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		Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, demonstrating HDTV in 2002.
		By LM Otero, AP file

The Dallas Mavericks, his star-filled NBA team and prize possession, has lost a rare home game to the woeful Atlanta Hawks, and Cuban is inconsolable. As ebullient and charming as Cuban is, watch out after a loss. (Talk Today: Submit questions for Mark Cuban, who chats at 4:30 p.m. ET)

In the Mavs' ostentatious locker room, where players' lockers double as home-entertainment centers, Cuban sulks while picking at his post-game spread. Players gingerly tiptoe around him. Other employees avoid eye contact.

About Mark Cuban Age: 45 Hometown: Dallas Family: Wife Tiffany and infant daughter Alexis Net worth: $1.3 billion (No. 179 on Forbes ' list of richest Americans last year) Owner: Dallas Mavericks, HDNet Host: ABC's forthcoming reality show, The Benefactor Personal blog: www.blogmaverick.com Slogans: "No balls, no babies"; "sales cures all"; "perception is reality." College: Indiana University, a B.S. in management. Passions: Basketball, business, family. Source: USA TODAY research

"Hey, I'm very competitive," Cuban admits. "If I lose a business deal, I get pissed, too. I just have less control over what happens in a basketball game."

It is a rare display of angst for Cuban. But it underscores the competitive nature that fuels him and his multiple ventures. "Ninety-five percent of the time I have fun," says Cuban, teetering on his lucky chair, flashing a goofy grin. "How can I not? This is a rush."

The next several weeks could be the most eventful yet for Cuban, 45. The Mavs are in the playoffs, he's overseeing another high-tech company, and he's co-producing a movie starring Robert De Niro. But his most high-profile venture is The Benefactor, a reality-TV show this summer that could do for Cuban what The Apprentice did for real-estate magnate Donald Trump. ABC executives predict the show — in which Cuban awards $1 million of his fortune to a stranger — will be a smash.

Over seven weeks, 16 contestants living in a Dallas house will perform tasks, and Cuban will eliminate them based on their behavior. "It's a way to prove you're special without eating bugs, being the prettiest or cutting off a finger," he says, eyes wide with excitement. "This is about values and how money creates tension."

The concept fascinates Cuban, an unpretentious sort. "Why let yourself be defined by your bank account?" he asks. He talked briefly with Trump, seeking advice, but doubts he'll come up with a catchphrase like The Donald's "You're fired." "Hasta la vista? Probably not," Cuban says, chuckling.

When Cuban goes to a game, watch out By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY Owner Mark Cuban's pregame ritual before each of the Dallas Mavericks' 41 home games is an adolescent's dream. Four hours before the game, the 6-foot-3 Cuban drills jump shots on the American Airlines Center floor. He retreats to an opulent bunker suite, with a 96-inch projection screen and four plasma screens. He assiduously answers e-mails on a nearby PC, a bounce pass away from a full-size bar. "He has a dot-com, pedal-to-the-metal, why-wait mentality," says Don Nelson, the Mavericks' coach and general manager who, as a Boston Celtics player, won five championships. "Winning championships is harder to do than Mark thinks." Watching Cuban watch the Mavs can be exhausting. He vaults from his seat and pumps his fist after a dunk. He buries his head in his hands after a turnover. He rants at referees, barks at players, leans into huddles. And this is in the first quarter. "He has a passion for life, and that passion is infectious," says TV's Dr. Phil McGraw, a Mavs season-ticket holder since 1994. "When he took over the team, it was like he breathed life into it. The worst thing in the world is if Mark Cuban became homogenized like all the other corporate owners in the league. Cuban pampers his beloved team with plush surroundings, and expects results. The Mavs hopscotch the country in a $46 million Boeing 757 with catered meals. Players are treated to a locker with flat-screen TV, PlayStation 2, DVD player and headphones. Fans are entertained with a dazzling light show, pulse-pounding music and chubby male cheerleaders called the Maniacs. Each of the arena's 142 luxury suites at American Airlines Center has a high-definition TV and high-speed Internet connection. It's no wonder the Mavs were voted by fans the second-best sports team among 121, according to an ESPN poll. The NBA champion San Antonio Spurs were first. "Mark's enthusiasm is fantastic for the league," says Joe Maloof, owner of the Sacramento Kings, the Mav's first-round playoff opponent. "He's zany, but I love it," says Scott Williams, one of the team's veterans. "Before he came here, Dallas was the dump of the NBA. Now it's a fantastic situation."

Still, the show's prospects and his role as host unnerve the camera-ready Cuban. "I'm excited and scared s—-less," he says.

Hardly the candor you'd expect from a CEO and team owner, but Cuban isn't typical. He routinely flouts conventional wisdom, quoting blackjack dealers and generally acting like a big, mischievous kid.

"He's not into froufrou stuff," says Doris Nadel, 43, who has worked in sales for Cuban for eight years. "He is who he is, and that's why people like him."

Sure, there are the trinkets of the fabulously wealthy: a $41 million private jet bought online, a 24,000-square-foot mansion and a new SUV with license plate MFFL, short for Mavs Fan For Life, a phrase coined by Cuban.

But Cuban is blue-collar down to his sneakers, jeans and blue Mavs sweat-shirts. He travels without an entourage and uses the same ramshackle swivel chair and desk he's had for years. His "office" is a cubicle in a nondescript warehouse that employs about 100.

And the $25 million mansion is sparsely furnished. Until recently, the living room doubled as a whiffle ball field. ("Got to be quiet around the baby," he says of his infant daughter.)

"He's more motivated by competition than money," says Brian Cuban, his brother. Brian laughs loudly, recalling how he, Mark and younger brother Jeff smashed loose a 2-foot piece of plaster at home playing football. The then-teenage Mark drove them to the hardware store, where they bought plaster and paint. After they patched the hole, they realized the paint was the wrong color.

"The mismatched plaster is still there, and he's still the same guy," says Brian, 43, a corporate lawyer, who is executive director of the Mark Cuban Foundation and the Fallen Patriot Fund, which helps families of military personnel killed or seriously injured during the war with Iraq. (Jeff, 39, is an HDNet salesman.)

Loyalty is important to Mark Cuban, a demanding but not overbearing boss. Many of his employees are longtime friends he trusts. On a balmy March day in Dallas, employees gravitate to his modest cubicle, hollering encouragement for the Mavs and commiserating over pickup basketball injuries.

He's a real maverick

While most of the NBA's other 28 owners are as faceless as a late 1970s rock band, Cuban is never at a loss for words, often shooting from the lip.

"Mark has remained the same outspoken person I've known for 10 years. What he says now gets in the newspaper," says Todd Wagner, a longtime business associate. To wit:

• On Kobe Bryant's sexual-assault case: "From a business perspective, it's great for the NBA. It's reality television, people love train-wreck television, and you hate to admit it, but that is the truth, that's the reality today." (NBA Commissioner David Stern called the statement "misinformed" and "unseemly," but says he and Cuban have a good relationship.)

• On Ed Rush, former director of NBA officiating: "Ed Rush might have been a great ref, but I wouldn't hire him to manage a Dairy Queen." The comment earned Cuban a $500,000 fine in 2002 and a voluntary daylong shift managing a DQ in Coppell, Texas. He served Blizzards to more than 1,000 people, but the NBA adopted his suggestions to change how it manages and monitors referees.

• On sports: "The 1980s and '90s were the golden age of sports. But fans have more choices now in this fragmented world of cable TV. Our league has to expand its mind about TV and technology. Why is it that NASCAR and bull riding have higher ratings?"

• On owning another team: "I've considered (buying NFL and NHL franchises) momentarily, but sanity sets in."

Such barbed comments evoke strong reactions. Fans and budding entrepreneurs love it, but Cuban has his detractors. The NBA has fined him more than $1 million since 2000. Normally reserved owners have yelled at him during meetings, one calling him "dangerous" for suggesting a change in league policy. Some sportswriters label Cuban a self-promoting bully. "His outrageous behavior is an embarrassment to the league," says Sam Smith, NBA columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Cuban's retort? "I personally have no respect for what he writes."

Even the unflappable Stern winces at Cuban's candor. "Mark is high-maintenance but he's a plus for the league," Stern says. "That's why I have wrinkles. People who buy sports teams have demonstrated confidence and competence."

Cuban bristles at what he calls the league's provincialism. "This was an industry where it was frowned upon to be vocal and opinionated," says Cuban, who matches his fines with charitable donations.

Last month, he started an online journal (http://www.blogmaverick.com) to ensure his comments aren't "filtered," he says.

'A hustler all my life'

"I've been a hustler all my life," Cuban says with pride. "One of my favorite sayings is, 'No balls, no babies.' I learned that from a Las Vegas blackjack dealer."

"I'm always amazed by what he does," says his father, Norton. "I have to look at his birth certificate to make sure he's my kid."

Cuban seems to have inherited his business acumen from his grandfather, Morris Chobanisky, who immigrated to Ellis Island from Russia. He sold food products out of the back of his truck. "Mark, like my dad, did anything to make a buck," Norton Cuban says.

Though Norton worked nearly 50 years in a car-upholstery shop, his straight-talking, blue-collar work ethic rubbed off on Mark. "He's always been a rebel," Norton says.

Mark exhibited the same restlessness in high school that would drive him to become a millionaire at 30 and a billionaire at 39. He took classes at the University of Pittsburgh as a high school junior and senior. He continued his accelerated learning at Indiana University, where he attended MBA courses as a freshman until "they booted my ass out," he says.

Lured by "fun, sun, money and women," Cuban moved to Dallas in 1982 because his junker car couldn't make it to Miami or Los Angeles, he says. Perhaps he didn't want a repeat of the time his car broke down in college and a group of Hari Krishna stopped to pray over it, Brian Cuban says.

His first major venture out of college, systems-integrator MicroSolutions, offers insight into the Cuban Way. Despite minimal computer experience, he became immersed in technical details and market research. He used strategies that would become staples of his empire: brand building, a top-flight sales team, exclusive partnerships and dogged competitiveness.

When MicroSolutions was sold to CompuServe for $6 million in 1990, its annual revenue was $30 million. Cuban retired.

The retirement didn't last long. Cuban and fellow Indiana alum Wagner started AudioNet in 1995 so they and their buddies could hear Indiana Hoosiers basketball games on the Internet. Within four years, the company — renamed Broadcast.com when it went public in mid-1998 and soared to $62.75 a share its first day of trading — piped content from about 100 TV stations, 500 radio stations and thousands of artists to millions of PC usersworldwide.

Dot-com's 'luckiest man'

While others lost paper fortunes and their reputations during the meltdown of the early 2000s, Broadcast.com was sold to Yahoo for a cool $5.7 billion in 1999 — netting Cuban $1.7 billion of stock. Last year, he ranked 179th on the Forbes' list of 400 richest Americans, with a net worth of $1.3 billion.

"I was the f——-' luckiest guy around," says Cuban, who spent a then-record $280 million to buy the Mavericks in January 2000.

Now, he's pressing his luck on TVs. He's sunk $100 million into HDNet, a network for high-definition TV, a digital format that offers wide-screen pictures considerably sharper than standard TVs.

The new format, enveloped in surround sound, appears to be catching on after years of hype. Consumers bought 4 million HDTV sets last year, up 60% from 2002. Others see potential, too: ESPN and HBO offer programming in high-definition.

Cuban and Wagner own Landmark Theatres, the nation's largest chain for art films, and two movie-production companies. They are executive producers of Godsend, co-starring Greg Kinnear and De Niro, opening Friday. They also bought a TV-and-film library from which HDNet gets some of its content.

"His attitude is, 'Go for it!' " says Philip Garvin, co-founder of HDNet.

Like other business associates, Garvin often fields a dozen e-mails a day from Cuban, offering a deluge of ideas. "The expectation is that you will get them done eventually, but he pushes people in a nice — not nasty — manner," he says.

"I micromanage until I trust you," Cuban says.

Still, some suggest marriage and parenthood have softened Cuban. He uses his personal jet to make pit stops at home to be with wife, Tiffany, and 6-month-old daughter, Alexis, between games.

Not so fast, says Cuban: "I'm as competitive as ever." If you don't believe it, watch him after the Mavs lose.