It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing for Mark Cuban during the early goings of his life as an NBA team owner. As someone who likes to march to the beat of his own drum, Cuban often found himself going against the established norms in the league in terms of running a team. Speaking to Dalton Trigg of SB Nation, the Dallas Mavericks owner confided that while his approach to managing an NBA franchise didn’t conform to the usual before, the NBA eventually found itself acclimating to his own ways.

When I got here, everyone tried to make me go old school and be like everyone else. Owners were supposed to write checks, and that was it. Teams had four coaches, no development coaches. [We] didn't market our game as entertainment, we sold basketball. [The league] didn't use technology and basically was run by David Stern top to bottom.

Normally, team owners would watch their team's games from luxury suites. Cuban, meanwhile, would rather stay right by the bench, peek over the huddle during timeouts, and walk onto the court to greet his players during timeouts. Cuban’s hands-on style could be attributed to his entrepreneurial background.

I tried to run the Mavs like a startup. We brought in 10 former players to help develop our players. People laughed at me. I sat next to the bench and listened into huddles. If it made sense to be in sales and management meetings and learn how people interacted, it made sense to listen in to huddles during a game and learn.

Cuban bought the majority shares of the Mavericks way back in 2000, and has since then made the franchise into one of the most successful in the league. It’s hard to argue against the effectiveness of his management style, when considering the fact that since he took over from H. Ross Perot Jr. as team owner, the Mavericks have missed the playoffs just twice. On top of that, Dallas has fallen short of a .500 record just once since 2000. That came last season, when the team finished with a 33-49 record.