Jonathan Bender was emailing Mark Cuban back and forth about his ideas. Bender, the fifth overall draft pick of the Toronto Raptors in the 1999 NBA Draft, was emailing the Dallas Mavericks owner about a product he had developed.

Cuban was looking for a product himself, a seven-foot, big-man, instead of what Bender was trying to pitch him.

"I told him about my product and he told me I needed a big man," said Bender. "It's tough to get owners to look at you as more than just athletes."

Bender has grown to become more than just a former NBA player, who spent most of his career with the Indiana Pacers after the Raptors traded him. Growing up in Picayune, Miss., Bender jumped straight from high school to the NBA to earn millions. He spent seven seasons with the Pacers, but retired in 2006 due to persistent knee ailments that can be traced back to his days in Picayune.

"There was a year in high school where I grew six inches," he said. "I didn't know it at the time, but I should have been resting my growth plates, instead of working out and doing everything athletically. By the time I was in the NBA, the workouts got even tougher and the damage was already done."

Starting in 2007, Bender began to articulate his own plan after the NBA and developed his own product to help against deteriorating knees and back pain, which is now known to be the JB Intensive Trainer. The product attaches to your lower torso and has two resistant bands that stretch along the backside of each leg, which are attached to supportive ankle harnesses. The bands essentially take the pressure off the knees and redistribute it to your leg muscles and core.

"I had to have strong quads, glutes and core to carry the weight of my upper body," said Bender. "A lot of NBA players are shaped like carrots, big on top and skinny at the bottom. This helped me strengthen all those core areas to take away pain from my knees. I was able to basically walk around with the product on and rehabilitate at the same time."

Bender notes that the product can help anyone strengthen their lower extremities and core, but is the most effective in people already suffering from knee or lower back problems.

"The best demonstrations I have is when I go into a store and somebody is already hurting," said Bender. "There was one store manager that had a sciatic nerve problem and he put the product on and he felt better immediately. Older people who have knee, hip or back problems, who hurt with every movement they make can't exercise and forced into surgery because of the pain. My product can help prevent because it helps train those muscles surrounding the area of pain that haven't been trained for years."

The JB Intensive has been studied by Purdue University Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and scientifically speaking, it's been proven to increase the necessary force in all the muscles surrounding the knee, while improving the load balance between the medial and lateral sides. Balancing the load across the knee joint produces the results that Bender boasts.

It was one of the main reasons Bender was able to come back to the NBA in 2009 to play for the New York Knicks. After working with team doctors and trainers, Bender had tested to have the strongest lower extremities on the team. It was proof that his idea and work meant something.

After a year with the Knicks, Bender retired on his own to pursue business and a life after the NBA.

Without a college degree, Bender studied some of the brightest minds in business and learned from trial and error to get his product where it is today.

He currently sells the JB Intensive Trainer in a chain of Houston stores called 'Relax the Back' and online. He hopes to have his product nationwide over the coming years.

But one thing that he wants the most, outside of Mark Cuban looking at him as a product, is to have his product help people.

"I created this from nothing to help people on a daily basis," he said. "I knew that if I wanted to leave a legacy behind, I had to put my feet in the dirt and do things for myself. I had to deal with a lot of adversity through this process, but the difference is determination. You have to take advantage of everyday, no matter what comes to you."