Mark Cuban On Luka Trade, Cooper Flagg, Life After The Mavericks, The Future Of AI, & More

When the Lakers were sold for $10 billion, some people were shocked. Was that your reaction too? No, my reaction was, why didn't I put them out? Huge mistake on my part. You come in, you're successful at your business and you think to yourself, I'm smart. So I'm gonna stick with what works for me. That's what got me in trouble with the NBA a lot when I first came in. I bought three number one picks in the 2000 draft and it ended up being the worst draft in the history of the NBA. Are you bullish on what NBA Europe could be as well? Depends how we do it. I was always a fan of the NBA taking the soccer approach to the Olympics. We should create our own World Cup. But every time I brought that up to Adam or David Stern, they said, well, our deal with FIBA doesn't preclude it. And then all of a sudden they renew their deal with FIBA without talking to the owners about it. It's riskier to try to build your own league as opposed to trying to build a super event. What's up everybody? And welcome to another episode of Network. On today's show, I sit down with entrepreneur and legendary sports owner, Mark Cuban. And I'm also gonna talk a little bit about NBA stars and how this last generation may be like nothing we'll ever see again. So download my show on Boardroom or Yahoo Sports and listen wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome to my network. Today, I wanna talk about the NBA stars of the last 20 years because in my opinion, the NBA stars of the last 20 years have been the most famous group of players in any era, maybe across all sports. Clearly there were household names before them, MJ, Bird, Magic, and across sports, Muhammad Ali, Tom Brady, Serena Williams. But the amount of stars that have come out of the NBA over the last 20 years is unlike anything we've seen before. LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Kyrie Irving, Luka, Giannis, Jokic, stars from all over the world. And how did this happen? Because these players grew up in the birth of social media. Fans now got unadulterated access. They can interact with their favorite players and the players clap back at fans. Twitter NBA is a thing in its own right. And it's not just social media. The game has been globalized. And by the game being globalized, fans all over the world now we're tuning in to watch their favorite players and their favorite rivalries. You could watch an NBA finals game and have someone from Akron, Ohio, or someone from Athens, Greece. Free agency became world news, LeBron James' decision, KD going to the Warriors. People were tuning into this like it was truly world news. Athletes became business empires. They invested in sports teams. They invested in venture funds. They started their own venture funds, their own media companies. They sat front row at the Oscars and they even won Oscars. They sat front row at fashion shows. They walked on fashion runways and they started their own fashion lines. This group of NBA players are household names all over the world. Any party they walk into, the room stops. So while there will obviously be big stars in the future like Ant and Wemby, what we will never see is the amount of stars that we have seen over the last 20 years in the NBA. Fans' attention spans are gone. Content is saturated. People tune into streamers as much as they tune into NBA stars. But over the last 20 years, the biggest stars in my mind, the most impactful stars in all of culture have been the NBA stars. And I don't know if we'll ever see anything like it again. That's just a few things I've been thinking about. Now I'd like to bring to the show famous entrepreneur, a figure you see on Shark Tank all over your TVs and one of the most notorious owners in the history of sports. Please welcome Mr. Mark Cuban. Welcome to Network, Mark Cuban. Thanks for having me on, Rich. Of course, man. Like we said off camera, this feels long overdue. I've obviously been a big fan and admirer of you. You are an inspiration to an entire generation of entrepreneurs. So it's exciting to sit here and talk some sports, life and business with you. I'm ready. So, you know, we're on the heels of a new NBA season going into another season, another year, everyone gets that NBA excitement. And I know in the past, I've talked to players that have retired and like it doesn't really hit until you start going into that new season. For you, is there something different this time of year now emotionally, just knowing that your role and position has changed after so many years being like so closely aligned in every way? That's a great question because it's not my team necessarily on the floor. So it's a lot less stressful because, you know, during the games I get into and I'd want us to win, but I'm thinking about all the decisions I made and all the various elements of what went to putting that team together and trying to determine, did we do it right or wrong? And so, you know, I don't have that same level of stress anymore. I just want to enjoy the game and hope we win. But not having that stress, does it come also with like a little bit of sadness or disappointment in some ways? Oh, for sure. Like, you know, because I'm not going to do things exactly the same as Patrick is going to do. And so it's like, oh, I would have done this, I would have done that, but it's not my call anymore. And yeah, and I kind of miss that part of it, but there's a lot of parts I don't miss. Yeah, I'm sure. You know, obviously like when it was first reported, they talked about the minority stake you were keeping and the role that you would still play. But it seems from afar, just knowing you and knowing that like, if you're still calling the shots, you're calling the shots. And was it misreported or did it evolve since it first happened? Oh, it evolved. Not to my liking, but it evolved. It just happened the way it happened. I thought I'd be running basketball, didn't turn out that way. That's in the past. So now we just move forward. So, you know, I don't want to get into the trade. It's everyone's talked about it at nauseam, but the one thing that I think is hard for me to figure out because I'm an avid sports fan and I've watched star players change teams. As a fan of the Knicks growing up, there were players that were traded that broke my heart, but never to this magnitude. Like what was the emotional connection that unless you were in Dallas, you wouldn't understand? And there was other parts to it, right? The way in which it kind of came out, but what was it that just hit Dallas fans so deeply? Luka did things no other player had done. I mean, it was called Luka magic for a reason because there truly was magic. And he was such a good guy off the court that every interaction that I've ever had with him was positive. When he would interact with fans, the things he did in the community, and you combine those two together, it was a unique situation. And particularly after Dirk spending 21 years here, I think everybody just anticipated that Luka would be here forever. And when that didn't happen, I mean, it hurt a lot of us. And so I think it really came down to, he was not just a special player, but it was how he was special. Just the moments he created, last second falling out of bounds against the Knicks, miss the free throw, get the put back to send us to overtime or whatever it was, and then do a little dance. You don't see that from other players ever. Yeah, I guess, and there's certain people, it's like an intangible, it's an it factor, it connects with people. Yeah, sure, there's certain people, they were just made for the moment. We saw that a lot with Dirk, but Dirk wasn't the one bringing the ball up. Dirk had to get into a spot or take the ball to a spot. Luka had the ball in his hands all the time, probably more than any player in the NBA. And so we saw a lot more of the magic. And I think that created a special bond with fans and his teammates. And I didn't anticipate, nobody anticipated what happened would happen. And so I think that made it a little bit tougher. Yeah, the shock factor for sure. Do you think there's like, God gave Dallas a bit of a mulligan, potentially, with the Cooper flag? It felt like that. Like, it felt like that Patrick Ewing coming to the Knicks in 85. Just something that obviously wasn't planned, but if I'm a Dallas fan, I could sleep a little bit better at night, potentially. For sure. I mean, all fans really want is hope. The hope that we're gonna be a good team, the hope that something special could be put together. And the basketball God smiled upon us when we got Cooper. And the kid's just amazing. Everything, you know, I've met him, talked to him, you know, deal with the people around him. Everybody just loves him to death. And, you know, the best part is, he's all basketball and a little bit of golf. Yeah. And that's all he cares about. He's not doing anything. He's just all about basketball. And he's 18 years old. My middle daughter is going away to college and she's a few months older than him. Crazy. And it's just stunning. I know it's hard to like, fully comprehend the age of these guys because when you watch them on TV, you like instantly age them in your mind a bit, right? Yeah, because, you know, it's hard to comprehend that this 18 year old is the hope of a franchise, just like when we got Luca, the hope of a franchise. And it's just, you know, and he's been through that pressure before. And, you know, at Duke that's obviously a hotbed and he was highly recruited and the top recruit. And, you know, it took him a little bit to feel his way in, but he did. And he'll do the same thing with the Mavs. Yeah. It's funny because even the way people talk about LeBron is ancient. In our world, like he's a young guy. Like he's a young- Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I would always tell people, you know, basketball is one thing, but father time is undefeated. But life after basketball is a long, long, long time. And so, you know, we've learned to adapt as we've gotten older. But like you said, you know, a player being 40, 41, that's young. You know, that's how old I was when I bought the Mavs. That's like being a teenager in this business. I know, I know. What do you think Dirk's legacy ends up being, you know, 20, 40 years from now? And as somebody that was so close to him, do you think Dirk is not fully appreciated for what he did on the court? Or do you think that he's pretty acknowledged for like how great he was? I think while he was playing, he was acknowledged because he was hitting all these milestones. You know, the championship, 20,000 points, 30,000 points, you know, the number of all-star game appearances. And so when he was playing, people truly appreciated him. Now he's appreciated in Dallas because of all the things he does in the community. And, you know, true Mavs fans, you know, remember and love him and see the statue in front of the arena. But outside of Dallas, I don't, you know, it's almost as if, you know, younger fans today don't really understand the impact he had on the game. His ability to come in and change a game, his ability to shoot and score and rebound and do all the things that he needed to do to win 10 straight years of 50 plus wins. I mean, that's unheard of in this day and age. And yet, you know, kids, unless you're in a highlight film or unless you're in, you know, on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube videos, you're not truly appreciated any longer. And that's just not Dirk. That's, you know, Patrick Ewing, you know, guys we all really truly loved and appreciated as players. It's just harder for players to really sustain that after they're done with their careers. I love that Patrick Ewing's been mentioned twice in this interview. I know, right? That's incredible. But it's true. Cause it's like, I always have this conversation about these like prototypes of players that are created and like when a prototype is innovated. So it's like Kobe obviously was absolutely godlike, but it was in the mold and the prototype of MJ. And even LeBron, to some regard, we've never seen anything like it, but it was in the mold of magic. Kevin gets a lot of credit for this 6'10 perimeter player that could move and handle the ball. But I would say that Kevin would acknowledge that Dirk was a bit of an inspiration in terms of that ability to play that way. And in a lot of ways, he was the first of that prototype. Oh yeah, cause I remember when KD came into the league with the Sonics, right? He's just trying to find his way, super skinny, right? And just moving his game further and further away. And KD had better handles than Dirk, but just in terms of being able to shoot, KD kept on working and has become a phenomenal shooter, you know, particularly in the mid range right now. But what's really different now, like I have a 15 about to turn 16 year old son and their skill level is a thousand times greater than players 10, 15 years ago and certainly longer because all day long they're watching videos of their favorite players. And so you see them replicating Steph, you see the handles and all the same moves and the little still should be a travel, step back, step back, step back three, you know, things that kids are doing today. And so if they're not emulating a player, they're not really connecting to the player. And as a result, you know, I see it at Mavs games, you know, when LeBron comes to town, huge number of LeBron fans sell out. Steph comes to town, huge number of Steph fans sell out. Now more and more Luka, same type of thing, and hopefully Cooper, but unless the young players are emulating you, you don't have as much reverence maybe is the word, you know, because they're not watching you in videos, you know, all day, every day. Yeah, no, it's the same reason why like big men historically couldn't sell shoes and like why someone like Kyrie had such a, like incredible sneaker business because it's like you're watching a wizard and you wanna try to emulate that. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. You know, player after player today will tell you Kyrie has got the best handles, the best moves, the most stuff to him, right? And Kyrie will go with it and live up to it as well. And then, you know, Kyrie has also started to understand the beauty of social media and the downside, but more so, you know, understanding how to connect to fans. You know, he talks about his community all the time, you know, hell of this, hell of that, you know, and he builds that into his shoes and he builds that into, you know, how he relates to fans. And I think that's really special and part of what really has changed with fandom just, you know, cause social media is relatively new. Yeah. You know, when I talk about the Brooklyn era, right? So, you know, I'm a diehard Knick fan that wanted Kevin to play for the Knicks. He chose the Nets, him and Kyrie had a vision and then I had to emotionally get on board with the Nets. So like this lifetime Knick fan in me had to completely, it was tough. And I did it. And I always talk about- No, you didn't, you just pretended. I pretended, I pretended, I pretended. I had better seats at the Barclays. So yeah, I was locked in. Yeah, that helped. But it feels like, you know, as an owner, if you can relate in some ways to what Joe went through in that time and I was fully enmeshed in it, but when I've come out of it now, I feel like none of that would have unfolded that way had it not been for the period of time this was, this COVID time where- Oh, for sure. You just let people express what they wanted and Joe did the right thing at that time in getting them what they wanted. But in today's day now, you would get in a room and figure this out. I'm sure you would have gotten in a room and figured that out. Yeah, COVID obviously was a wild card because it was a life or death thing for so many people. You know, because with the Mavs, we had to go through the thinking of, okay, what percentage of our fans coming to the game were immunocompromised or cancer survivors? And were we just going to preclude them and say, hey, just don't come, it's on you? Or were we going to try to take precautions? And what if, you know, who knows on what variant? There were so many different variables that I always wanted to err on the side of caution. You know, the concept that somebody might die on my watch because of something I did for the Mavs games was just scary as hell to me. Combine that with what Kyrie and his positioning, that was just oil and vinegar. So I felt bad for Joe and felt bad for Kyrie. But once we got past that, you know, Kyrie, you know, has evolved and Kyrie has matured in a lot of ways. And, you know, he's a, I wouldn't say different person, but, you know, you grow up, there's a difference between being 20 years old coming into the league, 25 and 30, and 33 for that matter. You do mature and you get a family. In Kyrie's case, you have kids. That changes how you think. Yeah, I think people don't tend to understand that like the same natural evolutions that we all go through, like the things I thought and felt at 24 were not the same at 28 and 32. And, you know, yeah, it's tough. So, you know, I know I've heard you talk about how like you didn't necessarily want the pressures of what owning a team can come with for your children, but was there a bit of a pushback or was it a complicated conversation with your family? Yeah, I mean, particularly my son, everybody was disappointed. There's no question about it. They, you know, because that had been their whole identity growing up. We own the Mavs, you know. We went to every home game and a bunch of away games. And so, you know, and I tried to explain to them, look, all this social media stuff that even you guys feel and the nonsense that you hear because of our association with the Mavs, you know, when I'm all gone, you know, and if it's on you guys, I don't want you guys to go through that one. And two, I want you to find your own path. I don't want you always to be, you know, in my shadow. This is, you know, the Mark Cuban Mavs or whatever, you know, and now you're trying to find your way. I just didn't like that idea. And, you know, they're young, they're, you know, 16, 19 and about to turn 22 now. And so, you know, it was harder for them to understand two plus years ago. Yeah. And I also heard you say something that was interesting. And I know a lot of people that I speak to struggle with the same kind of challenges at times, which is not a challenge that anyone should feel bad for a wealthy individual having, but a challenge that's real, which is like you worked your ass off, you made money before your kids were born. And some of the principles that you had instilled in you, how do you necessarily like translate that when your children are raised with money? Is that something that you feel like you've understood and figured out? Did I understand it? Yes. Did I figure it all out? No. You know, because, you know, I've got three kids, as I said, and they're all different. And I want them all to find their own path, but I don't want them to be spoiled or feel entitled. I want them to have to earn something on their own and to understand the satisfaction that comes with that. And that was part of all this. You know, I went to Indiana University. I wouldn't let them go to school there. You know, I don't want them to be in my shadow there and see my picture or whatever. And, you know, we're trying, my wife and I really try to get them just to go on their own path, to take on their own challenges, not just to rely on me. And I think, you know, so far, knock on wood, we've done a decent job, but, you know, you don't know until you know. So you went to IU. So were you, I'm trying to think how old Isaiah is. Were you there in 81? I was there when Isaiah, I got there, I was graduating. My last year was Isaiah's first year. So you were a Bobby Knight guy? Yeah, for sure. Did you get to know him? Afterwards, I got to know him some. After I bought the Mavs, we talked a few times, met at IU a couple of times. And then I went back, his last appearance in Bloomington, I was there for that as well. That's cool. You know, when the Lakers were sold for $10 billion, some people were shocked. For me, it made all the sense in the world, right? Like, if you look at the brand that is the LA Lakers, maybe in the traditional form that teams had run, it didn't make sense. But with the, like, numerous ways that teams can think about monetizing and different revenue streams to create, it did make sense to me. Was that your reaction too, when you saw that brand go for that much money? No, my reaction was, why didn't I bring the Mavs? I know, I almost said that too. Because I did see that you said that was your only regret, not bidding it out. Yeah, it was a huge mistake on my part, but in hindsight, right, is what it is. But, you know, one, you know, when I looked at it and dug into the numbers, they already own a substantial portion of the Lakers. So their marginal cost in terms of cash wasn't as dramatic, because it wasn't like someone came in from the outside and wrote a $10 billion check. And I still don't know, you know, in terms of minority ownership, you know, who sold or didn't sell, I have no idea. So it may not have been as big a check as the valuation makes it appear. But in any event, you know, Mark Walters running the Dodgers, doing a phenomenal job there. I think it was a win-win, you know. Jeannie and her family have done a phenomenal job. The Lakers obviously are, you know, an institution in Los Angeles and around the world. And so, you know, they deserve the price that they got. Yeah, but, and that's what I mean, right? Like if you think about them as a brand and then you think about their core product is putting on a basketball team, but as the brand itself, when you think about Nike being worth $80 billion or what some of these tech companies are worth, just looking at it without any understanding of anything of the economics, just like value of brands, like of course the LA Lakers would be a $10 billion brand, right? Well, it depends on how you can leverage it, right? Because there's some limitations on like how you can use your team logos and marks in major league baseball and football are completely different than the NBA. We're a lot more constrained. But at the same time, you know, I don't know their plans, but, you know, around crypto.com arena, there's already stuff that's been built out, but who knows, maybe they do what the Clippers do and find their own spot, who knows? It's just, it really depends on how they plan on leveraging it. But do you think the real estate thing is something that will continue to be a part of team ownership? Like you saw what the Braves did with the Braves built around their stadiums, incredible. I know what the Sixers ownership are planning on doing and that group and David Edelman, but that's obviously like a revenue stream to unlock, I would imagine, right? Building this entire world around your campus. And that's one of the reasons I sold, right? Because, you know, in order to truly monetize, because I really didn't make money from the operations of the Mavs. And so to monetize it, I would have had to get into real estate and, you know, building ancillary things around it. I just didn't want to do that. I love basketball, you know, I love the Mavs because it's basketball. All the other stuff is a job that I don't want to do. And so, but to your point, you know, the monetization and the leverage points really, you know, for every team in every major sport is what can you build around it? Yeah, well, because you said once that the Mavs were a tech company, right? That sold basketball. Yeah, we're an entertainment company, but at the beginning it was all about tech because tech was brand new. Yeah. And so leveraging everything I knew about technology to give us an edge. But at this point in time, you know, streaming isn't new, the internet isn't new, AI is new, but that's a different beast. It's all about real estate or in our case, maybe a casino. And that's one of the reasons I partnered with Patrick. He's brilliant at that stuff. He really knows the stuff. Has the role of a team owner changed from when you bought the team? Obviously the prices have changed so drastically that who can get in has changed, right? But it feels like the role of the owner, at least from when I was a kid and what I even thought of a team owner, I would say you are almost this inflection point. There are people like George Steinbrenner that everyone knew, but in the NBA, no one knew who anyone is. Jerry Buss, maybe, but it was you that changed that kind of perception. Has that changed? And then with that, has that brought challenges? Because if you think about what happened with the Cowboys and I'm watching the America's Team doc, which you should watch, it's incredible if you haven't watched it yet. I've heard it's amazing. I haven't seen it. It's amazing. And when you listen to Jerry Jones speak, right? Like he always wanted to own the Cowboys. He made money in oil. He thought to himself right away, I'm buying the Cowboys. He bought the Cowboys, fired Tom Landry, and then the whole city turned on him. But then ultimately he went on to dominate, but things have changed so drastically now. And then the same type of mentality has impacted him and hurt him in some ways. Does ego when you get so hands-on with these teams in some ways hurt you or can hurt you or hurt a franchise? Oh yeah. I mean, I've had this conversation with other owners because you come in, you're successful at your business and you think to yourself, I'm smart, I'm good, right? I took this business and grew it to whatever that put me in a position to buy this team. So I'm going to stick with what works for me. And that's what got me in trouble with the NBA a lot when I first came in. Cause I'm like, I'm not going to change for them. This is what works. But that ego to your point also makes you overconfident to a certain extent. So you go do like, I remember my first year, I bought three number one picks in the 2000 draft and it ended up being the worst draft in the history of the NBA. And so it's just like, cause you want to come in. I did anyways, I was young, I'm competitive and I just wanted to come in and have an impact. And that approach, that ego, that competitiveness can work against you. Now you see OKC, their special sauce was they were patient. They didn't rush things. They didn't force it. Whereas I always tried to force it. And I think that competitive, my competitive nature worked against me too often. Do you think team owners like, so I'll give you an example as a Giant fan, right? And I'm loyal to the Giants. I love the Giants and I would never knock Giants. About as loyal as you were to the Knicks? No, no, this one's real. This is football loyalty is different. That's for life. Like if the equivalent was that I was repping a football player to sign with the Cowboys, that would be the end of that relationship for sure. But I feel like sometimes there are certain owners that look simply at the math. When you can't value this like impact 360 that a player has with an organization. Obviously Luka embodied that. But like Saquon, right? Like we didn't value the running back position. The math may have made sense, but in the long run, what that does for fan base, what that does for other ancillary revenue, but really just like the culture. Do you think owners sometimes get way too caught up in the math? Don't realize that like ancillary value that star player have in a community? Yeah, but you know, father time's undefeated. They're not gonna play forever. So at some point you have to make the hard decisions just like players have to make the hard decision where they've been all stars and there's no interest in them or they're only wanted at the minimum. And so while you have to have a strategy and how you're building a team, you also have to be brutally honest with yourself and with the players and talk to them and say, look, here's where we are, here's where you are. Even though you have been an amazing impact in the community and we love everything you've done, you're not part of our plans going forward. But you know who we are at the Mavericks and every single player that played for us has an open door to come back and be part of the team after they've retired. Yeah, well, I guess though, and you don't have to comment on it, but I would take like the Micah example as saying that like in some ways, if the math doesn't add up, do you take the responsibility on as an owner to get creative and figure out how to counter that as opposed to ever letting a Hall of Fame generational player leave? It's just, you know, it's hard. You know, putting together a team is hard. If it was easy, there'd be 30 champions, 32 champions in every league. And so it's hard to make the determination of what strategy you're going to use and what the parameters are and how you're going to evolve those parameters. Like we went from analytics where you never take mid range and then players like Kevin, like Brunson, they got so good at shooting mid range, DeMar DeRozan, that the numbers worked back in their favor to take a mid range shot. And so as the league evolves, sometimes your path to the numbers and putting together a team has to evolve as well. And as much as like I kept Dirk and even Dirk has said he probably played two years too long, but I knew where we were in our life cycle as a team that we were going to have to rebuild. And if I was rebuilding anyways, I might as well support Dirk and let him stay as opposed to, you know, maybe I could have, you know, gotten off of them and gotten the draft pick and that would have been better, you know, overall for the team. But I think, you know, I made the decision that we were going to go through rebuilding that allowed me to keep Dirk around. But if you're not in that situation and you're trying to compete, it's really, really hard to look at that bigger picture of community and fandom, because when it's all said and done, you know, the fans are just going to look at the win-loss record. Yeah, no, it's true. But there are anomalies, because I think that's a good example you gave because you did say like, no, time's served, Dirk's my guy, he's staying through to the end. A hundred percent. Yeah, I mean, but that's 20 years. Yeah. You know, that truly is an anomaly. Yeah, that's an anomaly. What do you think about, like I'm very excited to hear all about NBA Europe, potentially. I mean, I think the value of these brands, if this is what happens, PSG, Real Madrid, like you don't get an opportunity to turn a switch and have a fan base that's so ravenous, be like, listen, this is your basketball team in market now. Are you bullish on what NBA Europe could be as well? Depends how we do it, right? Depends how they do it. Do they work with the Real Madrid's and kind of become part of them and supportive? Or do we say we're creating a whole new league and you're either in or out, and we'll compete with what's going on now with EuroLeague, EuroCup, et cetera. That's gonna be tough because, you know, like you talked about football, you know, and their football, the teams are the same. Real Madrid soccer and Real Madrid basketball are part of the same club. It's just a whole different beast. And, you know, you're gonna have to ask them to upgrade facilities and spend a lot of money, or we spend a lot of money. So I understand the goal, you know, because it doesn't make sense now for the NBA to expand. As much as, you know, two years ago, we talked about it being like an accepted path. I think now, because the revenue from the TV deal is so high, you don't wanna share it. There's no amount of expansion fee that makes that make sense. And as you know, as an agent, you know, if we add two more teams, that changes the cap calculations, right? So the basketball related income times 0.51 divided by 32 instead of 30 means the cap is going down. And I don't think there's any way that that gets approved. And so you look at Europe, and I was always a fan of the NBA taking the soccer approach to the Olympics, meaning, you know, 23 and under, or whatever it is for soccer players to participate in the Olympics. That's exactly what we should do in the NBA, and we should create our own World Cup. To me, a World Cup every two years, that's the dominant competition in the basketball world would be far more valuable. But every time I brought that up to Adam or David Stern, they said, well, our deal with FIBA doesn't preclude it. And then all of a sudden, they renew their deal with FIBA without talking to the owners about it. And so there's no chance. And so I think it's riskier to try to build your own league in Europe, as opposed to trying to build a super event that already has an analogous event in the Soccer World Cup. Yeah, that's actually funny you say that, because I found out that the U.S. Open generates, like the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament generates like somewhere close to half a billion dollars a year, right? And with like 200 plus million in cashflow. And then I was thinking about the idea that like, if you were running Live Golf, for instance, which you wouldn't have, that's a totally like far left thing, but like they probably would have been better off because scarcity right now has so much value, right? This like all this buildup to a moment. If Live Golf had just created an event that was working adjacent to the PGA, probably would have been just way more successful, without question. Oh, I agree, I agree. I mean, because when you have a league, people think, well, we have these great well-known players, and so everybody's gonna show up for the league. That's just not the way it works. I mean, you can look at the big three, they've done a great job surviving and growing their league, but just having players that were all-stars previously doesn't mean they're gonna be, you know, attractive for an ongoing schedule, you know? And so the idea of bringing those same players to compete and one winner take all, you know, that to me is exciting. Yeah, well, that's why, I mean, you see all these, and I know you've invested in a handful, we have as well, these emerging leagues, which they make sense because there's communities around these sports. And I think we realized that during COVID, right? You put Cornhole on ESPN and you could see like, holy, there's fans of every one of these small sports. But then on the flip side, there's like bowling. Yeah. There's ping pong. You know, you hear it all, there's darts. Yeah. Everybody bowls. Everybody's gonna love bowling, right? People who watch bowling. I even knew the guys who bowled, that bought the PBA. When was the last time you watched bowling? I know. Well, that's the problem is just like what you can't do is there's no like cheat code to creating that emotional connection and that reason why. Like, why am I watching something? Why am I tuning in? And plus now, because, you know, it used to be 500 channels and nothing on, you would just, you know, click, click, click, click, click, click, click until you found something. Now you've got to literally go look for it. Like, you know, with our new NBA deal where there's NBA Peacock, I mean, there's NBC Peacock, there's ESPN and Disney, there's Amazon, you know, you've got to look where you're gonna watch the games at. And so it just changes how simple it is to find non-top tier products. Yeah, harder to find. And then also the kind of cachet of what a national TV game used to feel like is gone. So, yeah. Which I would imagine is why ratings earlier in the NBA season are just tough because there's- Yeah, it's tough because we're competing with football and it's gonna be interesting going forward. Like, you know, talking about the calculus and the math and the economics of it all, you know, NBC Peacock spent a whole bunch of money for a playoff game, one single playoff game, and they added like 2.8 million subscribers and retained like 70% of them. I think that was the logic that was used for the new TV deal for the NBA, new TV deal with ESPN and Major League Baseball. But that logic needs to hold for all of that to work. Yeah. Because if these streaming companies don't get the number of subs to subsidize the cost of it, it's gonna be really interesting. Now, was it still a smart deal? Like in the board of governors meetings, I used to always make the case, going back to 2000, when we added a lot more cable games over broadcast. I used to say, look, you know, it costs $5 million for a top tier scripted episode of a new TV show, a new TV series. And 25% of them are going to hit. And so we should be worth, because every one of our games is going to draw at least a million, million and a half, 2 million viewers. That's good. That's a good number on HBO for a $10 million an episode series. So we see value in all that, but that has to draw subscribers. And that's gonna be the telltale sign. The math works now until we find out there's not enough subscribers or there are a lot. And then the next deal, the price goes up. Yeah, without question. I mean, that's what MLS is dealing with with Apple right now is like on paper, that sounded great. It was a great brand to align with as a league, but ultimately when the dust settles, like if you're not getting the subscribers, it's gonna hurt the business overall. Yeah, there's more money. So in the nineties, when you can buy a team for a few hundred million dollars and the prices are what they are today, is there a version of that that you see in 2025, not in sports, just in general? I don't know, like with teams. Or businesses. I mean, everything's AI now. Well, yeah, of course, yeah. Everything's AI and there's gonna be two types of companies. Those who are great at AI and those who used to be in business. Yeah, yeah. That's it. I mean, everything's going to change. It's gonna be really interesting to see how teams use AI. I'm not involved in the math side of that stuff anymore, but now just playing around with it, you can feed game tape to different AI options and it'll tell you all the plays that were run. It'll suggest what plays you should run. It's just insane what's going to be available on an analytics and production side or analytics and strategy side. And then on the marketing side, just being able to create insane videos and iterate over and over again. I mean, I'm still shocked that I have, like, if I was still at the Mavs, we'd be doing little insane baby videos of every one of our players, you know? All the, you know, the baby videos you see. Yeah, I love those, yeah. We'd be doing like, Cooper Flagg would be six weeks old talking about how excited he is. Yeah. You know, just stuff. And, you know, because we're all competing for attention on social media. And the algorithms drive everything that we see. Each one of us has our own unique algorithm. And, you know, my son always gives me a hard time. Why are you looking over my shoulder to see, you know, when I'm on Instagram? I'm like, because I can tell what you're into because it's algorithms that are feeding everything. And as long as it's basketball, basketball, basketball, football, football, fantasy, fantasy, hot girl, hot girl, I'm good. You no longer have to ask your kid, like, what your passions are. What do you care about? You just got to get into their algorithm. You'll find it out in a second. You got to look to see what's in their feed and TikTok and Instagram and YouTube. Yeah. You know, I feel like, so I've fully embraced utilizing AI. And I think there's also this like confusion a bit in society, because we've all been using AI for a while now, like in our daily lives without fully understanding that we were. But I think that the education around AI is poor because there's people like yourself that understand that I think me to a lesser degree, I've read so much that I think like I fundamentally understand it. Yeah, you have to. And I'm not scared of it. But I will say that what comes out is like, I saw this clip a few weeks ago of like the godfather of AI. You know, that person that they refer to him as that? Yeah, Jeff Fenton. Yeah. Talking about how we could very well be doomed if we can't teach AI maternal instincts. So if that's going to pick up and that's going to be what clicks and then you call that person the godfather of AI, that becomes... It would scare people, yeah. Yeah, that scares people. All you do is read about job displacement. And look, I've been in technology long enough. There's always been job displacement. And then we find new things. I think part of the challenge, particularly for kids coming out of school, big companies aren't going to hire as much. That's a given. Smaller, medium-sized companies are going to hire more. Big companies can figure out AI and they got plenty of people to do it. Small companies have no idea how to implement it and leverage it to their ability, to their benefit. And so I just think a lot of the jobs in the short term will be small to medium-sized companies more than the big companies, which is what we've always grown up expecting. But when it's all said and done, I think we'll end up having more jobs. We'll just be different jobs. And so you don't... The doomsday stuff is just like... No, like, look, let me give you some examples. If you have to give AI context right now, AI, ChatGPT, Anthropic, Cloud, Perplexity, Gemini, they're not smart. They're just auto-correct. They're just suggesting, just like at the bottom of a Gmail to suggest a reply, and that's all statistical, right? It sees what you wrote and it says, okay, other people who have written the same thing, what are some of the common answers that have been given? Or you want me to do a business plan for this company you just described to me. Let me look up all these other business plans that may be similar to what you're doing. And it just regurgitates it. If you said, you know, a baby is smarter, right? If you took a 12-month-old baby and it knocked over something, it would know not to knock it over again. It understands the context. It understands that if you hit the glass and it falls, it's going to break and make a mess. You have to tell ChatGPT, okay, here's all the context. You know, what happens if my baby knocks over the glass? It's just, you have to give it all the context. It can't see anything. It doesn't understand anything. Now, robotics, on the other hand, are having to learn these things because they have to be able to see. But no matter what, you know, if you just tell a robot right now, clean the kitchen, it has no idea what you're talking about. You know, and you have to train it what the kitchen is, how to, you know, how to open up the dishwasher, how, you know, how to do whatever. It's all going to change, but there's nothing that's that smart. Now, can people create weaponry and, you know, make those things dangerous? Oh, for sure, right? But it's not the AI that's going off on its own and taking over society. I just don't see that at all because there's a lot of latency. It's just, you don't, there's nothing right now, there's nothing 10 years from now that's going to be able to record everything that's happening in the world and communicate it in a way that keeps the AI or the robots up to date. Whereas with us, we can communicate and our brains assimilate it based off of what we see. Another way to look at it is full self-driving cars, right? We've been hearing about self-driving cars as being able to just do everything for a long, long time. And the reality is, like, the reason they're not is it can't be trusted just to see any set of circumstances and figure out what's going on. I can take my, you know, mini Australian Shepherd and put it at a street corner and it's going to know when to cross the street and when not to cross the street so it doesn't get run over. A self-driving car, if it hasn't seen it before, can't figure that stuff out. And the whole point is, there's just so many things that AI can't do. Yeah, but I mean, I've taken a handful of Waymos. I've stopped at an intersection, four-lane highway in the rain, and this car has, like, jumped at the exact right time that, like, my father wouldn't have made that move. No, but remember, you're only putting Waymos in certain cities because, and they're only traveling routes where they've traveled that route before. So it's seen almost everything in that route. And if it sees something it's not used to, it gets help. Yeah. You know, I will say I'm a really good prompter, right? Which is, like, you almost have to talk in the most, like, broken English. You have to really, like, get super real. And I've really become honest with it so I can get this, like, really honest feedback. So, like, one thing that really stood out to me is I asked it once to give me a snapshot on Boardroom in the overall media ecosystem. And it wrote to me, do you want me to tell you what you want to hear? Right, right. It always says, Mark, that's a great question. Yeah. And it's like, and I've changed mine now to give me, like, the Gen Z version so that I pick up the vocabulary that my son and my daughters use, you know? And it's just, you can play with it like that. But you're right, learning how to prompt, like, I'll do things like say, you are the world's foremost authority in AI for whatever it is. And I need you to give me very detailed explanation of what's right and what's wrong. And I need you to provide me sources for each of your positions to justify it. And, you know, it's still not always going to work, but we have the opportunity to go, if you're in chat GPT, use Gemini, use Perplexity, and just compare notes. Yeah, I'm gonna ask you a really complicated question and try to make it simple, which is when you list the things happening in the world, right, the overall state of the world, if you think about the wars that are happening, if you think about the economic issues and the tariffs and the kind of confusion that comes with that, and then it's endless, the environment, it's endless, right? But whenever I've heard you speak on TV, especially during COVID and until now, you have this unbelievable ability to like make sense of it all, to a calming way of putting it all in perspective without like in any way belittling how severe and serious these things are. And I like to ask real old people for their perspective on what's happening in the world because- Wait, wait, are you trying to tell me something? No, no, no, no, no. I wanted to specify like 30 years older than you. Like my wife's grandparents each lived till 99 respectively. And I remember talking to them and then looking at the like issues around the world and basically saying like, let me give you an example of what we dealt with in the 30s and in the 40s. So when you see the state of the world, I think the difference being social media, which has like desynthesized all of society. So it's allowed our government to speak the way they do. It's allowed people to communicate with each other that that never happened. But are you overall optimistic? Do you still feel optimism? Because there's a lot, you could just list these things that feel so serious. Yeah, I mean, my dad was born during the Great Depression. When he was 16, he shipped off and went and joined the Seabees and was shipped to Okinawa where he took on shrapnel. And then they brought him back in the 50s to the war in Korea. And then he came and he got a job doing upholstery on cars and had a staple break and he lost an eye. That's real, right? We're not at the point, hopefully God help us, we won't get to the point where our kids are getting drafted. We're not to the point where we're concerned that, hey, Pearl Harbor, somebody just bombed American facility. I don't think we are there. And the other side of it is, as scary as some things appear to us now, this country has been through all that stuff, that's part one. And part two is, I really believe in our kids. I think Gen Z is smart. I think that they're very obviously AI and technologically literate. And I think they're entrepreneurial and they're gonna come up with ways that improve this world. We're seeing the leftovers of the great generation who are in charge, the 70s and 80 year olds. I think that's part of the problem. I think just their frame of reference isn't as up to speed. They don't understand a lot of the things that kids understand. And I think as the younger generation starts getting into better and more positions of power, they'll learn from the mistakes. Just like my dad would tell me stories about World War II and the Korean War. And his whole point was, no, we can't do this stuff again. And I think we'll tell those same stories our kids will see now because of social media, those stories and realize we can't follow the same path that our parents and grandparents have taken. Yeah. All right, well, I could stay on that subject with you the entire time. Yeah, there's a lot to talk about there. But I'll respect the Yahoo Sports vertical and get back to sports for a second. Hey, I love Yahoo, right? You wouldn't know who I was if it wasn't for Yahoo. No, that's true, that's right. All right, well, I'm pretty sure everyone would have known who you were no matter what it was. But- Probably not. Talk to me about five executives in sports and they don't have to actually be operating now, but five executives in sports or athletes turned into incredible entrepreneurs that you truly admire what they've built, how they've run their business, how they've conducted themselves. Oh boy, Jerry Buss has got to be number one. When I came into the league, he sat me down and he was like, Mark, ignore what David Stern says. And he would give me all these stories. Like when I signed Magic Johnson to a $25 million contract, a million a year, the league went nuts and I would do it again over and over again. You know, he just, he had a heart of gold and he always was just like, be true to yourself. So I put Jerry at the top of the list. Jerry Jones too, when I came into the league as well, called me up and we talked and he was all about, you know, do what you know. Cause I'd met Jerry before talking to him and helping the Cowboys with their internet stuff and streaming stuff. And he also was, you know, follow your own path. You're good, you're smart, you know what you're doing. Keep on believing in yourself and good things will happen. I think David Stern was a big impact on me. He used to always say, and he was right. He goes, I made you, I made you. And we would come back, you know, and he would find me. And I was like, yes, thank you. Can I have another? Because you're opening up all these doors cause I'm the most fine guy and this and that. But I always respected him. And the fact that he was trying to do what was best for the league. And he took on tough things that a lot of other people were afraid to do. In terms of players, I learned a lot from Dirk, Steve, Nash and Michael Finley when I first came into the league. Cause I really didn't understand how professional athletes acted or operated, right? I didn't know what they were like off the court. I didn't know what they were like as people. And those three guys really demonstrated to me that there's a lot to be said for just being a good person and just being nice to fans and just being accepting of people and recognizing that you guys, they have a special talent that differentiates them but that special talent doesn't give them reason to believe that they're special people, you know? And that you should just be down to earth and be really appreciative of what we've been given in this life and never take it for granted. Yep, amazing. And give me one more, maybe an executive today outside of team ownership or athletes that is somewhat inspiring or just exciting to watch how they operate. Oh boy, I like what Maverick Carter does. I've talked to Maverick a few times. I think he's aggressive. I like what Josh Harris has done. He's been ballsy and gone out and gone for it with the commanders. You know, I don't know. It's hard. That's good. I like that list. But you know what? I love Mav so much, but I got to figure out whether I'm going to let him feel the gas of hearing you put him in the top five there or not. But I think I will. Yeah, edit that out. No, I have to. I have to, I have to. I have to let him have it. All right, and my last question before I let you go, outside of winning a championship, I'm sure this is going to be a very hard question to answer though. What's one like incredible memory from your time with the Mavericks that will always stand out to you? Oh, so, so many. I think Dirk's retirement, that was super emotional. It was just the culmination of so much for somebody I cared so much for or cared so much for. And to see the whole arc of his professional career and how important it was to him and the city of Dallas, that was truly special. And that, and probably just with my family, just moments with my family, you know, running onto the court, you know, hugging everybody. Because that was always, you know, winning the championship was fine, but the best part of owning the team was on a buzzer beater, I can run out in the court and get into the dog pile and nobody's going to say anything. They're not going to arrest me. And that truly, truly, truly, because, you know, that's the most stressful part of any game, that ball's in the air. And if it goes in, everybody's happy and all that stress is gone. And if it doesn't go in, like it's happened so many times, you're walking out with your head down upset. And when it goes in and you get to run out there and scream and yell and hug, nothing better. Nothing better. That's definitely on every young sports fan's bucket list for sure. Well, I hope we can do a part two one day because I didn't even talk to you about Shark Tank, man. I could have done that for an hour. I could have stayed on social media, destroying our entire universe, but this was really amazing. I appreciate it. You really are inspiring for our young people, people like myself, peers of yours, everyone that knows you and best of luck to you. And I hope to catch up with you soon. For sure. Let's do it again. All right. Take care, Mark. You too. Well, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Network. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Mark Cuban. So please continue to download the show at Boardroom or Yahoo Sports and listen to the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thanks for joining my network.