Posted by
Madeline's Dad on Thursday, August 24, 2006 9:39:00 AM
I don't like Mark Cuban.
I don't like seeing him courtside every time the Mavericks are on TV. I don't like that he is portrayed as a "SuperFan" by the Media. I don't like seeing him interviewed after a big win or a big loss. I don't like seeing him on the court during games.
Can you name three other owners in the NBA? That's the whole point. Owners make it possible for the team to exist, yes. But they don't need to be seen or heard from. It's okay for Cuban to love his team, but just don't force me to watch him.
That being said, I do respect the guy.
He made a fortune by selling his first company to Yahoo, then bought the Mavericks. He treated that like a dot-com, updating the doormat of the league into a nice place to work. He provided lavish buffets to the players and employees. He wired each players locker with TV and Internet hookups. He provided state-of-the-art A/V equipment to the coaches to make the team better. Players wanted to come to Dallas, not run from it for a change. And a funny thing happened.
The Mavs started winning.
I give Cuban all the credit for the turnaround. It used to be an easy night when you played Dallas. Now they make the playoffs every year, and barely lost the NBA Championship to the Miami Heat last year.
Then I read
this article this morning, and it made me dislike Cuban all over again, for new reasons. Cuban is going to investigate businesses he feels have questionable ethics/operations, and "expose" them. In the meantime, he will be shorting the stocks of those companies. For those of you in Tucson, "shorting" a stock is basically betting that the value of the stock/company will go down. If it does, you profit from the decline. What Cuban will be doing isn't illegal, but it does raise some ethical questions.
If he was truly interested in cleaning up "bad" businesses, why not donate the profits to charity?