Welcome to the Megyn Kelly Show your home for open, honest and provocative conversations. Hey, everybody, it's Megan Kelly and welcome to The Megan Kelly Show. Today, Mark Cuban, he's a billionaire self-made guy, made his money in the tech industry and now owns the Dallas Mavericks. He's outspoken on virtually all issues. And you'll hear some of that today got tense at times. It was a tough interview, but I think it was fair. And I give him a lot of credit for engaging because most guys in his position, certainly in the NBA, would never had deigned to take the time.

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Mark Cuban, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. All right. So how does a middle class kid from Pittsburgh wind up with four billion dollars?

A lot of hard work and a lot of luck. I started off as that kid in school growing up in Scott Township initially that just had every little side hustle that you ever could imagine from selling baseball cards to my friends, to selling garbage bags, to hustling candy, to buying and selling stamps at collector shows. You name it if there is a hustle, I did it.

So you were the kid who was mowing everybody's lawn and delivering the newspapers and always came home from the fair with a change in your pocket? Yeah, pretty much.

I wasn't a lawn mower, but I was a driveway shoveler.

It's funny. My my nana used to give my brother, my sister and me five bucks each to go down to the little carnival down the road because we would spend August with her in the summers and it just north of New York City.

And she used to say Makem would come home with just the five dollars gone, wouldn't want anymore.

Your sister would come back asking for change after two minutes and your brother would come home with change in his pocket. So my sister needed more money. My brother always had change and I wound up breaking even. And honestly, that's how we wound up to this day.

You know, that's how you learn, right? That's where you develop all your initial habits. You know, I try to tell my kids how you do anything is how you do everything, you know. And it's really important to get good habits that can lead to success as you get older. It's really true.

Was there a pivotal moment when you were a little kid that that drove you to be this successful? This this much this determined?

I don't know if there was any one. I think it's just how my parents raised me. I mean, my dad did a poll on cars and I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but never quite get there, never had a college degree. My mom did odd jobs, never went to college. And so they always did push me, but really supported me and encouraged me to try anything. I remember I would buy and sell stamps, and one time I wanted to go to New York and my dad had to take me right because I was 15, 16 years old.

And he was like, OK, I have no idea what I'm doing. And I would take him around. And what I would do is at the stamp shows, I would go to from one stamp collectors booth to another where they would have a dealer who would be selling these different stamps. And I would look for the inefficiencies. So how one stamp dealer would gauge a stamp or rate of stamps would be different than another one would. So I'd buy one that I thought was undervalued and go to the next booth and sell it to somebody who I thought would value it higher.

And my dad was like, I have no clue what I just saw, but you made money, so keep doing it. And so I think I realized then that I was going to have to make this on my own and I was going to have to figure it out on my own and that I had the ability to do it.

You were kind of you were a little nerd who went on to become king nerd. I wasn't so little, but yeah, I was. Well, it's funny is what somebody like you who's got as much success in their back pocket as you do.

I always think they probably went to Harvard or Yale or Stanford, and none of us can get into those schools without lifetime family connections and so on.

And then it turns out you went to Indiana, which I love that. So, yeah.

And I went for all the people who were feeling bad about themselves right now because they they didn't go to these top tier schools or the parents who are worried their kids aren't going to get into them. What do they need to know about going to a school like Indiana? I mean, look at I went to IU, which ends up being one of the best decisions I've ever made, because I saw a list of the top ten business schools and I picked out the cheapest one.

And I've never been to the campus and that's how I picked Indiana. And in terms of what people need to know, it's it's less the school that you go to and more the effort that you make. To me, I learned I picked up so much knowledge about business because I was really geared towards taking business classes and challenging myself. So I would say, don't worry about the school. You go to make it one that you can afford. You don't want to sell yourself with a ton of debt and to when you get there, you don't have to know exactly what you're going to be when you grow up.

Try to challenge yourself and take as many different types of classes. Because, you know, I end up being a tech guy and I took one technology class in college and I didn't really come to understand that I had a good aptitude for tech till after college. But what I really did pick up is all the language of business, accounting and marketing and finance and sales. And I think even more importantly, Megan, I learned how to learn, know the only constant is change.

And so I think Indiana really gave me a toolkit to say new things are always going to be coming at me. And I learned how to learn new things. And I learned that putting an effort into read and absorb information however I could really gave me a competitive advantage. And those are the skills I think you should look for. And none of that really applies to what school you select.

So in a nutshell, what is the business? What does the business do that you sold for all that money?

Oh, OK. So. So I first let me take a step back. My first job out of college, when I got down to my first job in Dallas, when I came down here, I got a job as a bartender at night. I was living six guys in a three bedroom apartment and then got a job during the day selling software. And that's really what got me into computers and technology. And so I was there for like nine months before I got fired.

And then I started a company called Micro Solutions where I just said, you know what? Nobody really knows all this new computer stuff. If I teach myself, then I'm going to have an edge. And I went and found a customer who would put the money up front for a software package they wanted to buy, told them if it didn't work, I would walk their dog, clean their floors, whatever it took to make them happy, and then built that up to a company, build that up to about 30 million in sales and 80 employees.

And we sold it to our block when I was about 30. And then I took a couple of years off and in nineteen ninety four early ninety five, a buddy of mine from Indiana, Todd Wagner, came to me and said, you know, there's this new Internet thing and you're the technology and networking geek. There's got to be a way that we can use this Internet thing to listen to Indiana sports over the Internet. And I'm like, OK, let me see if we can make this work.

And the first thing I did was look to see if there was anybody else doing anything like that. And the answer was no. There were some academic things going on, but no businesses. And so I bought a Packard Bell computer, set it up in the second bedroom, my house, and try to learn how to do Internet broadcasting is what we called it at the time. And we started a company called Audio in it. We built that up to where we had, I don't know, one hundred radio stations and thousands of broadcasts on there.

And then we changed it to broadcast dotcom and edit video nineteen ninety eight. We went public and effectively we were the YouTube of the early Internet. I mean, we just dominated streaming. We went public in nineteen ninety five and it was the biggest IPO in the history of the stock market at the time. And then a year later we sold to Yahoo for five point seven billion dollars in stock. How old were you then. I was just turned forty one.

I take that back about to turn 40. So I heard you tell the story about when you saw the stock go up and you realized you were making six billion dollars and that you were you didn't have any clothes on. You were sitting in Cincy looking at your computer like I am right now.

No, just kidding me, too. Yeah, right. You know, sometimes you just got to hang loose.

And so what I was just wondering, like, you know, when you I realize it's stock, it's OK.

But, you know, when you get when you get that money, at some point you actually get that money in, like, is that like direct deposit.

Is it. So what happened was I had been after I sold my first company, Micro Solutions, I traded stocks and did really well. And that helped me allow me to finance audio and broadcast dotcom and own enough to really do well when we sold it in. And so when we got it, we got stock. And so what happens was they literally put one point nine million. I forget the number of shares that we got, 19 million or something like that.

Shares of Yahoo! Stock. But because I traded stocks before, I knew that there was risk to the Internet bubble, that these stocks were not going to go up forever. And honestly, I already I had to be next to my name at that point and thought to myself, how much more did I need? So I did something called a collar where I sold calls and puts to protect my downside. And that's how I ended up converting all that stock into cash.

And as it turns out, when the Internet stock market crashed, I was protected. And a lot of our employees, we had three hundred thirty employees when we sold. Three hundred of them became paper millionaires. And we got we convinced a lot of them to hedge like I did, and they protected themselves as well. But at that point in time, once we collared it, which by the way, it ended up being called one of the top 10 trades on Wall Street of all time.

But when I collared it and as those callers let off, that's all I got cash in my account. So it was like one day. And like every third I said, I get the basic message. I get that you hedged. And so you protect yourself and your employees so that when that when the bubble burst, you guys were still in the black. Yeah, I got it.

OK, so I wanted to ask you, as somebody who came from a middle class background and winds up, as you say, with the B after your name, is there any downside to having all that Dow? Not at all. Here's what I thought I would say, having to wonder whether people coming into your life after you've got to be after your name are sincerely interested in you. That the man. Yeah, but you know what?

There's hassles in life, no matter how much money you have. You know, the friends I have now or my friends from high school and college and my rugby team and guys, my roommates are from Dallas. When I first got to Dallas, they're all still my good friends and I've added some friends along the way. But, you know, I wasn't looking for new friends. So what about women?

Like when when you were dating. I know when you were dating, did you worry about that?

Not so much worried because it was pretty obvious. Obvious when you start to date somebody or go out with somebody. In the first two things they said it was, you know, I really love to just do charity work and travel. Those are kind of my life goals.

You kind of new you know, I have a good friend who I used to work at the Jones Day, and she was this hard ass lawyer. She was great and went to great schools and all the stuff. And she fell in love with a guy who also worked at Jones Day. And he was also super brilliant on their first date. They'd been sort of eyeballing each other for a while and they go out to dinner on their first date and they're hitting it off.

They're both having a great time. And she says to him, at one point during the dinner, I'm going to get up and go to the bathroom. And if you're still here when I get back, I'll know that none of the three things I'm about to tell you are deal breakers. And if you're gone, no harm done. We can stay friends. The three things are I smoke, I'm going to quit. But right now, I'm still struggling with it and I smoke.

The second thing is I have terrible credit. I'm going to fix it. But I it's not that I don't pay my bills, she said. It's just like paying more on a quarterly basis, she said. The third thing is, I know you know me is this high powered lawyer at Jones Day. But what I really want to do is be a stay at home mom. And she got up, she went to the restroom, she came back, he was still there, they've been married ever since.

They have to. All right.

I love the story. That's like what a story that's owning who you are and what perceptions are of you just sort of just up front. Exactly right. I mean, and you've got to be honest then, you know, and during that dating period, I did a lot more having fun than truly dating.

Um, but what I was that a euphemism for action?

Well, that just meant that I didn't have a lot of long term girlfriends in that period. But when I met my wife, I was playing basketball at the gym and and she was on the bike and one of my basketball buddies dated her sister. And he was like, You see that girl there? You want to be there? I'm like, Oh, yeah. And we've been together pretty much ever since with a couple of breaks in there, but been married 18 years, three weeks ago.

Oh, that's great. So I got really lucky. Do you worry about.

I know you do, because everybody who makes that kind of dough does even I'm nowhere near your level.

But even just having achieved success in my own life, coming from a middle class background, I worry about it raising kids who are entitled.

Oh, yeah. Who don't have to drive to work hard after their health.

That is the first and foremost thing that scares the hell out of me, literally making it something I think about every day, something my wife and I talk about all the time. And it's something I talk to them about. I mean, now they're 11, 14 and 17. My youngest son, Jake Middle, is the oldest is Alexis. And kids, they all have their own unique personalities. So you have to kind of tailor the message to each one of them.

But I think you're really clear that there's no money train coming for them. They're going to have to make their own way and figure out how to earn a living that I'd never let them fail so that they really couldn't. So they had bad struggles. But I was going to allow them to struggle if if that makes sense. How do you do that?

Because I think about it now. I never had a desire just to be rich. I just wanted to work hard and be successful. That was the drive I had and it worked for me. But I, I don't know. I look around, I say to the kids, you know, you like the way we live. You better work hard because, you know, I would say that my kids will say, are we rich? And I'll say, Dad and I are doing just fine.

You guys, I said the same thing. Right?

But the truth is, I will leave them something I write. I don't want them to to not have anything. And I don't know about these billionaires like Bill Gates were like, I'm giving it all the way. My kids are getting nothing. That seems weird to me.

Do I take I take a little bit different approach than those guys? One, because as I said, I'm most concerned about their health. And so I really tried to keep a decent amount of liquidity just in case, God forbid, knock on wood, something goes wrong with your health and you have to step in and it's something unique and there's not a readily available treatment, then that's what it's got to be all guns blazing. And so that's kind of my save for a rainy day as it applies to their health.

After that, it's just trying to connect with them and set an example, particularly how I try to treat people when we go out and they see me interact and always be nice, always being cordial, always being respectful. They see me pick on the president and politicians and referees that Mavs games and we have discussions about that. But generally, I really try to set an example and really communicate to them that your education and how you do the school is going to be the door opener because each of you are different.

And if you want to blaze your own path, you're going to have to set your own goals and do your best to achieve them. Yeah, well, it sounds like you're setting a good example.

And by the way, you're trying all those people there in the arena arena, you know, you're going to take a chance.

Exactly. Yeah. So you be right. I got to take the punches, too. Yeah, absolutely. So you wind up buying the Dallas Mavericks. And I warn you up front, I know very little about sports. I only know sports to the extent they they veer over into my news lane. So you buy this basketball team.

Why? My wife and I used to we're season ticket holders and we used to go to every game and they were awful, you know, like you're saying. Yeah, those seats were fine. Right. But and I was right after we sold the broadcast dotcom to who I was at the opening night of the ninety nine two thousand season, it wasn't a sell out. I mean, it's opening night. We're undefeated. I was excited, but didn't seem like there was any energy in the arena.

And I thought I could do such a better job than this. And then it finally dawned on me that, hey, I can afford to put my money where my mouth is. And so I reached out to a former player, Mark McGuire, who knew the then owner, Ross Perot Jr.. They connected us or he connected us. And it took just a few weeks and the deal got done. And so from initial thought around November 1st, we closed the deal January 4th of January 8th or something right around there when not just got it.

I love I mean, I'm a basketball junkie. And so there's a couple of things I love. One, I learned very quickly that I may be. But for the finances, but all of north Texas truly owns the Dallas Mavericks, it's so different than any other industry or any other business I've ever been involved with, I never got requests. Hey, my son has cancer. Can you get a player to come visit us or call us or talk to us or will you come visit or unfortunately, my son or daughter passed away from cancer.

Would you mind if I look at just signed of Jersey so we can Burián in that because he was his favorite player? Just heartbreaking things like that that you don't see in any other industry. So that connection to community is first and foremost and just the challenge of it all. There's every season, there's 30 teams. Twenty nine losers and one winner. And I've only been that walk away final winner one time. So I love the challenge of it and I love the basketball side of it.

I mean, I get to go to basically my own arena before a home game and get out there and shoot baskets to me as a basketball junkie growing up, that's one of the coolest things ever. And that's really how I clear my head. Like, even today I can go down to the practice court. And if I'm stressed about something or want to just clear my head or think about something, I'll just get up shots. I'll get up there and shoot baskets.

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Amazon.com selected gun shops, pharmacies and retail stores throughout the country, pump pepper spray. And now back to Mark Cuban. My husband put on the last dance, the documentary about Michael Jordan. And we watched that. And I love Michael Jordan. I lived in Chicago during the course a lot of those Bulls years. So I saw that team play and wound up getting to know Dennis Rodman a little bit later in life, which is he was my roommate for a little bit, which was not.

Yes, he was. When I happened when I bought the Mavs my first year, we hadn't been to the playoffs in ten years and had sixteen years and had a losing record for the last ten or something like that. And I was trying to do anything to win. And so we signed him for what ended up being a total of 12 days. And because he had a suspended driver's license, he couldn't drive. And so I put him in the guest house in my house until the NBA told me that it was against the rules and he couldn't do it.

So Deron and I have been friends ever since.

He's he's such an interesting guy.

I asked, you know, how many times have you been arrested?

It was like over 80. I like, OK, OK.

And but he's he's kind of a sweet soul and also the Henry Kissinger of our time because, you know, instead of ping pong diplomacy, you know, you got North Korean basketball diplomacy. But yeah, you're right. I've got a great heart. Right.

Who did the Dennis Rodman could be a critical player in forging maybe a better relationship between the United States and North Korea? Nobody.

Yeah, absolutely nobody. But you're right. He's got a great heart. And I really like Dennis well. So I love Michael Jordan like like everyone in the world. And I loved that that the last dance.

I thought it was so well done and he was so interesting. But I wanted to ask you, one of the things they highlight in that documentary is that he never got political, even though there was pressure to do so. And he just thought, I'm not going to do that because I know my fans. I might not agree with me on whatever issue you want me to push or public Republicans buy sneakers, too.

Yeah, Republicans buy sneakers, too. Exactly. And and, you know, I like that because politics is just taken over. It's like you can't turn on the Emmys or the Oscars or the sports games. It's like it's everywhere.

And as you know, it's it's so ubiquitous just in the news. It's really just hard to escape it now. And that's not the way the NBA is going. It seems like it's gotten very political. But what from what I've seen again, and I'm sort of outside your lane, but there's the big BLM logo on the basketball court down there for the finals. And the guys are wearing social justice messages on their jerseys. And they've been having some protests like the night Jacob Blake got shot.

They they didn't play. And so what do you think? I mean, do you think that it's appropriate to take a side on issues that are so.

Well, first, let's go back. Right. Let's go back to Michael Jordan's era. Just because Michael wasn't a participant didn't mean that players weren't activist back then as well. Right. I mean, going back to the extent we see now. Well, I just think remember, there's a different media environment. There's there's a huge difference between media availability and the Michael Jordan days. That was just the beginning of cable. Fox News broke only existed for half of Michael's career.

Right. The last three years of Michael's career, there was no social media. The Internet was in its infancy. So there really weren't the mechanisms to to really convey to people messages. You had to go through all the gatekeepers. So it wasn't that players weren't active, they were in their own ways. But now we're in a different social media environment and things progressed. You know, politics and sports have always gone together. You know, Muhammad.

Ali was a champion of the world when he was Cassius Clay, and then he was ostracized when he became Muhammad Ali and he was not even allowed to fight because he did not want to go to Vietnam and get a lot of commentary there so we can go to the Olympics in 1980 when we withdrew from from the Olympics. So while I get your point, I don't agree that sports and politics have been disassociated and this is something new. It's certainly not now that the court, though, not on the court.

I mean, listen, I'm close related close enough to remember there was never a huge logo on a divisive issue on the basketball court during the final. Well, let's talk about that. So you wear a ribbon to support breast cancer. That's one thing, putting BLM in the middle of the court when it's not supported by virtually any Republican in the country.

It's less than just talk about the topic. So that's different. So, OK, so first there, when you said the group. What group are you talking about, Black Lives Matter capital, B, capital, L Capital. OK, but who is that group? Because it's a group founded by Marxists who want to dismantle the family and defund the police force, that's incorrect.

So, first of all, it's one hundred percent correct. OK, so let's go there. OK, so first of all, let's talk in terms of who we support. There's Black Lives Matter dot com. And that's where you go to get the information about the organization. Those are the people who started the hashtag. That's all they did. If we were supporting Black Lives Matter dot com. Don't you think, Megan, we would have been smart enough to put the dot com on the court along with Black Lives Matter?

Come on. You're now you're splitting hairs. I know I'm not. No. So that's. So what are you supporting? We're supporting the movement. It's really a distributed movement across the country to try to end racism, to bring awareness to social justice issues. And if you and I've done this, talk to people who go better at Black Lives Matters rallies and ask them who the three founders are, they don't have any idea. And if we were supportive of those three founders, don't you think we would have had one of them on an NBC broadcast?

No.

You know, that's the main takeaway on BLM, the main push. This is what they say. They're single issue. Their biggest issue is whenever you see a representative from the group, an organizer, people who go to the protests, it's one thing defund the police. No, that's crazy.

So that's not crazy. Trust me, I'm just following every every news cycle. I marched with them. That's the whole thing. And you just answered the question. You're following the news cycles. Right? And where you get your source of news determines pretty much the perspective that people are going to have on this. I can tell you from being an NBA meeting, I can tell you from being part of the discussions, I can tell you from talking to players.

So when I speak, I'm speaking for the NBA as an owner. And so I can tell you, it's been very clear that we're supportive of the movement. We're supportive of trying to end racism. We're supportive of police reform. But you've never, ever heard us talk about Marxism.

No. OK, fine. You don't need to endorse it. But, you know, march and pretend. But to pretend that Black Lives Matter, dotcom or otherwise, is not about defunding the police is to be dishonest. It is.

It is about even though it absolutely is. And the basketball players who have spoken about this have made clear that they support that. I mean, they've talked about how they want to defund and dismantle the police force.

Individual players can have their opinion. Right. And that's fine. Right. But me as a governor in the NBA and having been in all those meetings, I can tell you that while we are interested in police reform. Yes. And we have had discussions about police reform. Yes. We have never talked about the funding, the police, the funding, the police. And there they are, different ends, but devotes itself to it.

No, you're wrong again, because BLM, the hashtag Yalumba hashtag, the founders, is completely different than BLM, the movement.

We don't understand this distinction. You're trying to again, they don't. And that's why they saw this logo alienating. It's not the middle or lower case, BLM.

It's that what this group has become with the protests in the streets that have turned into riots with bothering people at their dinner tables, making them raise a fist and say black lives matter. And with this push to defund the police, which has already worked in some cities in New York, they took a billion bucks away from the police force to the detriment of the inner city, to the women and the children and the men who are who are in the inner circle.

So that was really controversial right now.

OK, I agree with controversial. Right. So first of all, when we talk about defunding the police, that's one extreme. Disrupting the police is a completely in trying to reform the police is a completely different issue.

OK, so you're going to have to put footnotes on the BLM on your see footnote forty seven for exactly which is your number two. So you're raising a very good issue that in terms of controlling the narrative, it's been awful. And the reason it's been awful is because there is no leadership, there is no one speaking for BLM and this is a conversation with our player.

There is true because the co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Patrice Cullors, was was on TV and has openly said, and I quote, We should abolish law enforcement.

Where was she on TV and when and how many times? She's been out there a few times. And her co-founder has said the same and half the organizers.

And they'll go on television and you see when most of the time when you see those, it's the same interview from two thousand fifteen or twenty sixteen has been rebroadcast.

You no, they're not they're not hiding this. Goldmark, I mean, the city of Minneapolis, both the police and now they've already regretted it and backtracked on it.

OK, so what I'm telling you is in terms of the NBA's involvement, right, whatever the founders of the hash tag and again, you have to distinguish between the hash tag in the movement and to you, it may be a distinction without a difference. But I'm telling you to the people who are marching and the people that are involved in the NBA, it's not according to Gallup in the latest poll.

Eighty one percent of black Americans want the same or more police in their neighborhood. Your complaint was that you're conflating two different things. You're talking about defunding the police. And do they want more police support? That's completely different than how the players responded to the Jacob Blake shoot.

No, understand I understand the point you're making. But what I'm trying to tell you is that that that people have been fed a media narrative about police hunting black men.

That is a lie.

Oh, OK. So maybe they have. OK, so maybe there's a media narrative depending on where you get your video. But when I sit and I talk to African-American males in particular. Right. And I didn't have this understanding until I sat and talked to our players and their families and other people around them. Right. And, you know, they said, Mark, you have a daughter about that just started driving at the time. Did you have to have the talk with them?

And I'm like, what's the talk? And they start to tell you about where one hears what you have to do if you get pulled over by the police. You over told your son to obey when pulled over by cops.

No, that's not it. That's not. Let me finish. That's obvious. Of course, you would tell them to do everything that it's supposed to do. But also, when you get pulled over, make sure you pull over in the lighted area if you at all can. If you have somebody else in the car with a phone, make sure they're videotaping it. If you at all can if you can call somebody so people can listen in to what's going on, please do.

If you can if you can automate something on your phone to do a quick dial to make all this happen. Please do if you can. That's part one. Part two. When you go into a retail establishment, don't be surprised if people start eyeballing you and following you simply because you're black. You could be dressed the exact same way as a white individual walking down the same aisle. And there's still a greater chance that they're going to watch you and you just have to be able to deal with it and not get mad.

If you're running in a neighborhood, please do have somebody with you, because when people see a black male running through a neighborhood, they get concerned and there's a good chance you're going to have the police called on you. So don't be surprised. So you're better off running or jogging or walking or walking your dog with another person because you are at risk. Mark, have you ever had to had those conversations with your children? The answer is no, and that's the difference.

And so when they see Jacob Blak shot, they're not looking to make Jacob Blake a martyr. Jacob Blake just happened to be the person that was just one more brick in the wall that just cemented where African-Americans feel that they are. That's the problem. That's why I support it. That's why I understand it.

And and the points you're making, I don't dispute any of those. I think you can argue about whether I mean, young women also get followed around a lot because, of course, we're the ones who are likely to steal. I mean, they think young women who can't afford the dresses are going to take them and shove them in their purse. So it doesn't just happen based on skin color, but I'm not disputing that. But but what's been force fed to the American public is the lie that the cops are hunting black men.

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I mean, the ratings, what makes the finals are underway things. Let me just finish the question.

OK, go ahead. Lowest finals opener ever. Game to another Nullo. Game three down an unprecedented fifty eight percent since last year. This is during a marquee matchup. Right. The Lakers in the Heat. I know enough to know that they were huge. And last year they had some team from Canada and that matchup was crushing what we're seeing this year. And the sports analysts say this is a disaster. It's an unprecedented viewership collapse for you guys.

So first, OK, my turn. OK, so first, I really love this conversation, I love going back and forth like this, so I don't want any of this to be anything but total respect. And I'm really enjoying this saying I appreciate that. OK, so no one who are the when you talk about you're putting these things out after just having said how bad the media was by using extreme examples and picking sources that may not be reflective of the reality.

So you're just what you just said was wrong in terms of crime, you're doing the exact same thing with this. So I just want to make this point so that the experts.

I know, I know I'm telling you, this is the accusation that your ratings are down because right to political right.

This accusation. But you're not saying who's making the accusation because. Well, kind of disaster I got from Clay Travis Valchek.

Of course you did. Right now what it's bizarre what the numbers are. The numbers are what the number was at the lowest finals opener ever.

Yes. And that was a new low for game two.

And I'll tell you a quick, quick story. So there there is this old probability thing where people use this example of during World War Two, they broaden this statistical analysis guy to help them reduce the number of planes that were shot down. And so what he did was look at all the planes that return from flying over the Pacific and look at all those who had been shot. And all the people in military said, look, all the all the planes that were shot return.

All the bullet holes are right here. So we've got to make that area where the bullet holes are stronger. And he said no, because it's already strong enough. That's why the planes return. You've got to look to see what shot them down. You're using these examples and it's analogies here because you're using these examples. Let me let let me finish. You're not looking outside the NBA ratings to see what else is happening in media. You're not using this is you're not correlating this or some other inconsistent point me to.

Sure. OK, here's why. This is a group of people that are incredibly WOAK horse racing horses are the most Wolk's species on the planet. We all know that horse racing is down significantly. The Triple Crown, the numbers are down 40, 50, 60 percent from last year because horses are the most workpiece, most beef on the planet. Right.

Because of politics, that horse, I know you want to compare yourself to horse racing right now, but the big indicators they look at our foot are football and baseball, and they haven't taken anywhere near the hit that basketball has.

Well, football has always done really well, right? What about hockey? Again, did you think hockey is analogous to basketball more than hockey, you had their finals. What about regular TV, broadcast television? You you're trying to die, you're trying. No, I'm not trying. That's what I'm trying. I'm trying. Why do you think your ratings are so low? What I think up until the final is I think our final is disappointed, I'll agree with that.

And I don't think it has anything to do with politics. I just think we don't have the match up or we don't have the storylines and didn't do a good job promoting it. But be that as it may, right prior to the finals, our numbers were good. All things considered, our numbers were fine in the the demographic that we shoot for. Remember, the only point of ratings is to help advertisers by advertising. Correct. Yes, that's why ratings exist, so within that realm, we were we were pulling we're winning our night every single night, we and that's despite having four games a day on some games some days, and even more on others starting our games at 1:00 in the afternoon when nobody's watching.

Despite all that, we were winning not only in viewers, but also in terms of the eighteen to forty nine demographic. That's our demographic. But here's the challenge in terms of media up until the finals and again, I'll admit that the finals are somewhat disappointing. Up until the finals, the only way to get an NBA game was on cable or satellite. We all of our games are on ESPN or TNT. Our core audience, our fastest growing audience is younger demographic.

They caught that. They don't have cable. They don't have satellite. There was just the morning was it morning consult, I forget who came out that said among Gen Z and young millennials, the NBA is just behind the NFL with forty seven to forty nine percent of fans saying it's the most it's their favorite sport. And so we're right there. But the problem is that our our largest growing viewership base and the one we want to be our viewership base, the youngest viewership, Danzy can't watch us during our games or doesn't have regular TV to have our game.

But that's the fundamental problem they can watch with broadcast after having television available to them. Right. And I'm not saying that's our reason for it. I'm not making excuses slower than I expect them to want them to be. Right. But at the same time, the rest of the playoffs, we did really well.

But our problem I would just suggest I would just tell you the whole the whole the whole thing about politics is nonsense, OK?

I mean, time will tell. Let me move on, because I have to ask you, China, the NBA is under all sorts of fire for taking money from China and China. What I'm told is that the NBA's revenue from China is around five hundred million bucks at least. So it's a lot of money that the Chinese put into basketball, into the players endorsements and so on.

And my question for you is whether the NBA needs to get more, not less vocal about this. There was some guy who sent out one tweet. He was the GM for the Houston Rockets back in October of nineteen saying simply fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong. And all hell broke loose.

The Chinese Basketball Association suspended all cooperation with the team. The Chinese top state TV star suspended airing of the games and so on. The NBA commissioner had to come out with his tail between his legs and said, we have great respect for China and its history. It's all regrettable. Then people freaked out in response to that and so on.

And now with his tail between his legs, with his tail, between his legs.

May, why can't you just ask me a straight up question mark?

Yeah, but, Megan, every single topic we tried to discuss that. I just look, you get to come into this interview prepared with your quotes. I don't get this is your industry. Yeah, but Megan, that's that's what I'm talking about. I don't care what industry we're talking about. Every single topic that you brought up, there has been one pejorative aspect to it in terms of how you present the question.

Look, I get between I'll give you the statement from Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner. I don't I'm just telling you, people freaked out after he said this. I take no position here.

Oh, a lot of people. I mean, I'll give you an example. A lot of people say, hold on, we can quote President Trump. People say, hold on.

Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, came out and said, we recognize that Daryl Morey, he's he was the Rockets GM, his Maury's views, quote, have deeply offended our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable. We have great respect for the history and culture of China and hope that sports in the NBA can be used as a unifying force to bridge cultural divides. In response to which many people. Here's just one example. Florida Senator Rick Scott came out and said the NBA is more interested in money than in human rights.

They are kowtowing to Beijing and its shameful. So you tell me whether the NBA needs to get more vocal in condemning what we're now seeing there, which is an ethnic cleansing of a minority Muslim group known as the Wiggers, one million or more are being held against their will right now. Men, women and children facing torture, forced labor, physical and sex abuse, coercive population control, forced abortion for sterilizations. And the question remains, why won't you and the NBA explicitly condemn that?

So first. First, we pay attention. I personally OK, let's just talk about me. I personally put a priority on domestic issues when it comes to human rights. I'm against all human rights violations around the world, including the ones in China.

China is not the only country with human rights violations, including the ones in China, but they're human rights violations against all human rights, including. Including China. Yes, including China. Any human rights violations anywhere are wrong. OK, now what do we do about them? That's the problem, right? So the first thing you do, you say, OK, there's there's people from China trying to escape that. There's people from Turkey, those people from Africa, all trying to escape and receive asylum here in the United States.

Would you agree with them? Would you agree with that? Look, you according to I'm ask you the question. I'm asking the question, would you agree that the question is there are people who are trying to escape human rights violations around the world and gain asylum as refugees here in the United States of America. Would you agree with that? Yes, that's true. OK, would you agree that is probably a good idea, that we should allow more of them to come so they can escape this human rights and put this back on me?

This is not putting anything on you on this a question. And I'll just ask you a question.

No, we're talking about. No, I'm explaining to my audience that what's happening now is you're dodging because you're uncomfortable because the NBA will not condemn China.

And it's I just told you, I'm against human rights violations everywhere, including China. Let's get specific. Do you condemn the genocide that's going on right now in China? All human rights violations? Why can't you be specific? Yes, because the way proclamations work in this country, the minute you say them anywhere, you're going to use this as a headline. Houben says this, this.

What's this with that headline Cuban condemns ethnically because I do with the trial. But then I got to deal with the trial. But now what's more important to ask is what actions that I think are important to deal with these issues. You don't you want proclamation's, but you're not what I try to talk about actions. You ignore them and say I'm evading the question and I would hold silence is violence.

And my question for you. OK, what I'm telling you why this action is this. I'm telling you, action is change. And what do you do about this? So what I just tried to explain it to you. Right now I'm working. I've been involved trying to increase the number of slots available for asylum seekers here in the United States right now. If someone were to escape any country that has human rights violations and get out of this country, they can't get a job.

Come on. You know why? That's what happens to what's happening in China.

Why not? Why would why would the NBA take five hundred million dollars plus from a country that is engaging in ethnic cleansing?

Why would so basically you're saying that, no, nobody should do business with China. Why don't you just answer my question? No, I'm just trying to get to the root of it. So you're just trying to like this one because they are a customer. They are a customer of ours. And guess what, Megan? I'm OK with doing business with China. I wish I could solve all the world's problems, and I'm sure you do, too.

But we can't. And so we have to pick all battles and what you'd like to give proclamation's so you can create a clip that says, look what I got Marc to say. You don't want to deal with the actual action item. You might think silence is violence, but action gets change. Right?

So when I start to type by your side, I mean that you will let me say it.

You stop me every single time and said I was changing.

Providing for asylum for those seeking it does absolutely nothing to help the we.

OK, so first of all, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what you're talking about because there are people you know how many people are on the waiting list for visas and asylum in China right now trying to get here but can't. More than two hundred thousand and you know how you know how I know that because it's not a public figure, because I went to the State Department and contributed the resources to figure it out and find out what's going on, because when people are able to get out, we don't give them a chance to come here.

And when they are able to get when they are able to get here, we don't give them a chance to work because they're not allowed to work. And so when they get here and so they go into the underground economy. So all these people crying for human rights, helping the people, when we find a way to help them, we stop them. We don't we don't help them. And so don't give me all about. I got it.

I have to ask you before we go, are you going to take these problems on from the executive office of the White House? No, no, I'm not going to run for president.

No, you're not. No, I've never heard you rule it out so explicitly.

No, I have. Yeah, I have. Many times when the only reason I considered it because because of Donald Trump prior to that, I was a political. And I'll go back to being apolitical when you're hopefully out of office. Thanks for being here, all the best. I appreciate it. Megan. Spirited. Interesting, surprising was in a couple of things. Look, he is actually right that helping asylum seekers from China, it is a good thing.

It is. They certainly can't stay where they are, go back home if they're here. But it doesn't do anything for the million people who are already in China's forced labor camps right now. And that's that's the ethical challenge of getting rich off China's money. Also, in case, by the way, you were wondering whether those terrible ratings really were caused by the NBA going political? Well, the NBA commissioner just announced that next year they will not be allowing messages on the floor or it seems on the jerseys.

He said he got the message from fans who turn on the TV and, quote, just want to watch a basketball game. Right. Can't you relate to that? So good. Good for them. Ratings speak. They have the ultimate power on these guys. That's that's the truth of it. And our thanks again to Marc for the spicy exchange. You can't think of another team owner who would have had the guts for that conversation, right? He deserves credit for that.

And we we respect it and appreciate it. I hope you enjoy the show. Tune in later this week for Alan Dershowitz. I am really looking forward to that. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show. No bias, no agenda and no fear. The Megan Kelly Show is a devil may care media production in collaboration with Red Ventures.