On November 21, The Intel Extreme Masters tournament took place in San Jose. Thousands of competitive video game fans filled the SAP Center to watch some of the top League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams battle it out for $175,000 in prize money.
Among those fans -- and players -- was Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank shark Mark Cuban.
He played in a showmatch against Intel CEO Brian Krzanich with each leading (well, let's be honest: being carried by) a League of Legends team with four other players. It was five-on-five action that raised a total of $38,000 for the CyberSmile Foundation, a nonprofit committed to fighting cyberbullying and online abuse.
He also took a moment to validate what those in attendance already knew: Competitive video games are awesome, and they're only going to get bigger.
"I love Colin," Cuban said, "but he's an idiot when it comes to eSports."
He was referring to Colin Cowherd, the sports personality who has ruffled the feathers of gamers before with rants against video games and the people who play them. "Somebody lock the basement door at mom's house and don't let 'em out," he said when talking about the competitors in a Heroes of the Storm tournament that had aired on ESPN 2.
"I'm a noob," Cuban said. "I'm still getting into it. But I love it. It's like playing five-dimensional chess against the world. It's one of the smartest games I've ever played. You've gotta have dexterity, you gotta be quick. This is a real sport, and people are going to figure it out real quick."
For a noob, he could have done worse. Team Cuban won their LoL match against Team Krzanich, and it took less than half an hour to do so. You can watch the entire match in the video below.
He also trashed talked quite a bit, which resulted in him parting ways with some of his money -- much to the delight of the crowd.
"Your trash talking was so good you actually dropped an F-bomb before the game here when I interviewed you," Kristine Leahy told him during the post-game interview. "And so I've just been informed that you've actually been fined 15 thousand dollars. It's OK though, because it's going to a good cause. It's going to Cyber Smile. Do you take back the F-bomb or are you standing by it?"
"So if I say it again I have to pay another $15K?" Cuban asked.
"You wanna up it to 30 thousand?"
"F--- it."
The uncensored clip is below (explicit language warning).
