Mark Cuban, Bulls: Billionaire Lends Chicago Bulls A Jet After Harrowing Incident

Dallas Maverick's Owner Mark Cuban made a lot of friends in Chicago this week. The billionaire investor let the Chicago Bulls borrow one of his planes after the Bulls' team plane suffered a terrifying malfunction.

On Saturday night, the Bulls were flying to Indianapolis for a game against the Pacers when their plane suffered engine trouble. Bulls radio analyst Bill Wennington recounted the story to the Waddle and Silvy show on ESPN radio.

"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," he said. "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?'

Wennington said the situation became serious several minutes later.

"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.'"

The plane returned to O' Hare airport safely and the players were forced to return the next morning and hitch a ride on the Chicago Blackhawks charter plane.

TV analyst Stacey King wasn't so sure about getting on a plane again.

"After getting on the ground that night, I was ready to get on a bicycle and ride to Indy. I was shook for a little bit,"King said.

"I'm not going to sit up here and lie, if I had a teddy bear, I probably would have been grabbing it."

The Bulls made it to Indiana and back, but were left plane-less when they needed to fly to San Antonio for a game against the Spurs. That's where Cuban stepped in. He loaned them a jet on Monday to return after Wednesday's game. Bulls Forward Lou Amundson took to Twitter to show his appreciation.

"Our plane broke, @mcuban loaned us his, nice guy...," Amundson said.

Yes, it appears that in a year that has been marred by high-profile injuries, even the Bulls' plane can't stay healthy...I'll show myself out.