One thing you'll never find at Dallas' American Airlines Center is a quiet Mark Cuban. And that might be a good thing. John W. McDonough/SI

By Ian Thomsen

He has been fined by the league, abused by opposing fans and forsaken by his rival owners. That's why Mark Cuban is my Sportsman of the Year.

In six years he turned the lifeless Dallas Mavericks into the defending Western Conference champs. Cuban should be a model for all of the many bad NBA owners who shuttle out millions in guaranteed paychecks yet fail to hold players accountable for their salaries. Among the most expensive payrolls in the NBA, the Mavericks are the only team in contention -- and it's because in his own way, like him or not, Cuban makes sure that his players give an honest night's work in exchange for their outrageous day's pay.

The owners who complain about Cuban's behavior should first consider their own failings. Do they get as much out of their franchises as Cuban does from his? A few of them do, and so they have the right to question Cuban's occasionally defiant behavior. The rest of them should spend less time criticizing Cuban's style and more time learning from his substance. If they would work harder to compete with him instead of complaining about him, it would be a far better league.

I have a lot of respect for David Stern as an innovator and a problem-solver, but the scoreboard says that he is not the greatest sports commissioner of all time. That honor goes to Pete Rozelle, who (with a huge assist from successor Paul Tagliabue) set the NFL on track to overtake baseball as the No. 1 sport in the country. The NBA was No. 3 when Stern came in and it is No. 3 today. He has been an excellent commissioner who raised a lot of money and heightened the interest in his sport, but so too did the other leagues during the bullish 1980s and '90s.

There is an unhealthy, self-congratulatory sense of complacency in the NBA based on the premise that all of the problems will be solved because Stern is a genius; and yet NBA players are held in generally low esteem by the public in no small part because of the way Stern chose to market them over the previous decade.

All I'm saying is that nobody has all the answers, and that Cuban's fresh approach should be welcomed by a league that could use some new ideas. To its credit, the NBA has increased oversight of its referees because of Cuban's griping.

The mistake would be to push Cuban away. It's bad business. If nothing else, his behavior lets fans know that he sincerely cares about winning each basketball game. While he's making an ass of himself, he's also changing the widespread perception that most owners don't care about the final score.

In the bigger picture, he does far more good than harm. When he sells the Mavericks, which I imagine will be sooner than later, he will be missed.