• last year
There are a few things Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban can't live without. From an electric ball pump and Alyssa's vegan cookies to a contact lens cleaner and a cure for hiccups, here are the Shark Tank investor's essentials.

New episodes of SHARK TANK air Friday nights on ABC.

Director: Jean-Luc Lukunku
Director of Photography: Francis Bernal
Editor: Eric Bigman
Talent: Mark Cuban
Producer: Camille Ramos
Line Producer: Jen Santos
Production Manager: James Pipitone
Production Coordinator: Tania Jones
Talent Booker: Meredith Judkins
Camera Operator: Mar Alfonso
Gaffer: Rebecca van der Meulen
Sound Mixer: Sean Paulsen
Production Assistant: Ziyne Abdo
Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch; Rachael Knight
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Rob Lombardi
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Transcript
00:00 and I hear this voice, "Hello?"
00:02 Oh, (beep) I just butt dialed Obama.
00:06 (upbeat music)
00:09 Hey GQ, I'm Mark Cuban and these are my essentials.
00:13 (upbeat music)
00:16 The way I relax and recover from stress,
00:22 I have a hoop in my backyard,
00:24 I go out there and I just get shots up.
00:26 Every hooper knows the worst feeling ever.
00:30 A flat mother (beep) ball, hate it.
00:34 So every kid growing up that ever played ball,
00:36 you've got that pumping hoop, right?
00:39 Press the button,
00:40 and this thing just fills and fills and fills,
00:47 and away you go.
00:48 And the sound man hates you.
00:55 I carry multiple phones for a lot of different reasons.
00:58 Number one, they're on different networks.
01:01 Now on top of that, there's certain apps
01:03 that run on Android or better on Android
01:04 that don't run on the iPhone.
01:06 I live my life on email.
01:09 I don't sit in front of a computer,
01:10 I'm gone most of the day, I'm doing whatever,
01:12 I hate fucking meetings.
01:14 I don't like to be one giving them,
01:15 I don't like to be the one sending them.
01:17 So if you want a meeting with me,
01:19 you better be doing something for me
01:21 that makes it worth my while
01:23 because otherwise, just send me an email.
01:25 - Who is the most unexpected contact in your phone?
01:29 - I mean, I'd say Shaq,
01:30 'cause Shaq, the big fella likes to talk and call
01:34 and everything, but that's, you know,
01:35 you'd expect it 'cause I'm in the basketball business.
01:37 Yeah, I got Obama in there.
01:39 Oh, you wanna hear my Obama story?
01:41 This phone, it actually didn't happen long ago,
01:43 so it's in my recents.
01:44 I got a call from Obama.
01:47 Cool, talk to him, yeah, da-da-da-da-da,
01:49 thank you, Mr. President, da-da-da-da-da.
01:51 (laughs)
01:52 And so I go to switch back to basketball mode
01:56 and I accidentally butt dialed, right?
02:00 And I hear this voice, "Hello?"
02:03 I'm like, "Oh shit, I just butt dialed Obama."
02:07 And all my, you know, all these guys here are going,
02:09 and then I like hung up and had to text him,
02:11 "Sorry, butt dialed."
02:13 That's my last Obama story.
02:15 (upbeat music)
02:18 - What makes the perfect?
02:22 Soft, sweet, but not too sweet.
02:25 45 calories each.
02:27 The best part is the story behind Alyssa's
02:31 and how I got to be an investor.
02:32 12 years ago, maybe 10 years ago,
02:34 I got a cookie in the mail and it had a little letter.
02:37 Guy named Doug, living out of his car or his van
02:40 or something, really struggling.
02:42 Protein in the cookie.
02:44 I'm like, "Yeah!"
02:46 Open it up, take it out.
02:47 Holy fuck, these things are good.
02:51 Wow, what's wrong, right?
02:52 'Cause good cookie, checks all the boxes.
02:55 I pulled the cookie out of the plastic,
02:58 whole cookie fell apart.
02:59 I'm like, "That's the problem."
03:02 So I go to Doug.
03:04 Doug, I'm willing to invest, but here's what we need to do.
03:06 We're gonna turn them into oatmeal bites.
03:08 And I'm gonna go to a local grocery store
03:10 and I'm gonna hand out samples.
03:12 And when we do this and I hand out samples,
03:14 you'll never have to advertise again.
03:16 (upbeat music)
03:20 When I bought the Mavs, we sucked, right?
03:24 And we had some great players.
03:26 And then my first full season, 2001,
03:31 people started to finally realize we were gonna be good.
03:34 And this was the first time any national magazine
03:38 came in and took pictures of us
03:40 because nobody gave a shit about the Mavericks.
03:42 And this was from Sports Illustrated.
03:44 They were gonna come in and this was gonna be
03:46 the cover shot that was gonna be on Sports Illustrated.
03:49 Now, those of you who are historians
03:51 of Sports Illustrated cover shots,
03:53 you know we were never on the cover.
03:56 (laughing)
03:57 And that was my one reminder from the very first full year
04:01 when I owned the Mavs,
04:02 that this was gonna be our breakthrough.
04:04 So there's two really cool things about owning an NBA team.
04:09 One, I get to go on the court before a game
04:12 and get shots up.
04:13 Two, I sit right by the court during a game.
04:17 At the end of the game, if it's a tie,
04:19 we're down one, down two, and we have the ball,
04:23 that shot goes up to win the game.
04:26 Goes up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up,
04:29 and down, down, down.
04:30 When that shot goes through the hoop to win a game,
04:34 I get to run on the court and dogpile with all the players
04:38 and not get arrested.
04:40 There is nothing better about owning a team
04:43 than being able to run out on the court
04:47 on a game-winning shot.
04:48 [upbeat music]
04:51 Lab Series Cool Shaving Cream.
04:54 My friend Andy turned me on,
04:57 and when you put this on, it's minty,
04:59 and it just makes your whole face cool.
05:02 And when you got a razor going on a beard
05:04 that gets like mine, life-changing.
05:07 I will not use anything else.
05:09 I hate shaving.
05:10 I mean, I love with this, but if I had a choice,
05:13 I wouldn't shave, but I've done the goatee before,
05:15 I just didn't like it, and my wife hated it,
05:17 so she wins all ties.
05:19 [upbeat music]
05:22 When I first got contact lenses,
05:24 and probably for the next 15 years,
05:27 instead of changing the contact lens fluid every time,
05:30 I was trying to save money,
05:31 so I would put my contacts in the same contact lens fluid,
05:34 and I could never figure out
05:35 why my contact lenses were always dirty.
05:37 That's how stupid I am.
05:39 Then one day I was going through, I don't know,
05:41 whatever website, things, whatever,
05:44 and here it was, a contact lens cleaner.
05:47 But watch this.
05:48 It shakes them up, so all the shit gets off your lenses,
05:55 and I can finally see again.
05:57 I take this with me everywhere I go,
05:58 'cause I have to do this every single night of my life
06:01 to clean my lenses.
06:02 If you wear contact lenses, get yourself a cleaner.
06:06 [upbeat music]
06:08 These are my babies.
06:11 These are the love of my life.
06:13 Jake, Alexis, and Alyssa.
06:17 I carry these around in my wallet.
06:19 I also have them set up in my office.
06:21 I have them in my bag everywhere I go.
06:24 I got them on my phone, obviously.
06:26 Any day isn't the right day.
06:27 Just looking at these makes them the right day.
06:30 So Jake is always talking crap, particularly so,
06:33 I grew up in Pittsburgh, he grew up in Dallas,
06:36 so we're also always doing battles,
06:38 Cowboys versus the Steelers,
06:39 and he's also into fantasy football,
06:41 so he is just drilling on me about the Steelers
06:44 not being as good as the Cowboys this year.
06:46 So give it time, Jake.
06:47 Alexis is in college right now,
06:50 and she also had one of the best business ideas
06:53 I've ever heard that we've tried to patent.
06:56 I asked her what she thought would be the best way
06:58 to sell products, particularly clothes.
07:00 She said, "Dad, with all this artificial intelligence stuff,
07:03 "it would be better if I go to a page on an e-commerce site,
07:07 "and instead of seeing random models modeling clothes
07:09 "and showing their fit, and they just use me as the model
07:12 "using artificial intelligence,
07:14 "automatic reality, and all that."
07:16 And Alyssa, Alyssa's our athlete in the family.
07:18 She's a great athlete, she gets it from her mom.
07:21 And she's in rowing, she's being recruited,
07:24 she's really good, she is literally probably
07:26 the most focused human I have ever met in my life.
07:29 When she sets her mind to something, she gets it.
07:33 I was never real big on the Apple EarPods, right?
07:39 They weren't very comfortable to me.
07:41 But then I heard about the Nothing Ear,
07:44 pillows on an ear pad.
07:46 My playlist just changed 180 degrees about four months ago.
07:51 So I used to be an ABC guy.
07:53 ABC is anything but country.
07:55 And I started listening to this song by Connor White,
07:59 I think it is, "Creek Will Rise."
08:01 I'm like, "That's gotta be."
08:03 And I'm like, "Okay, this shit ain't so bad."
08:05 So I literally, if you listen to my playlist right now,
08:09 it's got some classic rock,
08:12 it's got some classic Tupac and Biggie and all that.
08:17 It's got some DMX 2000s, it's got some J. Cole,
08:20 you know, and Drake later stuff.
08:23 But then you're gonna get a whole line of country.
08:28 What was I thinking, Dierks Bentley,
08:29 "Creek Will Rise" by Connor Smith.
08:33 The next thing you know, a bunch of Morgan Wallen songs.
08:36 I'm like, I'm shocking myself.
08:38 My ABC days are gone and I'm actually listening
08:42 to country and if you would have told me that
08:44 six months ago, I would have laughed at you.
08:46 Did you ever have the hiccups?
08:51 I hate the motherfucking hiccups.
08:52 How do you solve the hiccups?
08:54 Hiccups be gone, it's called the Hicc-A-Way.
08:58 And no lie, it works.
09:01 Every time I've ever had the hiccups,
09:03 my wife who gets the hiccups a lot,
09:05 we keep one of these in the medicine closet.
09:08 It's designed by a doctor who published research about it
09:12 in the whole nine yards and you get it
09:15 and it's like, oh, will this thing work, who knows?
09:18 Talk to somebody, it worked.
09:19 Drink through it like a straw, just like it looks.
09:24 With water, it works.
09:27 I promise you, it works.
09:31 210 calories for the whole fucking bar.
09:36 When you have that sweet tooth, look at this.
09:37 This is no little bar, like we just cut some corners.
09:40 No, this is a big ass chocolate bar.
09:43 Not only is it low net carbs, but
09:47 it is so good.
09:52 It is so good and it's sweet and it's chocolatey,
09:55 in this case, peanut buttery.
09:57 So instead of just grabbing a Snickers bar
10:00 or whatever the garbage is I used to eat
10:01 if I had a sweet tooth, now I eat my Gatsby chocolate
10:05 and this is my go-to at night before I go to bed.
10:08 Just break off a square or two.
10:10 Oh, sweet tooth solved.
10:13 Hey guys, thanks for watching.
10:15 See you guys next time.
10:16 [MUSIC PLAYING]