NOBODY IS SURE MARK CUBAN is coming until he arrives. He rarely agrees to in-person interviews, and his publicist hasn’t responded to several requests for confirmation. When I park at the Mavericks’ office in Dallas at our scheduled time and introduce myself to a bewildered security guard, he explains that the building is undergoing renovations and Mr. C is not there. The guard deposits me in a conference room with a fancy bottle of water anyway.
The room is lit by four fluorescent circular fixtures overhead, which reflect off the white lacquered surface of a large conference table like ring lights off a pupil. A huge photograph of a beach with noxiouslooking pink surf hangs on the far end of the room. Outside the space’s glass doors there is a giant photo of Cuban, who owns the Mavericks, grimacing in a suit. I’m staring at it when the actual Cuban appears, hurrying through the doors with one hand outstretched.
He is wearing sneakers, white Mavericks joggers, and a well-worn white T-shirt with a logo and TRACKS RECORDS, BLOOMINGTON, in emblazoned over one pec. (The owners of Tracks threw it at him last summer as he walked by the store while he was in town for a rugby reunion at his alma mater, Indiana University.) After he takes a seat, he places a bent plastic water bottle on the table, followed by a black wallet case containing his phone and a crowded key ring with a black Tesla key chain.
His eyebrows look groomed and his teeth are optic white and very straight, but his face doesn’t register as a rich guy’s. It looks increasingly Stallone-like the more you look at it, with the downturned outer corners of his eyes and a pummeled je ne sais quoi. “When I was like 18, I used to walk into places when Sylvester Stallone was brandnew—see how old I am—and people would start singing the theme song to Rocky,” he says. “I had the hair and all that.”
Now 65, he seems delighted to have something as universal as getting older to be self-deprecating about. He hates to be photographed, he explains, because he always thinks he looks older or out of shape. (The photograph hanging in the hallway was “not by choice,” on which he has appeared as a judge since 2011, but he doesn’t like to watch it. “Just because I hate to see myself,” he says. “People always come up to me: ‘Oh, you look so much better in person.’ Or at least they .”
