Mark Cuban: ‘People were more interested in the election than the game’

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was watching his team play on the road against the Los Angeles Lakers as the precincts reported in. 

Cuban, an outspoken Trump critic, started the night believing that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would win in a close election. He was tracking the updates on his phone.

So were the nearly 19,000 fans in attendance.

{mosads}“You could hear gasps from the crowd as results came in,” Cuban told The Hill. “People were more interested in the election than the game by the time we got to the fourth quarter.”

The billionaire investor had been a Trump supporter early on in the campaign, but he later endorsed Clinton and became one of Trump’s biggest antagonists. Still, he says his disappointment in the outcome was tempered by his belief that Clinton’s election defeat had a silver lining.

“Part of me was upset. Part of me felt like, ‘this will be interesting,’ ” Cuban said. “If we can get through this term we may learn from it and come out further ahead.”

The next day, Cuban and the Mavericks headed to San Francisco for a game against the Golden State Warriors.

“We were in San Francisco and people literally were crying and walking up to me asking for a hug,” he said. “It was surreal.”