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It’s safe to assume the vast majority of people on the planet have dreamed about reaching a point in life where they have more money than they’ll ever know what to do with. Unfortunately, very few of us will ever be able to realize that goal.
However, it’s safe to say Mark Cuban has been able to do exactly that. The entrepreneur who successfully cashed in on the Dot Com Bubble before it burst was eventually able to amass “Owning A Professional Sports Franchise” levels of wealth after purchasing a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks just a few days after the new millennium rolled around.
Cuban wasted no time cementing himself as one of the most vocal, visible, and passionate owners in the NBA, and he’s run up one hell of a tab over the past couple of decades thanks to the more than $3 million in fines he’s racked up as punishment for various comments and actions.
When Cuban bought the Mavs, the man who currently boasts an estimated net worth of around $4.6 billion inherited a playoff drought stretching back ten seasons. However, he wasted no time turning things around in Dallas, who spent the ensuing decade as perennial contenders before finally winning the first championship in franchise history after beating the Heat in six games in the 2011 NBA Finals.
While the team would’ve probably preferred to win the title at home, securing the Larry O’Brien Trophy in Miami did have its upsides.
During a recent conversation with Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles on the Knuckleheads podcast, Cuban recalled heading to LIV (the fairly iconic nightclub inside the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach), where he opted to celebrate the win with Dirk Nowitzki by dropping $140,000 on a bottle of Armand de Brignac “Ace of Spades” champagne (although multiple reports published shortly after the night in question stated it “only” cost him $90,000).
However, he ran into a tiny issue while trying to buy the massive bottle of bubbly that is perhaps the epitome of “Rich People Problems.”
Here’s what he had to say about what went down (the anecdote in question kicks off around the 31:30 mark in the above video):
“I’m like, ‘Dirk, do we want to get this?’ He’s like, ‘F—k yeah we want to get this.’ So I go to the waitress, ‘Alright, we’ll take one.’
10, 15 minutes go by. Dirk’s like, ‘Where’s the champagne? Where’s the champagne?’ I’m like, ‘Let me check.’ All of a sudden, the lady comes up: ‘Mr. Cuban, you’re card was declined.’ I’m like, ‘What the f—k? My card is declined?’
You know how you get a new credit card and you’re supposed to turn it on and everything? I guess they thought [when you] turn it on and all of sudden there’s a $140,000 bottle of champagne, something’s up, right? So I had to go back into the back office of LIV with one of the managers and I’m like, ‘Let me call American Express.’
I’m drunk as s—t. They’re like, ‘How do we know this is Mark Cuban? How do we know this is real?’ I’m like, ‘Did you watch the game tonight? Let me just tell you to turn on the TV and see what’s going on’— because we’re in Miami, right?
So finally, they approved it, got my bottle, and we were good.”
Cuban didn’t go into a ton of detail concerning how the rest of the night panned out, but I can only hope it ended better for him than the time he was, um, overserved at Juwan Howard’s birthday party.