After the explosive Sports Illustrated report on the Dallas Mavericks, many are wondering what went wrong and what owner Mark Cuban had to do with it. To this point, Cuban has taken responsibility for keeping a former beat writer on staff even though he knew of the writer's prior instincts of domestic abuse.
He said he kept the writer, Earl Sneed, because he wanted to help him instead of letting him possibly inflict that kind of abuse on others.
Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press
At first glance, Cuban's explanation makes little sense. But he has actually expressed similar ideas before. When the whole Donald Sterling fiasco happened, Mark Cuban voiced his opinion on bigotry and how he would go about it if he saw it in an organization under his control, per Bernie Augustine of the New York Daily News in 2014.
“And so when I run into bigotry — in organizations I control — I try to find solutions. I’ll work with people. I’ll send them to training, I’ll send them to sensitivity training. I’ll try to give them a chance to improve themselves because I think helping people improve their lives, helping people engage with people they may fear or may not understand, and helping people realize that while we all have our prejudices and bigotries … We have to learn that it’s an issue that we have to control. It’s part of my responsibility as an entrepreneur to try to solve it, not just to kick the problem down the road.
Brett Davis/USA TODAY Sports
It does my company no good, does my customers no good, does society no good if my response to somebody in their racism or their bigotry is to say ‘It’s not right for you to be here. Go take your attitude somewhere else.”
Sound familiar? The Mavs' owner said almost exactly the same thing regarding why he thought it would be a better idea to keep Sneed.
Whether that kind of thinking makes sense or not is or others to decide. To Mark Cuban's credit, he admitted that choice was a “horrible mistake.” Time will tell if anything changes.
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