By David Marchese
When Mark Cuban bought a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks in 2000, he was a brash new kind of team owner: quick to criticize the N.B.A. status quo, unafraid of the spotlight and a member of the exotic class of young tech moguls (albeit one with strong regular-dude vibes). Since then, the billionaire investor and ‘‘Shark Tank’’ star has become an unlikely éminence grise.
Cuban, who is 62, has seen the league rethink statistical analysis, the N.B.A. rule book and in-arena entertainment. Now he’s focused on influencing the world beyond professional sports: A former self-described libertarian, Cuban has found himself pushing for more activist government. He has become a loud critic of the Trump administration, as well as an advocate of overhauling the country’s health care systems. ‘‘I’m not trying to identify with either political side,’’ Cuban said. ‘‘I’m just trying to put the customer first.’’
The Mark Cuban who has been talking about politics and health care these days is now promoting government intervention that would have given pause to the Mark Cuban who used to call himself a libertarian. What has changed for you?Being a libertarian meant “Let’s avoid politics, because politicians are just going to screw things up.” The efficiency wasn’t there. Then 2016 comes along. I know Donald Trump. When he said that he’s going to run for president, I said that it’s the best thing to happen to politics because he’s not a Stepford candidate and he’ll say what’s on his mind. So he was calling me all the time, and we’re interacting, and I’m calling him — more him calling me, actually. That’s such a Trumpian thing to say.
Doesn’t mean it’s wrong.Exactly. But as time went on, it became clear that he wasn’t learning. He wasn’t doing the things that were important for a candidate for president of the United States. He wouldn’t learn anything. He was making no effort to learn. When you talked to him, there was no depth. Then all of a sudden, he had a chance to win. I said to my family that I couldn’t live with myself, knowing this guy, if I didn’t do something.
That’s why I got involved.And initially, in 2016, when you saw me talk about policies that are not libertarian by any stretch of the imagination, it was trying to get the Clinton campaign to be more pro-business. Having learned the things I’ve learned over the last few years, I’ve done what would be considered a 180. I’d rather see bigger government checks written to people and more jobs created than more programs created. Whether that’s progressive or conservative, I don’t know or care.
Do you have concerns about Joe Biden not being sufficiently pro-business?
I don’t know how much he’s politicking to his base right now and where he’ll end up, but yes, of course. When you go to Biden’s website, there’s still a lot of the Democratic dogma that hasn’t been updated. In terms of how you get out of this economic mess, it can’t be traditional Democratic trickle-down government programs. It has to be direct compensation via jobs and stimulus programs. That has got to be the foundation of everything he does.
I’m curious what makes you think Biden might not be pro-business enough? I know he wants to raise the corporate tax rate, but isn’t he insufficiently pro-business only if you believe that the government should be totally hands-off with business?There’s reality, and there’s perception. The Republicans are great at demonizing candidates on the other side, so I get emails all the time from people: “What do you mean you’re supporting Biden? He’s a communist. He’s a socialist.” If you watched right-leaning news shows enough, that’s exactly what you’re going to believe. That’s the issue.
Couldn’t it be that someone like yourself saying you need to wait and see if Biden is pro-business enough helps validate that suspicion?Yeah, there’s no question. We’ve still got a hundred or whatever days until the election, and as Biden comes out with things, I’ll either say yea or nay. Remember, having a conversation about politics, I want to be brutally honest. If there’s uncertainty, I’m not going to try to hide it. I’d rather be open about my uncertainties and A, hopefully influence that candidate in the event that he thinks what I’m saying is of any value, and B, be the honest broker. I’ll be critical of both sides. That’s not to say that I won’t look stupid in hindsight. I mean, my generation was sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll — I never thought they would be the Fox News generation. People I knew were smoking pot, listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and protest songs. The idea that those are the people condemning Black Lives Matters and watching Fox News in droves — it’s so upsetting to me. You have no idea.
So you knew Trump, and then in 2016, you came to the conclusion that he had no depth. Does that mean that you thought differently about him before that?I did know that there was no depth there. I just didn’t think he would have a chance to win.
Did you think he was an astute businessman?No, never.
Did you think he was insightful about anything? Never once in conversation with him have I ever thought, That was an interesting insight. Not when it comes to business. Not when it comes to marketing. Not when it comes to anything. More the opposite. It was like, What the [expletive]?
So what conversations would you two have? You know what’s interesting? He never really asked me about things. He might say, “What do you think?” But he just wanted support. Donald Trump is like the coddled athlete or the person who gets by on one skill or on attractiveness and just says, “So what do you think?” Because if you’re always asking that, you never have to say what you think. He also calls people all the time. If this whole interview was about how much I love Donald Trump, he would call me tomorrow and say: “Thank you so much. What do you think about this?”
When did you last speak with him?We talked basketball — this was in October, the start of the N.B.A. season. He just wanted to BS about basketball. It was like a four-minute call, but it ended with, “I’d like to have you come to the White House and bring your family.” I didn’t say no, but it never happened.
Can you talk about what the most important factors were, outside of safety, in getting the N.B.A. back to playing this year?There is no “outside of safety.” That’s the underpinning of everything. Without it, we would be playing in the home arenas. Everybody has come to the realization that while there’s no absolute certainty, by using the best available resources — which the N.B.A. has but which individuals, whether it’s me or a player, do not have — we’re effectively keeping players safer than they might otherwise be at home.
If playing again was only about safety, wouldn’t you not play until there was a vaccine?Not necessarily. I’m not saying there’s no economics involved. If the economics rewarded us to stay home, we would probably stay home. But it’s not just economics. There’s also the patriotic side. I know that sounds cheesy, but we need something in this country to cheer for.
How much should sports-team owners like yourself be worried about the risk of alienating their players if the players don’t feel that political and social attitudes at the top of an organization reflect their own? I don’t want to speak for other owners. What I’ve tried to do is communicate and listen better than I have in the past. I’ve learned a lot since George Floyd’s death. That gets into a much bigger conversation about what I’ve tried to become personally.
Let’s get into that conversation. White people don’t like to talk about race. It’s uncomfortable for a white person to say the term “white race” or “white people,” because there’s an immediate association with white supremacists. And when you use the term “white privilege,” people get defensive. “I can’t be a racist.” We try to say, “I see everybody the same,” but I learned when we went through our sexual-harassment challenge that treating everybody the same is not the same as treating everybody equally. I used to think that if I told a stupid joke to David, I could tell a stupid joke to Sue and I could tell a stupid joke to an African-American because I didn’t think that it was racist, and if I’m colorblind, I can’t be part of the problem. George Floyd’s death, it changed me. It really did — listening to our African-American players talk about personal experiences and seeing the ubiquity of it all. Like, after Trayvon Martin’s death, I talked about walking down the street and how I would cross to the other side if I saw a black kid with a hoodie or a white bald guy with tattoos coming toward me. That was my way of saying: “I don’t see color. I try to evaluate each person individually, but I have prejudices that all people have.” I won’t say that anymore. Colorblind isn’t the way to be. You’ve got to recognize the differences. When people talk about Black Lives Matter, they’re not saying white lives don’t matter; they’re saying that black people and different ethnicities have been mistreated. And when you see somebody who’s mistreated, you help them. That’s what I came to realize.
Should more owners feel an obligation to be supportive of Black Lives Matter? I don’t think there’s an obligation. I think there’s a consequence if you’re not. Let’s go to an underpinning of this. Why are we talking about sports-team owners as opposed to coffee-shop owners? Because sports play a different role in the community than any other business. I get emails from parents because their son is dying of cancer and his wish is to have a signed jersey. You don’t see Make-a-Wish come to a Google corporate meeting. When I first got to the N.B.A., I was like: “You guys realize you don’t sell basketball, right? Basketball is not our product.” “Oh, you’re an idiot.” I’m like, “OK, tell me the score of your last game.” “I don’t remember.” “Do you remember the first time you went to a game with your dad? The first time you went with your date, who turned into your wife? The time your buddy got sick and puked on the person next to them? The time you high-fived when Vince Carter hit that shot against the Spurs? You remember your experiences. That’s what we sell.” I might be the proprietor of the Mavs, but the community owns the Mavs. That’s why I’m not going to say what any other owner should do. But there is going to be a consequence if they don’t recognize what business they’re in. If you aren’t beloved on some level in your community, you’re not going to have intense fans and you’re not going to have a business.
You mentioned the sexual-harassment issues the Mavericks dealt with. Your position publicly was that you weren’t aware of what was going on. But you were known for being deeply involved in every aspect of the Mavs organization. So what accounts for your not knowing about sexual harassment? Were you willfully naïve? I spent all my time on the basketball side. My only interaction on the business side was marketing and sales, and I had a C.E.O. I inherited when I bought the team. At the beginning, I was definitely hands-on on the business side. But over those 15 years leading into 2018, if I was in the business office twice a year, that was a lot. So when I was made aware of some of the issues, I didn’t address them in the right way. I didn’t recognize the impact it had on the women in the office. It never dawned on me that women wouldn’t email me to say there was a problem. The fact that women went to work at that office and were fearful still bothers me. But I tried to learn from it.
Have you taken steps to be more involved? Yeah, I talk to Cynt all the time. I’ve got a much different relationship with her than I had with her predecessor. When I say that, I let her do her job. She’s a lot better at it. I don’t have to be there a lot. Look, I bought the team because I love basketball, and that side is where I’ve spent my time.
What’s the likelihood that there will be fans at N.B.A. games in 2021? I’d say better than 50 percent. I try to be a health care and science geek and read as much as I can on the vaccines. I’m a believer in an earlier vaccine with a wider distribution. But there’s no certainty. It’s not something we are planning for at this point.
Sticking with basketball, do you still believe you got robbed by the referees in the 2006 finals? 100 percent.
Because of ineptitude or something else? Ineptitude plus something else. I’ve had refs tell me that I wasn’t their favorite person.
So they were screwing you intentionally? Without question.
Did you talk to the league about that? I did. They investigated it and said they couldn’t prove it. That year was the last year, because I raised such hell, when most of the refereeing assignments in the finals were based on seniority. Now there’s an attempt to make it based on job performance. Once I went through the list, right around that 2006 time frame, of all the recently hired referees. I was curious where we were hiring these people from. These weren’t refs that were in the pressure-cooker games, Indiana-Purdue, Duke-North Carolina games. They were from these small conferences. I’m like, Why are we hiring refs from these small conferences? Turns out that the guy who was in charge of officiating for those small conferences was the former coach of the person responsible for hiring the referees. There was this connection between the two of them, and so he wasn’t hiring the best. We hired somebody from the Rucker League! I don’t even want to go into all the details. It was a joke.
I assume you presented all this to the league. What was the response? Effectively, they [expletive] their pants and made changes.
Here’s a random question I bet you’ve never been asked before: You were an executive producer on that movie “Serena,” with Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, from a few years back. I remember seeing that movie and wondering how something with two stars who were at or near their peaks turned into a mess that basically got buried? What happened there? I don’t know. My name’s there as an executive producer, but that’s Todd’s side of 2929.
Quick story about me and producing movies: This is 2004. I get an email from a guy named Alex Gibney. I didn’t know who Alex Gibney was. He goes, “I’ve got this footage from Enron, and we want to do a documentary.” “Do you own it exclusively?” “Yes.” “So we have all the rights?” “Yes.” “How much will it cost?” “$770,000.” “Let’s do it.” So we did this movie, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.” I greenlit this movie in 12 minutes — 12 minutes from first email to last. It was nominated for an Academy Award. Then Todd comes to me. He’s got this black-and-white movie that we would end up doing with Participant. It’s going to have George Clooney.
“Good Night, and Good Luck.” Yeah. “Good Night, and Good Luck” is our second movie. Cost us $4 million. Crushes it. Gets nominated for six Academy Awards. My first two movies that I’m involved with get nominated for seven Academy Awards. I’m thinking, This [expletive] is easy. [Laughs.] You don’t know a movie since then that we did. But yeah, “Serena,” I have no idea.
You’ve been talking about health care a lot over the last few months. I noticed that when you do, you often refer to citizens as “customers” of the government. Why is that a helpful way to think about citizens’ role? I’ve always said about customers: Treat them as though they own you. You don’t have a business without your customers. That’s the perspective our federal government should have about our citizens. This should not be a country run by two political parties. There should be allegiance to the citizens. Maybe “customer” is not the best metaphor, but it’s the best one I have.
I guess I’m wondering if it’s strange or limiting to think about a country’s citizens and its government as being engaged in a seller-customer dynamic. For example, who is the government’s “customer” when it comes to a health care issue like women’s reproductive rights? It’s just the power dynamics. The power dynamic should be with the individual and the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution. I think that “the customer is always right” is a phrase people agree with for the most part. To me, that’s why “customer” works. But I’m not beholden to it.
As simply as possible, can you explain the health care overhaul that you’ve been out there pushing for? Right now, there’s the dynamic in health care where you’ve got providers and payers. Insurers want to maximize premiums and minimize payouts. Hospitals want to maximize their earnings while hopefully maximizing health care at the same time. So I asked the question, What’s the role of an insurance company? The role of an insurance company is to aggregate capital via premiums so that when somebody gets sick there’s enough money in the quote-unquote bank to pay the providers for the services. But the problem is that we don’t need insurers for national programs. What I’ve proposed is this thing called the 10 Plan. Effectively, what it says is, ”Let’s make the United States of America — the Treasury — the bank." If you do that, then you can create a health care program that is a hybrid of single-payer and open-market health care. You would have a program where no one has to pay premiums, because the Treasury has enough capital to pay out costs. And you would not pay premiums until you use the system. Once David used the system, we would do means-testing. If David made under $40,000 a year or between 200 and 250 percent of the federal poverty level, then your health care would be free with some co-pays. If David made more than $40,000, it would be means-tested but graduated up to 10 percent of your income. So you would never pay more than 10 percent of your income for health care, and you would only pay for what you use.
Give me an example of how this would work. David sprained his ankle, and it cost $500. Let’s say you’re means-tested at 5 percent of your income: You have the option of paying $500 right out of your pocket or 5 percent — $25 a month — until it’s paid off. And if David had something horrific happen in his family, if someone got cancer that required a million dollars a year in treatment, you would continue paying your 5 percent until it was paid off or for 15 years, whichever came first. By doing that, based off the last numbers that we had, consumers — let’s not call them customers — would save $63 billion dollars a year. The question you didn’t ask is, Why did I geek out on all this stuff? It’s because when the Republicans were looking at repeal-and-replace and they didn’t have a program, I thought, What would I do? I looked at my own health care for our companies. We self-insure. If the biggest companies self-insure, why can’t the country? That’s exactly what the 10 Plan is. There’s your quick answer. Easy to understand? I don’t know.
You’ve obviously done a ton of research on this. Have you done any research on whether people want the sort of health care system you’re proposing? I have not. I’m just looking to say — and this may be arrogant — how can I solve this problem? I’m not saying I have the solutions, but when you put things out there and people smack you down, then you find out where the problems are. Beat me up. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. But let’s at least have the conversation.
Is there any way in which your effort to find a solution to the country’s health care problems without having talked to people about what they want is maybe an example of the kind of thing that causes distrust of rich people who say they know what’s best for everyone? Absolutely. So is my choice to keep it to myself?
Or combine what you’re doing with finding out what people want, too. I’m not saying I won’t. Look, we’re talking four months into a pandemic. We got to see what the $1,200 stimulus did. It’s not like, OK, on March 11, the league closes down, and on March 12, I said, “Here’s my idea off the top of my head for how to fix things.” Instead, it’s like: “OK, what have we seen that has worked? How do we get from here to where we need to be?” That’s what I’m trying to help figure out.
Opening Illustration: Source photograph by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Turner Sports.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.
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