He is a billionaire that prefers wearing t-Shirts to tuxedoes. He is outrageous and outspoken but seems to get away with it all the time. Mark Cuban is the owner of the basketball team the Dallas Mavericks. He has owned this team for 15 years and has always spoken out over various topics and has turned his oversized personality into things far beyond basketball like being a billionaire on a popular show called Shark Tank. His bug mouth has cost him a couple of million in fines over the years especially when he trash talks the referees at his games.  That is just lunch money to him.

He bought the team when they were losers. Since then, they have only missed the play-offs once. In 2011 they became NBA Champions. It was the first title in its franchise history. He did it all his way. For starters most owners do not hold news conferences before the game while he is working out in the weight room.  You will not see him in a suit and tie sipping Champagne in a sky box either.  Since this is his business, he sits right next to his merchandise, the ball players. No one is immune to his comments not even his star player Dirk Nowitzky,   a 12 time All Star and one of the leading scorers of all time who will say yes boss but do what he thinks is right not what Mark is yelling about.

Mark even sought out a player who was hanging out in a bar and signed him at the bar to play for his team. He stole star player Chandler Parsons from the Huston Rockets.  He has been annoying other owners with his antics since the day he was accepted into the league. Mark even did the mambo on Dancing  With The Stars. The fact is that he is many things including a husband and father of three children.  He has appeared in a few TV shows as an actor including HBO’s Entourage. He calls Shark Tank the ultimate sport where many businesses are bought. In the first three seasons of the show, he closed on 45 deals. He doesn’t do the show for the money but to be able to blab about the American dream being alive and well.

Mark Cuban has always been a no nonsense competitor even when he was young. At 11 years old he thought he could support himself. He was selling trash bags door to door. In college he opened a bar and was tutoring students and teaching disco to girls to make extra money.  Eventually he launched a company that broadcast sports and was on the Internet and sold it to Yahoo and overnight he was Mark Cuban the billionaire. His outspokenness is brought on by his not taking crap from anyone.  He even took on the NBA to be stricter on the act of flopping which is,  players dramatically falling over in order to turn a nudge into a foul. He even hired scientists to do research into the type of force that would make a man fall to the ground.

You can count on Cuban to test conventional wisdom wherever a controversy arises.  He is the very definition of a Maverick or non-conformance. When he dies, he wants to come back as himself.  He is frightened by his own life that things have gone so well. We should all be so lucky.