Team owner Mark Cuban has become the first member of the Dallas Mavericks to appear in a post-NBA championship national commercial. The TV spot is a lead-in to the upcoming film, Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
The commercial goes even farther with its promotional tie-in by also featuring ESPN sportscaster Jay Harris. But as revealed toward the end of the 30-second spot, the main player is Optimus Prime.
Following the Mavericks 2010-11 NBA championship series win over the Miami Heat, Cuban was among those cited by analysts as being in an optimum position to transform the crown into endorsement perks.
In the debate over the nation’s rising debt, rhetoric trumps reality. In January 2001, the U.S. budget was balanced for the first time in decades and the Congressional Budget Office was forecasting surpluses totaling $5.6 trillion by 2011. A decade later, the national debt is larger, as a percentage of the economy, than at any time in U.S. history except for the period shortly after World War II.