[MUSIC PLAYING]
Yo you know what it is.
Nothing but illustrious guests here on "Desus & Mero."
That's right, number one show on late night.
And tonight we have one of the most
swagged-out owners in the NBA.
Mark Cuban himself, ladies and gentlemen,
you know what I'm saying?
Make some motherfucking noise, y'all.
[CLAPS]
That's right, we got American entrepreneur
and investor, Mark Cuban.
You might know him from a little show called "Shark Tank."
You know what I'm saying?
Yes?
I believe you guys entering your 10th season?
Yeah, 11th. 11th.
11th.
This is the old poster.
That the old joint.
That's the old joint, yeah.
We're season 11.
That's the platinum plaque right there for season 10.
Exactly.
[CHUCKLES]
Yeah, it's rolling.
It's going well.
So what's up, guys?
I want to thank you for "Shark Tank."
I'm a huge fan.
I watch it all the time.
Appreciate that.
Is there any product that was pitched to you on "Shark Tank"
that you passed on that really haunts you?
No, not at all, man.
When they're done, they're done.
I'm moving on, and I don't care.
You're moving on?
Yeah, there's plenty of fish in the sea.
I literally-- because when we shoot,
they bring in deal after deal after deal.
We'll see 12 in one day.
We'll see 250 in the season.
And like, the minute one's gone, we're on to the next.
Next one.
That's it.
Yeah-- whoops.
What's the dumbest pitch you have gotten?
Oh my god, so many-- just dumb shit.
I mean, like, fart candles.
Some shit in a--
Wake n' Bacon.
Like, a little bacon cooker that goes next to your bed and sits
next to your alarm clock so when you wake up,
you already have the smell of bacon.
Except the problem is--
[LAUGHTER]
I'm like, well, what if it catches on fire?
Wow.
You have a nice, little grease fire in your bedroom.
Exactly, man.
Just some dumb, dumb, dumb, stuff.
Oh, man.
Oh, Mark, you're living the dream.
You are able-- not only do you own a basketball team.
You are able-- you actually talk for the fans,
because you have gotten fined by the NBA.
How much fines have you gotten from the NBA for speaking up?
Like, millions.
I don't know.
You're like the Rasheed Wallace of team owners.
Yeah, that's right.
You know, but both teams played hard.
[LAUGHS]
Oh, man.
How much fun is it to own a basketball team?
You know what?
When you win, like when we won the championships,
unbelievable.
But when you lose, it hurts.
It hurts more to lose than you're happy to win.
But other than the games and the guys and the energy,
the best part, like, I get to go on the court before home games
and just get up shots.
And so like, two hours, 4 o'clock-- games at 7:30.
4 o'clock, I'm on the court just getting them up, getting up.
And I'm in an NBA arena.
My own NBA arena.
Just getting the ball, and just getting them up, taking threes
and, you know, making it rain.
And that's still because it's like a lot--
you're one of those guys you can tell it's not
really about the money for you.
It's about, like, you're a hooper.
Like, you love the game.
I love.
Yeah, no, I still play pick up, man.
My body's falling apart, but I--
you know how it goes, right?
You go from, yeah, I can play, I can play, to like,
just give me the ball, you know?
I went from shooting threes--
Corner threes.
Yeah, corner threes, just like I'd get further and further
and further back, right?
And that ball is out there.
I can get-- no, I'm not gonna go after that rebound, no.
No.
But I can still shoot it some, so I can still
play and not embarrass myself.
Yeah.
Mark, you recently said that you believe that coronavirus
will improve capitalism.
Yeah.
Because I think-- - Could you explain that?
Yeah.
So, you know, going into all this mess, right?
You had Bernie Sanders on one side,
and people who are really progressive think,
you know what?
Things aren't right with capitalism.
It's all about just making the next dollar,
make the next dollar, don't care about your employees.
If you pay them less and put more in your pocket,
that's all good, right?
And he got people thinking the government's only taking
care of the rich people.
And now with all this, like, it affected everybody the same.
It don't care if you're white, black, rich, poor, where
you live, whatever, right?
And so we all got hit.
But in order to get past this, in order for our businesses
to rebound, every single employee is
just as important as any other.
It don't matter if you're sweeping the floor,
or you're the CEO.
It don't matter if you're in sales, or you're on the phone
doing customer service all day long,
because everybody's going to have to contribute.
And so I think CEOs are either going to realize that,
or their brands are going to be toast.
Because look, you guys know better than anybody.
I mean, you guys are born to social media, right?
Starting with a podcast and everything.
And so being able to leverage all that,
you know you are your brand.
On social media, each and every person--
you don't have to be famous to be a brand.
You know, everybody who puts a picture
on Instagram, everybody who does a dance on TikTok, right?
Wherever you show you, you represent you, right?
And so if CEOs don't do it the right way,
if they don't treat their employees the right way,
they're going to torched, and your brand's
going to get killed.
And so I think with all these changes,
everybody's going to have to be more respectful to people
who work for them.
More respectful to people coming up from the bottom, more
like a trickle-up economics.
And that's going to make capitalists more compassionate.
And if they don't, they're going to get
crushed because people aren't going to respect their brand.
All right, so if corporations aren't responsible,
people aren't going to rock with them anymore.
That's exactly right.
I mean, it's like, you pick a brand.
Whatever clothes you like to wear, whatever shoes, whatever.
Man, if that company does it wrong,
their brand is torched for decades, right?
They're not going to get over it.
The minute someone goes online and says,
I can't run with these guys, I can't roll with these guys,
it's over.
It's over, yeah.
Especially now, in the age of-- like, information
gets disseminated so quickly--
Exactly.
--that all it takes is one employee to be like,
you know what? Fuck this.
These guys treat me like shit.
Yeah, or somebody they know, somebody who's an influence,
or an influencer picks it up because it's
a relative or a friend.
And they're like, this is the way they treated my guy.
Right?
We can't be going with that at all.
So, you know, you're going to see companies, like my peers
that run companies, saying, you know what?
We've got to be different.
And when we come back, as we come back,
we need everybody's help, and we've got to respect everybody.
And you're not just talking it.
You're living it.
You reimbursed your employees for buying
lunch at local businesses.
Yeah, because everybody--
Shout-out to you.
Yeah, you know, everybody-- it wasn't my idea.
It was a friend of mine's idea, and I'm like, I'll steal it.
And it was like, all these restaurants are hurting, right?
Everybody's struggling.
And so what I said was, anybody who
buys from a local restaurant, if they send me the receipt,
I'll pay them back.
Because I wanted to encourage them to do that.
That's nice.
Shout-out to you doing that.
And I'm sure Dallas appreciate it.
Yeah, I mean, look, we're trying to help out all we can,
man, because you guys--
I hear you guys talking about the Bronx
and everything, and all the local businesses
all the time, man.
Those guys are struggling.
And anything-- you know, they're closed.
I mean, it doesn't get any worse than that.
And so anything you can do to help with the take-out
and help them roll, that's what I'm trying to do.
Thank you, man.
We appreciate it.
I'm sure everyone appreciates that.
So do you see any parallels in running
your typical corporate company versus running, like,
a sports franchise?
Nah, man.
Totally different.
Totally different, right?
Because with sports, they only care if you win.
And with sports, they'll call radio stations.
They'll go online.
They'll go on NBA Twitter, and they'll tear you a new one.
You can be 80 and 0, but you lose
that 81st game, the whole season's falling apart, right?
You know, so they'll--
We know, we're Knick fans.
OK, right.
I ain't gonna touch that.
I ain't going there.
[LAUGHTER]
Smart man, smart man.
That's how you made your money.
You can be the first guy to own two NBA teams at once.
No man, I'm smart.
[LAUGHTER]
You are, you are.
That's why you got the long money.
Right?
But you know, there's no other business, right,
when you hit it big, they throw a parade.
Google, they could have everything.
Facebook, Amazon, biggest year in their history, right?
No one throws a parade.
Can you imagine the Knicks win an NBA championship, what
New York would be all about?
Oh my god.
I wouldn't survive.
The show would be over.
The show would definitely be over.
When the Mavs won, it was out of control, man.
Just completely out of control.
Yeah, I can imagine, man.
Did you expect that to happen, or was it like a fairy tale?
Oh, it was a fairy tale, man, because we were
we had to run into Kobe and the Lakers, right?
and they had won two in a row.
And I'm thinking, oh, please just let
it be respectable, literally.
And then we got rolling and swept their ass, just like,
[CLAPS]
Get them outta here!
It was like, bam-bam-bam-bam-bam.
And so we get to the fourth game, right?
And we're playing in Dallas.
And we can't miss.
And we're up 20-some points.
And I said to my friend next to me,
I said, you touch me or you pinch me,
because I might wake up, I'll punch
the shit out of you, right?
Because it's just like, don't let it end.
It was crazy.
And then get to the finals, man, and to win it
all was unbelievable.
Mark, I used to be the wild computer nerd.
So I gotta take you back.
OK.
You were responsible for CompuServe?
No, no, I sold my company to CompuServe.
Oh, you sold your-- it was MicroSolutions, right?
Micro-- oh, so you're talking CompuServe, you're going
way back to the scene, right?
I'm going way back, baby.
I've been following you for a while.
No, that's crazy.
Yeah.
I sold my company to CompuServe.
That was my first payday.
And then was it broadcast.com?
Yeah, so that's--
we started starting a company called AudioNet in '95--
late '94, '95-- where we basically started
the whole streaming business because I want to listen
to Indiana basketball.
And then boom, it just blew up.
Oh, wow.
Is there anything that you've invested in--
I mean, obviously there is.
But like, is there anything that sticks out in your head
that, like, you invested in or you put time into
and you were like, man, that didn't pan out,
but you learned something from it?
Oh, yeah, time and time again.
Like right after I graduated, I was looking for a job.
And somebody came up to me, and he goes,
look, everybody drinks milk.
I'm like, well, not everybody, but here.
And he's like, I got this powdered milk to sell, right?
So he goes, milk is $1.75 a gallon.
This powdered milk is a buck and a quarter a gallon.
Everybody needs to save money on milk, and like, I got no money.
I'm like, OK, that makes sense.
It tastes OK.
All right.
And then I went out there trying
to sell this powdered milk to grocery stores or whatever.
And then they're like, it tastes OK.
And I'm like, no, OK.
I learned a lesson, right?
People want what they want, and it's got to be good.
If you deal with a bad product-- but yeah,
so my first big failure was trying to sell powdered milk.
It just died.
It died. But I learned.
You could have told me that, because my mom brought
powdered milk to go to the Dominican Republic
where we used to go there.
And I was just like, this is not milk.
No, it's not milk, right?
I'll put it in cereal.
No.
This is calk juice, Mom.
That's exactly right.
I should have called you first, man.
Mark, we have a question we always ask people.
And I'm honored to be able to ask you this
because I hope you have a wild answer.
What is the most wasteful purchase you've made?
Wasteful purchase I made.
Like a Ferrari for no reason, or?
Oh, yeah.
No, no, no-- OK, so--
[LAUGHS]
I got a Ferrari plane!
No, so my partner, Todd Wagner, and I
are at this charity event.
And we had just sold to Yahoo, and just really mad our money.
And there was this yellow Hummer.
Just a big, old yellow Hummer, and it was, like, for charity.
And no one else wanted to buy it.
It was just a big, ugly, yellow Hummer.
And so I'm like, well, how much do you need?
They're like, $210,000.
I'm like, no problem.
Just wrote a check for $210,000 for a yellow Hummer.
For the yellow Hummer.
I drove it once.
Once.
Once, and then I had to get rid of it.
Where is it now?
It's gone-- I sold it.
I just said, get it out of here.
You sold it.
Yeah, I had it for, like, two years.
I was like, get it away.
I mean, it was like a big, old--
it was like a big, old banana in my front driveway, right?
It's just like--
Oh my god.
And it's not like he drove and you're like,
yeah, this is my Hummer, I got this.
But no, it was like, what the hell are you doing in that car?
A yellow Hummer.
In this banana yellow military vehicle.
It'd be like, yo, banana boy!
[LAUGHTER]
That's not how you want to feel when you're cruising.
No, man.
Yo, come tally me banana!
Yo!
[LAUGHTER]
Bring me a smoothie!
Yo, it's not that kind of Hummer, my man!
Yo, Mark, we could talk to you all day,
but we know you're a busy man.
We've gotta go.
But listen, everyone that comes on our show, in New York,
you know we got the bodega--
we have bodegas, and they have the neon signs in them.
And those signs could say a menu or a saying.
What would you like Mark Cuban's neon sign to say?
[EXHALES LOUDLY] That's a good question, man.
It could be life advice.
It could be anything.
You know, today's the youngest you're ever going to be.
Live like it.
Always live young. - Woo!
- I like that. - Off the top!
OK!
That's knowledge right there.
Always live young.
Yeah, I got you, you know?
Did you did you like what you started that fadeaway?
No, no, that's fair.
I can't get that down, man.
I can't get that down.
He laughs at me.
More practice, more practice.
Yo, give it up for Mark Cuban.
Thank you for chatting it up with us.
Appreciate it, guys.
[CHUCKLES]
Mark.