Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is one of the few owners in the NBA that stays active with his team on a nightly bases, often seen at home and road games sitting with the rest of the fans. Along with being one of the most active owners, Cuban can now add "most generous" as well.
Last Saturday night the Chicago Bulls were involved in a scary midair incident which has left them borrowing airplanes to get around this week.
According to the ESPNChicago story, an engine backfired and shut down, although Bulls radio announcer Bill Wennington claims everyone handled the situation calmly.
"Apparently a compressor in engine No. 3 had some trouble, and it sounded like it exploded, but I guess it's like a jet engine backfire, which is very loud," Bulls radio analyst Bill Wennington said Monday on ESPN 1000's "Waddle & Silvy Show." "Sparks fly out of it. It happened actually right after ... the captain thrusts the engines forward and it revs up and starts to go, about three seconds after that you hear a 'Boom!' 'Oh, what was that, are we stopping?' The plane keeps going down [the runway] and you're thinking, 'Oh no, why aren't we stopping?'
"It was funny, because we're in the back of the plane, and the engines are right by us, and we hear it. They can't hear it [in the front of the plane]. And apparently they couldn't feel anything. And so we take off fine, and about five minutes later, two more booms, 'Boom!, Boom!,' and a couple people saw flames and sparks and stuff flying out [while looking out of] the window. We're all thinking, 'Well, it's been nice.'"
Cuban lent the Bulls the Mavs' plane to fly to San Antonio on Monday night and to return after Wednesday's game. Bulls forward Lou Amundson tweeted his appreciation to Cuban for the lift.
"Our plane broke, @mcuban loaned us his, nice guy...," Amundson tweeted in the early hours of Thursday morning. Cuban later retweeted it.
The Bulls' plane is expected to be fixed and used for the rest of the season.
