Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is as fiercely loyal to his team as owners come.
He lives and dies with the Mavericks’ success, and the sense of obligation he feels to franchise cornerstone Dirk Nowitzki is, at its core, truly admirable.
But when you’re a practicing fan, you tend to complain a lot, no matter the team you’re rooting for. Cuban isn’t one for complimenting the NBA’s referees. He’s fair in the way he doles out criticism and support for certain NBA policies, but his view towards officiating, at least publicly, skews in the direction of a normal team supporter: The referees are afterthoughts until they aren’t, and when they make the transition from afterthoughts to pivotal parts of a game or series, it’s seldom good.
Cuban, however, is beginning to not just accept but laud the way games are being watched over. He kind-of-sort-of issued his stamp of approval to the league’s officiating process while speaking on an episode of the Lowe Post podcast with Grantland’s Zach Lowe, per The Dallas Morning News. But that stamp of approval came complete with an anecdote about the time he almost sold the Mavericks because of how much he loathed that same officiating process:
“There’s still a lot of room for improvement but I think transparency makes a huge difference. I think the biggest change that’s going to happen that (NBA commissioner Adam Silver) has really started to push through is in recruiting and training. I remember back after 2006 when I was just going bananas and it really was the only time I was looking at selling the team, sitting down with them and showing them a list at that point and time where all our most recent refs over the past 10 years had worked at prior to coming to the NBA, and they were all from two conferences: the Southern, I think, whichever conference had Belmont. They were two really tiny conferences and it was because the college coach of the then head of officials, Ronnie Nunn, was the head of officiating in those two conferences. So we had this little back scratching arrangement which nobody even knew existed. Didn’t even know existed. Since that time we’ve started to make headway in better recruiting of officials but now we’re really starting to take it seriously.”
Can you imagine a world in which Cuban didn’t own the Mavericks? Neither can I.
Can you imagine a world in which Cuban is being supportive of the NBA’s recruiting and training of referees? I sure can’t. Not even after reading his comments. It just doesn’t feel real.
That championship banner the Mavericks hung in 2011 is very real, though. And if Cuban had gone through with selling the franchise back in 2006, it’s possible they never would have earned it.
Sometimes things work out for a reason. Cuban held onto his organization, won a championship and is now warming up to certain aspects of refereeing. Go figure.
