and raving. He said, “No. Mark probably cost his team that game.” That’s the only time I’ve ever been mad at him. But to make a long story short, the next year, all of a sudden there were independent timekeepers. Imagine that.
PLAYBOY: How do you get along with Stern now?
CUBAN: David’s a master politician. When it’s his idea and you’re on his side, you’re his best friend. When he doesn’t feel the need to respond to something, he’ll tell you to feel free to get the owners to vote him down, which he knows is very difficult. He’s a master of divide and conquer.
PLAYBOY: Have you achieved other changes in the NBA?
CUBAN: Remember how Shaquille O’Neal used to get away with stepping over the free-throw line? I complained. All of a sudden they started watching for it. There are many other examples.
PLAYBOY: Did O’Neal get pissed off?
CUBAN: At the time, I said, “Shaq should be on his hands and knees thanking me because if it weren’t for my complaining, he’d still be stepping over the line and he’d go down in history as the best center ever except that he could never hit a free throw without doing that.” A reporter told Shaq. He said, “Tell Mark I said thanks.” Shaq’s great. I love Shaq.
PLAYBOY: Yet apparently you had a blowup doll made of him.
CUBAN: [Looking delighted] We did a thing when we played the Lakers a couple of years ago. We made a cartoon of a character like Fat Albert, put a Lakers 34—Shaq’s number—and Shaq’s head on him and played the video during the game. He said, “Hey, hey, hey, I’m Shaq Albert.” It was hysterical. Shaq was bent over laughing.
PLAYBOY: David Stern wasn’t.
CUBAN: The league said, “You’re not allowed to make fun of other players.” I
was fined $25,000. But it was such great entertainment, it was worth it.

 

[Bratfisch]

PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: MARK CUBAN (2/5)

PLAYBOY: Over the years, the league has implemented a number of officiating
changes that you lobbied for. Is the refereeing better?
CUBAN: It’s run much more like a professional organization than an old boys club. But despite its adding strong people, some remain who probably shouldn’t be there. Until that changes, there will still be a little too much politics and not enough professional management skills.
PLAYBOY: The general opinion about you in the league office seems to be that you have good ideas but push too hard for immediate results. Given your background of running your own companies, you never had to be a team
player. Is teamwork something you need to learn as one of 30 NBA owners?
CUBAN: I hope not. To me, a good partnership is one in which it’s okay to say, “Shut the **** up.” I don’t take it personally.
PLAYBOY: Do you take it personally when Donald Trump spars with you? Is it done with a wink, or is there an ongoing competition between you two?
CUBAN: It started with a wink. When I got my show, The Benefactor,
he called me, saying, “Hey, this is Donald Trump. I just wanted to say congratulations. If anybody can do it, you can.” It was very nice. Then I
read a story in which he called the show a copycat. “I already know it’s going to be terrible,” he said. That’s when it started.
PLAYBOY: Had you met him before that?
CUBAN: Yes. The first time was at a Super Bowl party at his place Mar-a-Lago in 1999. My company Broadcast.com had just gone public. It was the biggest IPO in the history of the stock market. I was there with someone
from Yahoo, which was about to buy my company. Trump came over, and I was introduced. People were dining on a balcony above us, and he said, “Someday you’ll be able to sit up there and eat with the rich people.”
PLAYBOY: Is it true you tried to pitch him your Internet services?
CUBAN: A mutual friend suggested Trump invite me to his office to talk about Internet stuff. I went. It was a normal business meeting, uneventful except for one thing. Now, I figure the over-under on office pictures of yourself and your family is four or five. In his office, every inch of every wall was covered with pictures of himself. And I’m like, Note to self: If you ever make it big, don’t ever be like this. After the TV show was canceled, Trump sent me a letter, which I framed, by the way. It says, “I told you, you never should have done the show. I could have told you it would fail.” Totally low-rent,
right? But I had pissed him off by saying in one of the show’s promos that I could write a bigger check than Donald Trump and not know it was missing. He threatened to sue me. The point was not net worth but cash. Most of my money’s in cash. If everything comes crashing down, I have cash. I have no debt. I told my lawyer, “Let’s pray to God he does sue,” because how much fun would that be? He would have to disclose everything. It was “I’ll show you mine; you show me yours.” But he never pursued it.
PLAYBOY: As Trump was eager to point out, The Benefactor, which aired in the fall of 2004, was canceled after six episodes. What went wrong?
CUBAN: I think it failed because I listened to the producers who created the show, rather than the people from ABC. The ABC folks told me to be myself and let it fly, but the producers kept telling me what to say. By the third episode I was like, **** it. I will do what ABC said—be myself and have fun. But it was too late.
PLAYBOY: At the opposite extreme, some people have suggested that your latest venture is too early. How do you plan to pull off a company that delivers a movie to a person’s home the same day it opens in theaters? It goes against the entire structure of the traditional movie business.
CUBAN: The idea is to give the consumer three choices: go to the movies, get the movie on pay TV or buy the DVD. All three would have the same distribution date. Here’s how it came into being. Three years ago I started two high-definition networks, HDTV and HDNet Movies. They are both carried by most cable and satellite companies. That gives us content. Then we bought Landmark Theatres, which has 215 screens and gives us an outlet to
show movies we produce. That led us to buy Magnolia Pictures, which distributes movies. We also bought Rysher Entertainment for its film and TV library.
PLAYBOY: Your upcoming release will be Steven Soderbergh’s Bubble. Will it be available in theaters, on DVD and on HDNet Movies all at once?
CUBAN: Yes. That will be our first. Here’s the thinking. Some people don’t want to rush to a movie the weekend it opens. They say they’ll wait for the DVD, but some percentage of the time they blow it off because the excitement of watching it at the same time as everybody else is gone.
Meanwhile, the film studio is spending a whole new advertising budget to promote the DVD. Why bother? Why not compress it and charge a premium of, say, five bucks to get the DVD right away? PLAYBOY: Because, according to the perspective of traditional movie studios, not to mention theater companies, you will lose money you would have made at the box office.
CUBAN: The difference is that we’re putting the consumer first, whereas Hollywood puts itself first. Hollywood is saying a movie has to go to theaters first, then to DVD and finally to TV. That’s just the way it works. We’re saying, “Do you know what? That’s not the way it works, because that’s not what’s best for the consumer.”
PLAYBOY: Theaters are threatened, though. They may lose considerable
money from box-office receipts, as well as concession sales.
CUBAN: That’s why we’re willing to kick back a percentage of DVD sales to theaters.
PLAYBOY: Why?
CUBAN: Because they are in essence creating more value for the DVD sales. So why not reward them?
PLAYBOY: One studio head who has voiced some support for your idea is Disney’s Robert Iger. Does this surprise you?
CUBAN: No, because every studio knows it makes more sense. They have to realize that they must return a percentage of DVD sales to theaters, though. Until they do, I don’t expect theaters to let it happen. We can do it because we own a chain of theaters.
PLAYBOY: You’ve already had one minor hit, the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, which has grossed more than $4 million so far. But in the Hollywood scheme of things, that’s a pittance.
CUBAN: I’m not making movies for $100 million. I don’t need blockbusters. I’m
not going to make Spider-Man 3.
PLAYBOY: Then what’s the goal of your entertainment company?
CUBAN: It’s to have a vertical company that gives consumers in the 25-to-54-year-old age group great content when and where they want it. Through my production company HDNet Films I can make movies I know will be geared to the demographic that Landmark Theatres fits. If you want the DVD, you can purchase it through our distribution company the same day the movie opens. You just pay a small premium price. I have all the parts. I just have to do it well.
PLAYBOY: Are you doing it well enough yet to turn a profit?
CUBAN: Except for HDNet, all the parts of the company are profitable.
PLAYBOY: How long are you willing to lose money on HDNet?
CUBAN: I’ll last. When I started it in 2002 I expected to lose money at the beginning, which I wouldn’t have done unless I thought I could finish it. I gave it five years, so two more years to go. But remember, you have to look at it relative to my net worth. I’m taking a smidgen of my net worth and risking it to create a TV network.

 

[Bratfisch]

PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: MARK CUBAN (3/5)

PLAYBOY: In addition to Soderbergh’s Bubble, what other films are in the works?
CUBAN: We have five more Soderbergh films coming, plus we had The War Within, which opened in the fall. One Last Thing will open next month. These three movies, by the way, were all accepted into the Toronto Film Festival. We’ve heard the only other start-up company that did as well is Miramax.
PLAYBOY: How have you been accepted in Hollywood? Have you been impressed with the people you’ve met there?
CUBAN: A lot of great film and music people are incredibly impressive when you talk to them one-on-one. But so many of them just walk, talk and crap the company line when they actually have to make decisions. The smartest marketing person I ever met in L.A. is Paris Hilton. I put her up there with Dennis Rodman. They both know how to leverage the media and get what they need while pushing their own agenda. Amazingly brilliant. Between the two, I would have to give Paris the edge.
PLAYBOY: How smart is the NBA when it comes to marketing?
CUBAN: We have a great product, our players are charismatic and exciting, but we can’t market our way out of a paper bag. On the networks that carry our games you’ll see lots of NBA promotions and teasers, but you’re not going to see them anywhere else. We promote to the converted. I’ve tried to be very communicative with all media. I thought that if I opened the lines of communication, I could be a conveyer of stories instead of a reactor to stories. That has made a big difference. In a quick-response medium,
like e-mail, you can leverage the media. I call that getting wide and fast, meaning if I think something is of value to a writer, I can pop him an e-mail.
PLAYBOY: Have you discussed the idea with other team owners?
CUBAN: Other owners don’t get it. They don’t look at it as their responsibility. I politely suggested that we need to be more guerrilla-like. We need to have a sense of urgency. I think you have to reearn your business every day. The studios are promoting a new movie every day that keeps somebody from going to a Mavs game on a Friday night, and we have to counter it. For a while every league was boasting how its revenue went from $400 million to $2 billion because TV rights were doubling every four to six years. I came in January 2000, right at the peak. Then things changed real quick. It’s no
longer a world of “Wait it out. Only good is going to happen.” You can’t just watch the revenue and valuations go up. You have to create value. You have to stand out. When I look at the NBA or sports in general, I don’t think any of the professional leagues are standing out, working as if we’re in an MTV Deathmatch, if you will, for attention.
PLAYBOY: What else would you do to improve the business of basketball?
CUBAN: In any business you should have an understanding of what your ptimal productivity is. In sales and marketing, in everything down to customer satisfaction and how fast tickets are processed and hot dogs are served, optimal productivity should be your goal. You need to figure out how close to your goal you can get this season if you work your ass off and everyone does his job. Those are called your benchmarks. In most businesses, if you exceed your benchmarks, you get rewarded. If you come close, you keep your job. If you fail, you’re gone. The same should apply to how teams are subsidized by the league. Define goals and benchmarks for every team based on market size, stadium situation, etc.
PLAYBOY: Have you proposed this to the league?
CUBAN: Two years ago. They’re studying it. They’re figuring out how to do
revenue sharing for teams that have performed to all their benchmarks but
whose markets aren’t big enough for them to keep up. The teams that are
drags won’t get revenue sharing. How the league will deal with them remains
to be seen, but at least the bad businessmen will be identified rather than swept under the rug.
PLAYBOY: Which teams are poorly run?
CUBAN: Probably four of them. Probably another 11 are okay but could do
a whole lot better. Maybe 10 are good. Five are great.
PLAYBOY: Are you including the Mavericks?
CUBAN: I put us in the “good” category. We’re trying to be great. The Lakers
are great by default because they have a great cable-TV deal. Jerry Buss is incredibly smart. He’s the one owner I look up to. The only one.
PLAYBOY: Who else in the sports world do you admire?
CUBAN: Jerry Jones, Jim Dolan and David Stern. Dolan isn’t afraid to take on anyone. You want to build a stadium that could impact my business in New York? **** you. Watch me muck it up by changing the game. That takes balls. Jones changed the economics of the NFL. He said, “The Cowboys are a national brand. We outdraw the home team in multiple cities. Watch me sign up Amex, Pepsi and others to big deals that all the other owners cry about.” Hopefully I can get the Mavs to the point where we are an institutional
brand with national impact too.
PLAYBOY: Have you changed? It has been a while since you were fined for yelling at refs.
CUBAN: I’m still yelling at the refs. The only difference is they’re getting used to me.
PLAYBOY: The NBA is drafting more players from overseas. With so many U.S.
kids playing hoops, why can’t the NBA fill its rosters from home?
CUBAN: The NBA is Darwinian. We will go to Mars if there is a martian who can take on Shaq. The reason more players are coming from ROW—that’s the rest of the world—is simple. If a kid from outside the States dreams of being a professional basketball player, he can, at any age, join programs dedicated to making him a pro. While going to school, he can practice as many hours a day with professional instruction as he wants. In the U.S. we pretend athletics are only a complement to academics. Limits are put on how much students can practice. Rather than getting instruction that enables him to have his best shot at the NBA, a kid becomes a piece of meat for college coaches to use to further their career and increase their bank balance. This pulls kids away from their academic responsibilities and puts the emphasis on the coach’s success.
PLAYBOY: Nevertheless, each year the NCAA seems to produce an impressive
crop of top players.
CUBAN: What we get are kids who are sixfoot-two or shorter and who have been the star of their team. Their coaches have ridden them trying to win games. They play them at shooting guard or small forward, anywhere but the position that will give them the best chance to succeed in the NBA. When the kids leave school, they realize that at their size, unless they are the next Allen Iverson, their chances of making the NBA are greatly diminished because they have never been trained to be a point guard. To make the switch while trying out for an NBA team is almost impossible. Winning at every level in the U.S. is more important than the kids’ future.
PLAYBOY: Is there a way to fix this system?
CUBAN: My hope is that four or more schools will drop out of the NCAA and
start their own organization that would have stringent academic standards but also allow kids to major or minor in basketball. Each team would have NBAexperienced coaches, allow one or two former NBA players on the team and have full-time tutors to support the kids’ academic needs. Bottom line: Colleges need to recognize that, to succeed, a guy who dreams of being an NBA player should have the same support as one who dreams of being a concert pianist.
PLAYBOY: Do you approve of the NBA’s requirement that players be 19 years old to enter the draft? Some have charged that it’s a racist policy.
CUBAN: I completely support it. The difference between a high school senior and a 19-year-old with a year of college or the real world under his belt is huge. As for the racial stuff, anyone who says that is a moron. The only color the NBA sees is green.
PLAYBOY: After last season’s Indiana- Detroit game at which a brawl broke out between fans and players and led to Ron Artest’s suspension for the rest of the season, what steps would you take to prevent another such episode?
CUBAN: I think it was a one-off event. I don’t think the league has to take any specific precautions beyond the security measures we already have. I would be shocked if anything similar happened again.
PLAYBOY: Should the emphasis be on controlling the fans or the players?
CUBAN: You can’t control the fans. They can get nasty sometimes. I know—I get heckled far more than our players. I’ve had drunks come up and grab me or push me. We have to make sure our players know to get a security guard and not deal with the fan directly. If there is a problem on the players’ side, it’s because some like to think their manhood is being challenged when a fan says something overly critical. Even when fans are cruel, it’s the most idiotic thing I have ever heard for a player to think his manhood is being attacked. Some players don’t realize how stupid it is to give a loudmouth, dumbass fan the satisfaction that he got under their skin.
PLAYBOY: Is the league tough enough on players who misbehave, break the law or have substance-abuse problems?
CUBAN: Yes. But you have to put it in context. If the NBA is a company with 450 employees and five of them get in trouble with the law and all but one apologize and go through treatment, that’s the best company in the world.
PLAYBOY: Athletes earn multimillion-dollar salaries and are viewed as role models. Don’t they have additional responsibilities?
CUBAN: Just because the media is following people with problems around doesn’t mean they can self-correct on a timetable equal to the season. But that’s what we expect, and it’s inhumane. So the first thing you have to do is try to eliminate the media. I would tell the media, “Look, we have an issue with this person. I’m going to communicate with you as best I can, but the bottom line is, I don’t give a shit what you think. I have someone who works with me who I have to help.” I don’t think athletes have the responsibility
to be role models, because nobody ever knows the athlete. We know the
media’s interpretation of the athlete, and it’s not fair. We make a devil’s bargain with the media. We’ve leveraged them because they’re a great marketing tool for us, and we have to give them blood. We know that when chum is in the water, the sharks are going to come out.
PLAYBOY: But shouldn’t some lines not be crossed?
CUBAN: Yes, for human beings. I don’t think there are separate rules for athletes.

 

[Bratfisch]

PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: MARK CUBAN (4/5)

PLAYBOY: How about you? You’re a guy who obviously plays by his own rules. Did success breed that kind of confidence, or were you always pushing the envelope?
CUBAN: Always. All the rules, the conventional wisdom, all the things that people said had to be done a certain way, I would test. Every chance I had and everyplace I went, I would put a toe in the water to see if those things were real. It taught me that just because something is the way everybody says it’s supposed to be doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be questioned. More often than not, something is there, but most people simply take the path of least resistance. My junior year in high school I wanted to take an economics class, but I wasn’t allowed to because it was for seniors. So I dropped out of high school and took some night classes at the University of Pittsburgh. I did
okay. The next year I enrolled and moved into a fraternity house when
I was supposed to be a senior in high school. I remember I took my prom
date to my fraternity house, and then we went to the prom. But I was always
getting into arguments with teachers: “How do we know this is right?” I
wasn’t questioning did-we-land-on-themoon types of things, but I always took the opposite side to try to understand. I drove a lot of teachers nuts.
PLAYBOY: Being an alumnus of Indiana University, did you ever run into
Bobby Knight?
CUBAN: The first time I met him was when former IU president Myles Brand had us in for this little tea, and I showed up in jeans and a sweater. Knight goes, “No suit? I like you already. We’re going to get along.” We kept in touch. After he got fired I stood up for him. My feeling was that he may not have been the right coach for IU, but this is not the way you handle firing
somebody who’s been with you 29 years. I don’t care if it’s the janitor. That’s why I haven’t given a nickel to the school since.
PLAYBOY: You were 31 when you sold MicroSolutions in 1990. Then you went
to Hollywood to become an actor. Was that your biggest failure?
CUBAN: Hell, no. It wasn’t a failure. I did that to meet women.
PLAYBOY: Did it work?
CUBAN: It was a huge success. I had no intention of going to work on my craft. I had no illusions about the actor in me who was dying to get out. It was “Oh my God, I could meet really good-looking women.” I wasn’t looking for real life. I was retired. I had a couple million bucks in the bank. To me,
that meant I could live like a student for the rest of my life. I bought a lifetime American Airlines pass for $125,000. It was cool. Let’s go to Las Vegas! The next day I was in Barcelona for the Olympics. From my perspective I was living the life.
PLAYBOY: Did you date any actresses?
CUBAN: I wish. There was a girl who was a backup singer for Mick Jagger and a couple who were cast in some movies. That was it. I was in a great acting class, though, taught by a guy named Aaron Speiser. With me were Kim Wayans, Shannon Sturges and Karyn Parsons, people who were all kicking ass on TV.
PLAYBOY: Your Hollywood phase lasted a couple of years, and then you gave it up. Why?
CUBAN: I returned to Dallas to get back with a girlfriend. Todd Wagner, who I went to college with, had the idea of trying to get IU games through the Internet. Originally I was just going to give him some money. Then slowly I got more and more into it.
PLAYBOY: It was Broadcast.com, one of the rarest of dot-com successes. What did you do differently?
CUBAN: A lot of stupid people with some of the stupidest money were doing the stupidest things. They thought the world had changed. It hadn’t. It was still about profit and cash. Actually, profit is a bad word because profits are very misleading. You can make a company look profitable on paper—see Enron—when it doesn’t have any cash. We understood that, even more than
profits, it was about generating cash flow. And that was our focus at Broadcast.com.
PLAYBOY: But you lost money for a while.
CUBAN: True. When I started my first company, MicroSolutions, we never had a losing month, never lost a penny. So for me, starting Broadcast.com and losing money was painful. But remember, I funded it. It was my money. We had probably a year and a half when we invested in the company to get it
bigger. Most of that money was invested in the sales force and hard assets. A lot of companies were buying tons of advertising. We never spent a nickel on advertising. When we went public, in 1998, we were at cash-flow breakeven.
PLAYBOY: What was the difference between you and the dotcommers who failed: your products or the way you did business?
CUBAN: Lots of people had good products, but they got caught up in drinking the Kool-Aid, thinking this was a new economy. I was out there giving speeches, saying 95 percent or more of these dot-coms were going to go out of business. It was unfortunate that so many people got caught up in the stock market and forgot the business side. Any company that runs its business for the market is going to get into trouble. Our stock would go up $50 in one day and we’d be just as shocked as everybody else. We knew this was craziness, and that’s one of the reasons we sold to Yahoo—liquidity.
PLAYBOY: But this craziness fueled your success.
CUBAN: Sure. We and Netscape were the first dot-com companies to go ballistic. We would go to mutual funds that had billions of dollars under management. Our job was to explain our company in a 15-to-30-minute meeting on a road show to get them to consider investing. They could ask questions. They were clueless. There were guys who asked us how many CD players we had. Since we played music on the Net, they figured there had to be a CD player for every person who wanted to listen. They were the dumbest questions you ever heard. The people at some of these companies didn’t even ask questions. Yet every single company we talked to placed an
order, even though they had no idea what we did. From our perspective, we couldn’t just stand up and scream, “Hey, you idiots, ask questions!”
PLAYBOY: When you and Wagner sold the company to Yahoo in 1999 for $5.7 billion, people said you were lucky, selling before the market collapsed. Does that bother you?
CUBAN: Hell, no. I was lucky. How could I have predicted the stock market would go nuts? But on the flip side, I had no doubt that the market was going to come back down, whereas other people thought it would go up forever.
PLAYBOY: Internet companies are again on the rise. Are you seeing the same irrationality as during the last go-around?
CUBAN: There’s only one area of idiot behavior right now. It’s the all-time
scam business of the moment. Here’s how it works. Have you ever mistyped
a website name and been taken to something else? That’s called domain
parking. People buy websites using misspelled names and set them up with
Google. When you inadvertently go to that website and click on the ads, the
owner gets paid. Let’s say someone sets up a website called Tomcruse.com. People mistype Tom Cruise’s name and there they are. The scheme gets more
complicated, but basically if a person can make more than the 10 bucks a year it costs to maintain the site, he makes money. I know a guy who makes $150,000 a month—net! People are making all this money, and meanwhile advertisers think they’re getting legitimate clicks when the clicks are accidental.
PLAYBOY: How pervasive is this?
CUBAN: Let’s call it the underground digital economy. There could be more than 1 million people making more than $1,000 a year. That’s a billion-dollar economy.
PLAYBOY: There’s an irony here. To engage in domain parking, people often
use companies you own.
CUBAN: I’m a big owner in a company called Register.com and another company called Tucows. Both do domain registration, which I think is going to be big. People have to register their domain names somewhere, and our companies do that.
PLAYBOY: You call it a scam, but you’re making money off it.
CUBAN: Not as much as I want to—yet. But yeah, basically.
PLAYBOY: What kind of relationships do you have with other CEOs in the tech world?
CUBAN: I know some of them. The story I have is about Bill Gates. After I
sold Broadcast.com I decided not to give industry speeches anymore. Then I was asked to speak at some event right after Bill Gates. I got up there and said, “I’ve worked long and hard to finally get to the point where Bill Gates is my opening act.” Being able to say that was the only reason I agreed to speak. Afterward his folks said he wasn’t too happy about it.
PLAYBOY: What about Google, arguably the hottest technology company? Can it maintain its dominance and its sky-high share price?
CUBAN: There are risks. Forty-five percent of its business comes from non-Google sites. More competition for that business will come from Yahoo, MSN and AOL. Part of it comes from ads by Google, and it has to keep that growing. If the competition reduces that business by 10 percent, that will have a huge impact on the stock price. Google would have to compensate
for that in a big way. I don’t have an answer, but to me, that’s a risk factor
in Google. It’s not a slam dunk.
PLAYBOY: What’s your take on the future of AOL?
CUBAN: I think AOL will do great. It has recently become very aggressive. It
understands what the business is now, that dial-up is not going to save it. AOL did Live 8, which was the largest streaming event ever. It’s getting into original content and making its home page open for people. AOL is taking the best of Yahoo and Google and adding to it. It’s not going to replace them, but it already has a built-in user base, so if it can make its users happy and attract to its site people who aren’t dial-up AOL users, there’s no reason it can’t sell a whole lot of advertising.
PLAYBOY: In your blogs you talk about the stock market as if it were the world’s biggest scam. Why?
CUBAN: In a nutshell, I think the stock market is broken. It has become a collectibles market. Owning a share of stock that does not pay a dividend is not a whole lot different from owning a baseball card. The key to both is whether you can get someone else to give you more for it.

 

[Bratfisch]

PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: MARK CUBAN (5/5)

PLAYBOY: What’s new about that?
CUBAN: Actually, there was a time when the majority of companies paid dividends. But in the 1990s the intrinsic value of companies didn’t push the market. It was the ability of mutual funds and brokerages to market stocks. I don’t have proof, but I am willing to bet that the stock market basically correlates to the amount of money spent on marketing by the mutual-fund and brokerage industries. If you sell something hard enough, you create demand. In essence, the financial TV networks have become QVC for stocks. As long as you make it look good, you can find someone to buy it. I am trying not to be hypocritical, because I will buy stocks if I think they will go up. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think the stock market is broken. It’s the ultimate Ponzi scheme. The stock market is the only time we give other people
our money and don’t expect to get any cash back. I’ll tell you what: If interest rates go up to 10 percent, you could see the Dow, which is at 10,000 to 11,000, plunge to 5,000. That’s the other thing. No one knows. Do you think anybody really knows?
PLAYBOY: According to Forbes, you are the 164th richest American, with $1.8 billion. How much money does one need?
CUBAN: It depends on what kind of lifestyle you want. If I were single, $2
million in the bank would do me fine. Having a family now, I probably would
want more.
PLAYBOY: Is money a way of keeping score?
CUBAN: Absolutely. I mean, business is the ultimate competition. If you compete with me, my whole mission in life is to put you out of business. When we ran Broadcast.com, I was open in saying my goal was to stand in front of
an antitrust committee. Yeah, you can split up my company. That just means
I won and I will go do something different and do it all over again. To me,
money is a scorecard. It lets you know how well you are doing. If you are in
a particular industry, if you are getting the money and somebody is else is not, then you win. There’s an old Andrew Carnegie article they made me read at Indiana University. I keep copies of it with me. It basically says it’s patriotic to get rich.
PLAYBOY: With your wealth, have you moved into new social circles?
CUBAN: Most of my friends are the same ones I had before I had anything. I’m still good friends with my high school and college buddies, as well as ones from when I first moved to Dallas.
PLAYBOY: Tell us about your toys.
CUBAN: In Dallas, a yellow Hummer, a 2001 Ford Explorer and a 2004 Lexus
coupe. I have a Lexus 450 truck in L.A. and the same in Miami.
PLAYBOY: What do you consider your biggest extravagances?
CUBAN: My Gulfstream G550 by far. Nothing better than hav
ing a plane at
my beck and call. But I guess the biggest extravagance is not having to look at the price tag on anything. Have credit card, will buy.
PLAYBOY: What kind of boss are you? Do you tend to micromanage?
CUBAN: Typically, when I first get into an organization, I do because that’s how I learn what people can do. But over time I’ll fall off. Like now, from a management perspective, the Mavs for the most part run themselves. I have to devote only 30 percent of my time to them, and I can focus on the other things, such as marketing.
PLAYBOY: Are the Mavericks profitable?
CUBAN: Not even close. It’s because of my payroll. We have the second or third highest in the league, about $95 million this year out of revenue that will be $115 million. I didn’t do it the right way. I listened to my basketball people a little too much.
PLAYBOY: As far as whom to sign?
CUBAN: And the price to pay. It’s about building a team and what you do if
you make a mistake. I was told, “This guy can put us over the top. Spend the
money.” To get those kinds of guys you often have to take their bad contract. So we got stuck with all these bad contracts and maybe paid too much. And maybe they weren’t over-the-top guys. It added up and killed our flexibility. We’re just getting out of that now.
PLAYBOY: Last season the Mavs made it to the Western Conference semifinals and then lost to Phoenix. Is winning a championship proving tougher than you thought?
CUBAN: Not tougher, but it is more frustrating to get so close and blow it.
PLAYBOY: What changes have you made this season?
CUBAN: Hopefully we’re a defensive team, one of the better defensive teams in the league. Our big challenge is going from being all offensive all the time to being a team that can defend.
PLAYBOY: Is it true that you’re superstitious?
CUBAN: Yes.
PLAYBOY: Don’t tell us you never change your underwear.
CUBAN: I don’t wear underwear.
PLAYBOY: Okay, then what?
CUBAN: If I told you, I’d have to kill you.
PLAYBOY: It’s that bad?
CUBAN: No, it’s just completely stupid. If I’m chewing a piece of bubble gum and we’re winning, I don’t care how nasty that piece of gum gets, I chew it. But it’s going to last only one game. I don’t wrap it up and put it in the freezer for the next game. One year I had to walk a certain way to my seat. Even in my house there were certain tiles I wouldn’t step on. But I was seriously disgusted with myself for doing it. I was like, “Come on!” Then I’d
sidestep it. It was completely stupid.
PLAYBOY: You have a two-year-old daughter. Has being a dad changed the way you look at your life?
CUBAN: Dramatically. Now we can lose a game, but when my daughter comes
running to the door and says, “Daddy, I love you,” that’s what matters. It’s no longer “How am I going to feel when I’m 80?” It’s “I hope my daughter’s
healthy.” It’s “Whose ass am I going to have to kick when she starts dating?” I tell my wife, “I don’t care how pretty she is, but she has to have fat ankles.” Fat ankles will at least cut the population chasing her in half. I’m sorry, but I want her to have fat ankles.
PLAYBOY: What do you do when you’re not working?
CUBAN: I love what I do, so I never look at it as work. But I love to play basketball, read, work out and, most of all, hang with my wife and daughter.
PLAYBOY: We’ve spent a lot of time together in two different cities and not once have you behaved like the crazy guy at Mavs games. How do you explain the disconnect?
CUBAN: I have to let out the aggression somewhere. For whatever reason, when I play sports or watch basketball or rugby, I get really into it, over-the-top. Not football, not baseball—basketball and rugby. Go figure. Even before I bought the Mavs, when I was a season-ticket holder, my wife used to try to settle me down at games. In leagues at the gym I was
always at the top in technical fouls. I was even in a fight every now and then. I became friends with the guy who became CFO of Broadcast.com when we got into a fight playing basketball.
PLAYBOY: Would you change your temper if you could? In fact, is there anything you would like to change?
CUBAN: I’ll paraphrase a quote from Allen Iverson: I’m working the job I always wanted. I’m living the life I’ve always dreamed of. I love what I do, and I’m having fun. Why would I want to change it?

das interview entstammt der januar-2006-ausgabe des amerikanischen playboys. und das sag noch einer, den playboy koennte man nicht wegen der texte kaufen...