My Evening With Mark Cuban

Sometimes it becomes clear why I keep The Jester around. Last week (ok, it was actually more than two weeks ago. I’ve had a hard time finishing this posting as you’ll notice when it kind of ends abruptly) he was spiffed with his employer’s Mavericks tickets. These were some nice mid-lower bowl seats all by themselves. But soon after arriving an old Frat buddy of The Jester’s, who works for the Mavs, supersizes two of the four tickets our group had. How superersized? Well one of the tix was right behind Mark Cuban and the other was back and to the left of Cuban – usually not a good position in Dallas.

Sidebar -- I go to a lot of Stars games, but only one or two Mavs games a year. And it never fails to fascinate me how much different the crowds are. There is the obvious difference. The Stars’ crowd is quite a bit whiter than the Mavs’ crowd. Shit, the Stars’ crowd is quite a bit whiter than America in general. And, although I’m not in possession of the paperwork to prove it, the women that go to Mavs games are at least half the size of the women that go to Stars games. But, to be fair, those old school Darian Hatcher sweaters aren’t very flattering.

OK, back to the Mavs. Since there were only two tickets behind Cuban and four of us, we took shifts. Alex (not my dog) and Crutch took the first half and The Jester and I took the second half.

This is the third time I’ve watched a game from the floor – but the first time in the regular season. It’s very cool and I highly recommend it. So if you have a few thousand dollars laying about, burning a hole in your mattress, do it.

While I enjoyed the Mavs when they were on their big playoff runs, I am not what one would call a fan of basketball. In fact, of the four major sports it ranks fifth. But sitting on the floor and watching these goliaths perform just feet from you is, in one overused word, AWESOME. Except that I could not help but notice that filthy rich much have much smaller asses than the average Joe. There just isn’t that much room for a plus-sized dude like me.

But the highlight of the night, and the reason you’ve probably suffered through the first half of this post, was getting to witness the genius of Mark Cuban. Admittedly, I’m a fan of Mark Cuban. If we had more guys like him in the world, I truly think the world would be a much better place. He demands excellence from everyone around him and is constantly striving to improvements in his surroundings. We need more of this in this country. Although, I only demand mediocrity from myself.

But I would dread ever having to work for him – directly or indirectly. It’s not just a myth; he really is on the refs the whole game. The Clippers were shooting at our end. And any time they had the ball, he’s yelling “Three seconds. Three seconds” for the entirety of their possession. There was also a young referee officiating this game. On one particularly dubious call, he yelled out to the crew chief, “Hey, you can override him when he’s wrong.”

Cuban is also hyper vigilant – acutely aware of everything that’s going on around him. During one stoppage of play, a slower, quieter song got played that did not quite fit into the standard continuous cacophony of sound that is a Mavericks game. So Cuban jumps out of his seat and begins yelling at someone at the scorer’s table.

But my favorite moment happened after Brandon Bass was fouled. On his way to the charity stripe, the sound guy plays the drop “I brought you this delicious bass”, from Napoleon Dynamite. Well this tickled Marked and he began laughing riotously. So then everyone around him had to start over-laughing as well – including me.

So, in summary, Maverick’s games on the floor are good.