Mark Cuban is probably America’s most famous lottery winner. At the start of the tech boom, he made a million dollars selling software. He used some of that money to start a company that broadcast sports events over the Internet. The company had a lot of success and was generating $13 million in revenue. The main reason was it could shift the cost to others, but he deserves credit for seeing a market and finding a way to profitably meeting it. Broadcast.com was a great idea.
That’s when he hit the lottery. Yahoo, drunk with dotcom cash, paid Cuban $6 billion for his company. The company turned out to be worthless to Yahoo. Within a couple of years a slew of others started broadcasting radio over the Internet and licensing issues made the concept unworkable. For his part, Cuban used his billions to buy a basketball team and make a fool of himself on TV. There’s nothing wrong with it as he is not harming anyone, but it is why he is America’s most famous lottery winner.
Like a movie star impressed with his own clippings, Cuban no longer understands this fact about himself. He really thinks he is a genius. He was clever, but he was mostly lucky, but the does not see it that way. As a result, he likes to go on TV and show the world he is a genius, which usually results in him saying ridiculous things that often get him in trouble. Recently, he made some crazy statements about the value of college as a development league for the NBA.
Mark Cuban thinks the next Kevin Durant would be better off in the NBA Development League rather than the college of his choice.
The outspoken Dallas Mavericks owner said he can envision scenarios where the country’s top basketball prospects would get drafted and play in the D-League rather than spend one season at an NCAA school.
Cuban said there’s no reason for a player to attend college as a freshman “because he’s not going to class, he’s actually not even able to take advantage of all the fun because the first semester he starts playing basketball.”
The billionaire owner said his idea is not yet a well-researched proposal, just an opinion. He said agreements with colleges could still give players a shot at an education.
“A major college has to pretend that they’re treating them like a student-athlete,” Cuban said. “It’s a big lie and we all know it’s a big lie. We can do all kinds of things that the NCAA doesn’t allow schools to do that would really put the individual first.”
I’ve long contended that the NBA is the worst run sports league on the planet. They are also the the best argument against the Zionist conspiracy stuff. All but a few owners are Jewish and the league office is run by Jews. Yet, they manage to screw up what should be one of the easiest businesses to run in sports entertainment. If the Tribe can’t run a sports league, they are not running the world. I guess the counter to that is the world is so screwed up it must be run by Jewish basketball executives.
Anyway, the league survives despite the best efforts of guys like Cuban. Football and hockey let others develop their players, thus minimizing their investment. Baseball has actually figured out how to make their development league profitable. The NBA, in contrast, drafts players nowhere near ready to play in the league and then pays them millions to learn. Many never learn or contribute very much to the teams that drafted them. The result is millions are wasted on bad players.
It has been known for a long time that basketball is the major sport requiring the least amount of learned skill. By high school, players have 70-80% of the learned skills, like shooting, dribbling, passing and defense. It is not that complicated, even for the people most likely to take up the sport. The physical development is in place by the early twenties, leaving the emotional maturity. That’s why a player’s peak years are between 25 and 32. Michael Jordan won his first title at 28. Lebron James won his first at 27.
The physical side is a such a major part of the game, injuries can easily alter the trajectory of a young player. Derrick Rose is a good example of why investing in youth can be foolish. The Bulls have $56 million invested in a guy who has missed the last two seasons with knee problems. They are committed to paying him close to $80 million more, when it is unlikely he ever lives up to their hopes. This is why the other sports have low cost development systems for their young players.
Those leagues, however, tend be more selective with their owners. Mark Cuban has been rejected by baseball and football, simply because he is an idiot. Those leagues also lack the tribal blind spot you see with basketball. The NBA owners protect Cuban out of tribal loyalty, because there are not gentiles around to tell them otherwise. It’s the Achilles heel of clannishness. The tendency of the tribe is to protect the tribe, even when it is bad for the tribe. Cuban is bad for the tribe and the Tribe.
