Mark Cuban’s celebration after the Dallas Mavericks won the 2011 NBA title came with a problem no one expected: his American Express card got turned down while he was trying to buy a giant bottle of champagne in Miami.
Cuban has told the story more than once, and it still sounds almost too ridiculous for a championship night. After Dallas beat the Miami Heat to claim its only NBA title, the team headed to LIV nightclub at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach. Cuban wanted to mark the moment for Finals MVP Dirk Nowitzki, so he ordered a 15-liter bottle of Armand de Brignac “Ace of Spades” champagne, a purchase he has estimated at about $140,000.
“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,’” Cuban said on the “Knuckleheads” podcast with Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles.
Then came the wait. When the champagne still hadn’t shown up after 10 or 15 minutes, Nowitzki started asking where it was.
“Ten, 15 minutes go by. Dirk’s like, ‘Where’s the champagne?
Where’s the champagne?’ I’m like, ‘Let me check,’” Cuban recalled.
What he got back was even stranger.
“All of a sudden, the lady comes up: ‘Mr. Cuban, your card was declined.’
I’m like, ‘What the f-k? My card is declined?’”
Cuban recalled.
He said he had to head into the back office at LIV with one of the managers while the night kept rolling around him.
“I'm drunk as s-t. They’re like, ‘How do we know this is Mark Cuban? How do we know this is real?’”
Cuban’s response was to point them toward the biggest evidence available.
“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?”
American Express eventually approved the charge. LIV owner David Grutman later remembered Cuban’s pitch in simpler terms, telling ESPN: “Can I please spend some money?”
The exact final price has never quite matched up. Grutman said the bottle came in closer to $90,000 before gratuity, while Cuban has stuck with his higher estimate. Either way, the champagne became part of Mavericks lore.
Cuban has laughed about the whole thing since then, saying the timing was brutal for a card he had only just received. He remained a constant presence in Mavericks conversations even after selling the team in 2023 and stepping away from day-to-day operations. More recently, he has said he still wants the team back, though the current ownership group has shown no interest in selling.
For all the titles, trades and front-office drama that have followed, the champagne story still stands out as one of the most memorable footnotes from Dallas’ only championship run.
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