Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is a fiery chap and is constantly getting into trouble with the NBA officials.
Over his 14 year team ownership, Cuban has racked up close to $2 million in fines, most of which being due to his temper and subsequent vocal outbursts. His second largest single fine was the $250,000 levied against him for “repeated misconduct” during his team’s 2006 NBA finals loss to the Miami Heat.
But, by far his largest fine was the $500,000 he received for verbally attacking the head of NBA officiating, Ed Rush. In a characteristic outburst during his teams 2002 loss to the Denver Nuggets, Cuban claimed he would not even hire Rush to manage a Dairy Queen ice cream bar.
The then head of Dairy Queen communications, Dean Peters saw an opportunity. The company issued a statement where they offered for Cuban to come and run a Dairy Queen for a day to see if it really was that easy. They did not actually expect him to take them up on the offer, but he did.
Just six days after the challenge was issued, Cuban was working at the Dairy Queen close to his office. The team expected Cuban to arrive around mid morning and leave soon after, but he arrived at 6:15 as any normal employee would, and stayed until 2:30 when the store staff told him to go home.
During the time Cuban was serving at the counter queues of people tailed back for blocks and media trucks filled the area. Dairy Queen estimated they received around $10 million worth of publicity with the stunt.
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