Best & Worst: Mark Cuban annoys us, from selling trash bags to trashing refs

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst of 2006. Check out the other nominees for Most Annoying Money Expert of 2006. Be sure to cast your vote.

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban is best known as the eccentric owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA team. But he got his start as an entrepreneur at the age of twelve, selling garbage bags. His other early money-making efforts included providing disco dancing lessons and a chain letter that earned him more than $1,000. The foundation of his fortune, though, came about through starting and selling technology companies. Unlike so many others in that field, Cuban managed to avoid the dot-com bust by diversifying his portfolio. He's now one of the world's 500 richest people, according to Forbes.

Cuban is a confessed admirer of Ayn Rand, particularly a fan of her novel, The Fountainhead, and also of objectivist philosophy; he leans toward the libertarian end of the political spectrum, though he doesn't get much involved in politics. A casual man, Cuban rarely wears a suit and never wears a watch. He purchased his stake in the Dallas Mavericks from H. Ross Perot in 2000, and has since been a very visible and outspoken supporter of the team, often appearing at games in a Mavericks jersey. He's been fined a number of times by the NBA for criticism of referees and league officials, though he matches his fines with donations to charity. In one notable incident, Cuban's complaint that a league manager wasn't smart enough to run a Dairy Queen eventually resulted in Cuban working the counter at a Dairy Queen in Texas, where delighted fans lined up around the block to be served by him.

Other widely reported incidents include a 2003 scuffle with professional wrestlers Eric Bischoff and Randy Orton, which turned out to be a scripted stunt. In 2006, when film director M. Night Shyamalan expressed concern over the marketing experiment of simultaneously releasing Steven Soderbergh's film Bubble in theaters and on DVD, Cuban called Shyamalan an "idiot."

Makes one wonder who Mr. Shyamalan might vote for as the Most Annoying Money Expert of 2006.