Mark Cuban, 50 years old is the American billionaire owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks. He is also the chairman of the HDNet cable network.

Mark Cuban was raised in a Jewish working class family and was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1958. He spent his childhood while growing up in the Pittsburgh suburb of Mt. Lebanon.  Cuban's started his first business at the age of 12, while enamored with a pair of expensive basketball shoes that his family could not afford, he sold garbage bags in order to earn enough money so that he could buy them for himself. During the time Cuban was in school, he took on numerous different employment opportunities to earn money including bartending, disco dancing instructor, and party promoter. He earned money for his college tuition by collecting stamps and then selling them. One time he sent out a chain letter and earned over a thousand dollars from that adventure.

Cuban actually skipped his senior year in high school and entered the University of Pittsburgh as a full time student. After completing his freshman year at the University of Pittsburgh, he decided to transfer to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. In 1981, Cuban graduated from there with a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration.

Cuban moved to Dallas, Texas a year later in 1982. Once in Dallas, Cuban fell back on past experiences and began working as a bartender. He then found work with a company called “Your Business Software” as sales representative. 

Your Business Software was one of the very first PC software businesses in Dallas. Needless to say, that endeavor did not last very long for Cuban, as he was fired less than a year after starting in that position.

After being let go from Your Business Software, Cuban started his own company called  MicroSolutions. He received help with backing from some of his previous customers that he had with Your Business Software. In the beginning, MicroSolutions was a system integrator along with a software reseller, enabling Cuban to obtain the rights to change the name of the software and claim it as his own.. MicroSolutions was an early exponent of computer programs such as Carbon Copy, Lotus Notes, and CompuServe. Perot Systems, founded by Texas billionaire and presidential candidate Ross Perot, was one of MicroSoulutions largest clients. Cuban sold MicroSolutions to CompuServe in 1990 for six million dollars. After taxes were paid on the sale, Cuban secured around two million dollars on the transaction.

Along with former Indiana University graduate Todd Wagner, Cuban formed a new company called Audionet, where Wagner and Cuban linked their common enthusiasm in college basketball and webcasting. With only one server and an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) line, Audionet changed its name to Broadcast.com in 1998. Within a year, Broadcast.com had developed into a company with 330 employees and $13.5 million in profits. During the next year, during the Dot-com prosperity of the late 1990’s, Yahoo purchased Broadcast.com for 5.9 billion dollars worth of Yahoo stock.

Once the sale was completed, Cuban diversified his wealth to prevent liability from a possible market crash. As of this year, with a net worth of $2.3 billion, Cuban is #296 on Forbes' "World's Richest People" list. After paying $40 million for his Gulfstream V jet almost ten years ago via the internet, the Guinness Book of Records acknowledges Cuban with the "largest single e-commerce transaction" in history.

On January 15, 2000, for a price tag of $285 million, Cuban bought a majority stake in the NBA Dallas Mavericks basketball team H. Ross Perot, Jr. whom he had connections with from his time with MicroSolutions.

During the 20 years prior to Cuban purchasing the team, the Mavs had a 21-32 playoff record and only a 40 percent winning percentage. During the next six years, the Mavs won 69 percent of their regular season games and played in the playoffs in every one of those seasons. In 2006, The Mavs made their first trip the NBA finals before losing the championship to the Miami Heat in six games. With Cuban as owner, the Mavs playoff record is 39-40.

Unlike the majority of NBA team owners, during games Cuban acts more like a fan and sits among them wearing team jerseys and cheering the team on. He is anything but the usual laid-back NBA team owner that watches the games within the security of their skyboxes. The media have declared Cuban as the ultimate fan fantasy come true. He also attends the Mavericks away games by flying his record purchasing jet, the Gulfstream V to the cities they are playing in.

Cuban's ownership has been the origin of considerable media deliberation and disputes concerning league policies throughout his tenure.

Cuban has been fined over a million dollars by the NBA for thirteen different occurrences for severe allegations about the NBA and its referees. 

In one incident, he criticized the NBA’s manager of officials, Ed T. Rush, claiming that he "wouldn't be able to manage a Dairy Queen". The outburst was publicized throughout the nation and when Dairy Queen Management took displeasure from his comment, Cuban actually worked at a Dairy Queen in Coppell, Texas for a day. Fans were lined up for blocks in order to get some ice cream from the Mavericks owner.

Cuban started a booing crusade during the 2005-06 NBA season when former Maverick player Michael Finley came back to play against the Mavs as a member of the San Antonio Spurs. During a playoff series between the Mavs and the Spurs, Cuban blasted out at a Spurs player. For running out onto the court and chastising NBA officials during a game, the NBA fined Cuban $200,000. Cuban was also fined $250,000 by league officials for recurring misconduct actions after the Mavericks' game five loss to the Miami Heat during the 2006 NBA Finals.

After publicly criticizing NBA Finals MVP Dwyane Wade in February 2007, Cuban acknowledged that he would get fined if he expressed what he really thought happened during the 2006 NBA Finals.

After a league review in January of this year, the league fined Cuban $25,000 for screaming at Denver Nuggets player J. R. Smith at the end of the first half during a game played in Denver on January 13. Cuban was obviously extremely upset that Smith had thrown an elbow that missed Mavericks forward Antoine Wright by a slim margin. On the positive side, Cuban made the proposition to match his fine from the NBA with a donation to the charity of Smith's choosing.

This is not an unusual practice for Cuban in that he matches all of his NBA fines with charitable donations of equal amounts to the fines he receives.

Even his players notice it and consider Cubans antics as a distraction to the team. During an interview with Mavericks player Dirk Nowitzki in June of 2006, he had this to say concerning Cuban:

“He's got to learn how to control himself as well as the players do. We can't lose our temper all the time on the court or off the court, and I think he's got to learn that, too. He's got to improve in that area and not yell at the officials the whole game. I don't think that helps us. He sits right there by our bench. I think it's a bit much. But we all told him this before. It's nothing new. The game starts, and he's already yelling at them. So he needs to know how to control himself a little.”

Cuban had also let it be known that he was interested in owning a Major League Baseball team, most notably, the Chicago Cubs. In April of 2007, it was announced that the Cubs would be up for sale once the Chicago Tribune's sale to Sam Zell was finalized, but Cuban chose not to contemplate the possibility of purchasing the Cubs until they were officially on the market.

Once it became official in July of 2007, Cuban sent in an application to Major League Baseball to buy the Chicago Cubs, along with Wrigley Field and the Cubs Television Contract with WGN and Comcast. The sale of the Cubs and their entities could go as high as one billion dollars. In early October of 2007, Cuban publicly announced that he would likely bid on the Cubs, saying it would be "an opportunity [he] couldn't let slip by." In July of 2008, Cuban submitted an initial bid of $1.3 Billion to purchase the Cubs. He was then invited to take part in the second round of bidding for the Cubs along with a select few other potential ownership groups.

To Cubans disappointment, in January of this year, the Tribune Company announced that billionaire stockbroker Tom Ricketts and his family had won the bid for the opportunity to purchase the Cubs with an estimated bid of $900 million. Even though Cuban submitted a larger bid, his reputation as feisty owner probably hurt his chances and approval from other Major League Baseball owners might have been difficult.    

Other possible professional sports that Cuban could be associated with as an owner include the new American UFL football league which is expected to begin in October of this year. Although Cuban was involved early in its development, he will not be involved or be an owner this year. However, he is still a potential owner and is expected to join the league in either 2010 or 2011.

Photo Credit: Rhona Wise / Icon SMI