Mark Cuban | Owner Dallas Mavericks

Mark Cuban | Owner Dallas Mavericks

Mark Cuban | Owner Dallas Mavericks
Mark Cuban was born in Pittsburgh in 1958. His Jewish-Russian grandparents shortened their last name from Chabenisky to Cuban when they came to the United States in the early 1900s. His father was an automobile upholsterer. Perhaps Mark already knew that he had a future in the NBA when, as a child, he sold garbage bags to buy an expensive pair of basketball shoes.

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Mark also showed his entrepreneurial skills at an early age when he brought in newspapers from Cleveland to sell during a newspaper strike in Pittsburgh. He skipped his senior year in high school to attend the University of Pittsburgh, but left there after one year to attend Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

Mark worked a variety of jobs in Bloomington including party promoter, disco-dance instructor (he lost 34 pounds and lasted five weeks on "Dancing with the Stars" in 2007), and powdered milk salesman. According to the Pittsburgh Tribune, Mark even started a chain letter while he was a student at Indiana University to help pay his tuition. He also opened a popular college bar in Bloomington that he called Motley's. Mark moved to Dallas in 1982 where he worked as a bartender and computer software salesman for a company called Your Business Software. He was soon fired from Your Business Software, and used some of his former employer's customers to start his own company MicroSolutions that he sold for $6 million. Mark then started Broadcast.com that grew to over 300 employees. He sold the company to Yahoo in 1999 for almost $6 billion.

Mark bought the Dallas Mavericks in 2000 from H. Ross Perot, Jr. for $285 million. When he purchased the team, the Mavericks were on a twenty-year down slide but Mark immediately pumped money and enthusiasm into the organization. He went to every game, complained a lot about officiating, and bought the team a $46 million jet.

His Mavericks shocked everyone by winning the 2011 NBA title beating the heavily-favored Miami Heat with LeBron James and Dwayne Wade. According to Forbes, the Dallas Mavericks are the sixth-most valuable basketball franchise in the United States, worth about $438 million.

Mark and his wife, Tiffany, and their three children live in the Preston Hollow area of Dallas in a 24,000 square foot mansion. It is one of the most expensive properties in Dallas County with 10 bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, a pool and tennis court.

Source: virtualglobetrotting.com