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Cuban bristle crisis With Mavs owner, you have to take the bad with the good
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Jack's take, give us yours. If you can help me with the answer to this question, please respond: Why can't I find it in me to despise Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban? Egregious qualities positively pour from his smug billionaire being, which has shelled out about $500,000 in fines this season. He's a camera hog. He's a jock sniffer. He's tactless in victory, worse in defeat. He's a materialistic computer geek. As Larry King might write, next to the phrase nouveau riche in the dictionary there's a picture of Mark Cuban. Plus, he's kind of good-looking, in a spoiled-brat-yuppie kind of way. Early this season I was in Dallas for a story that had nothing to do with Cuban or the Mavs when someone introduced me to the owner. He clapped me on the back and said, "As soon as I finish running the stairs, I'll give you all the time you need." He just assumed I was there to talk to him. Most owners are about as accessible as Cabinet members; Cuban, in the Big D style of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, practically places the cassettes in your tape recorder. Over the next 45 minutes, as Don Nelson put the Mavs through their paces, I watched Cuban -- towel around his neck like a prizefighter, sweat pouring off his frat-boy face -- run up and down every stair in Reunion Arena. What a life, huh? Show up at the arena, slap a few backs, stay in shape while your team practices, hit the weight room with the guys after practice (Cuban is surely among the buffest owners in pro sports history), slap a few more backs, go to the game with your pretty girlfriend, sign autographs, torch referees and opponents from the best seat in the house, slap a few more backs in the locker room that was redecorated and re-accessorized with your bucks, drive home and lay your head down in your personal castle. But something about the 42-year-old Cuban is vaguely ... endearing. Is that the word I'm searching for? Even before he bought the team, Cuban was a loyal fan, playing the courtside fool then as now, carrying on and rooting for a team widely known as the Mavwrecks. He thought the franchise could be better, so he put his money where his mouth was. Then he supercharged the organization from within, hiring smiley-face salesmen to peddle a product that seemed un-peddleable, even getting on the phone from time to time to make sales calls himself. Then he showered gifts and perks (such as on-call masseuses) upon his players, turning Big D into one of the NBA's most attractive stops. Then, at the games, he continued yelling and carrying on like a 10-year-old at his first circus, confounding NBA officials who couldn't seem to fine him enough to modify his behavior. In a springtime scenario that is anathema to any traditionalist, Cuban and his Mavs are still around, while old-schoolers Karl Malone, John Stockton and Jerry Sloan are gone. Wouldn't you love to put Sloan and Cuban in a room together, lock the door and instruct them that only one man could be ambulatory when the door was opened again? Cuban's physical condition notwithstanding, my guess is Sloan would come walking out in less than two minutes, dusting off his hands. But in this NBA universe, I say it's possible to respect guys like Sloan and still not be completely turned off by Cuban. He acts like a 10-year-old and, as with all 10-year-olds, you have to take the bad with the good. To get an owner who will live and die with his team, who will show the kind of enthusiasm that fuels sport, you also get the spoiled brat. We just have to get used to a spoiled brat with a billion dollars. Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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