NBA Fines Mavericks' Mark Cuban

The Dallas team owner continues playoff antics and pays the price.

Jun 20, 2006

Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, is paying big fines and entertaining NBA fans, at the same time.

It's hard not to love Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban. Sure, he behaves like a big kid, as he patrols the sidelines near Dallas' bench during the NBA playoffs, but other than NBA commissioner, David Stern, who cares?

What other sports team owner do you know who huddles with his team, pats players on the fanny, high fives fans and screams at referees with junior high-like enthusiasm. It wouldn't surprise me if Cuban showed up to a big game with his face painted blue and white and one of those giant, spongy index fingers attached to his right hand.

And the best thing about Cuban is that he is completely immodest. He doesn't care what people think - especially the NBA's brass.

In a recent NBA Finals contest against Miami, Cuban went ballistic so often that the league office fined him $250,000. No big deal to Cuban, who has been fined more than Terrell Owens. The Mavs owner is worth nearly $2 billion, thanks to the sale of his Dot-com broadcast company to Yahoo in 1999.

Since taking over as owner of the Mavericks in 2000, Cuban has been fined by the NBA to the tune of nearly $1.5 million - nothing more than a charity donation to the 48-year-old hoops fan.

Prior to the most recent penalty, Cuban was hit with a $200,000 slap on the wrist for saying he wouldn't hire the head of NBA officials to run a Dairy Queen. That statement alone is worth at least half a million on the laugh-o-meter.

Mark Cuban is pure entertainment. He makes the NBA playoffs worth watching. The basketball being played in between Cuban's antics is more like commercials - boring and time consuming. I'd use this time to grab my snacks, if I wasn't too afraid of missing a camera shot of Cuban, waving an admonishing finger at David Stern, screaming at a bumbling referee or winking at a scantily-clad cheerleader.

When not splitting my sides over Cuban's sideline show, I'm falling over listening to his sound bites or reading his blog. In one edition he claims to suffer from HID, or Hyper Intensity Disorder. "Ok, I just made that up," he writes on blogmaverick.com. "But if it were truly a disease, I would claim that I had it."

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