11/05/24
March 17, 2004
Mark Cuban has a weblog.: Apparently, Mark Cuban is still not getting all the attention he thinks he deserves.
posted by mkn to basketball at 07:48 AM - 11 comments
As a diehard basketball blogger, I think this is incredibly badass. Basketball has been lagging far behind baseball and hockey in the blogosphere and this is exactly the kick in the pants needed to raise the profile and quality of roundball blogs everywhere. Bravo!
posted by Scott Carefoot at 08:50 AM on March 17, 2004
Cuban has always been very accesible - this doesn't surprise me at all. More sports owners should be like him. Before he got super famous he used to answer every email he got. I wonder if he says anything about the giant spike he causes in MAMA when he bought 600k shares of it. Maybe I should follow links before I comment on them...
posted by Bernreuther at 09:02 AM on March 17, 2004
Sweet. Thanks, mkn. This was hilarious (Cuban is shooting scenes for The Benefactor): The highlight of the day came while we were outside the school shooting liners for the show. At various times during the day, I would get the expected “Mavs Suck, Lakers Rule” shouts that are normal everywhere I go in LA. But this time while we were shooting, there were some cars backed up at a light, and one guy just had to shout Mavs Suck or Cuban Sucks everytime he saw me start to talk. So we took a pause waiting for the light to change and this guy to drive off. The light changes he starts to roll forward while we wait and has to get one more Cuban Sucks in there, and then crack! He rolls into the car in front of him. The whole crew just burst out laughing. It wasn’t even a fender bender: there was no visible damange and no one got hurt, but karma had raised its head. Of course, I suggested we go over there and make the most of the situation. So we gave both parties a hundred bucks, put ‘em on tape, and the Laker fan gave us some great humbling moments. And the lady he hit. She didn’t want the hundred till she found out it was from me. Then she signed the release because she liked the idea of taking the money from the guy who owns the Mavs. She likes the Lakers too. Bookmarked? Aye.
posted by Ufez Jones at 09:08 AM on March 17, 2004
Yes, what the previous commenters said about Cuban being cool. Check the post from March 16 in which he includes his exchange of email with Kevin Blackstone of the Dallas Morning News and then Blackstone's subsequent column. Cuban is upset that Blackstone tried to spin his comments for the article. I wonder if Cuban realizes posting such correspondence on the Internet might not be the best thing to do to improve relations with the media.
posted by dimmykarras at 09:19 AM on March 17, 2004
this is great. i wish more owner's and atheletes would do this!
posted by owl at 10:04 AM on March 17, 2004
dimmyk, I do hope that Cuban realizes that reprinting the entirety of Blackistone's e-mail without consent (which he may have had) is probably a bad idea. The one time I've done that on my blog I made sure to have permission, and that wasn't a public figure, much less a journalist. Cuban is a pretty good writer though.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:14 AM on March 17, 2004
dimmyk, I think Cuban is smart enough to understand the consequences--this is just one more way an insightful billionaire can put pressure on others without looking like an asshole. I do wonder if his PR team reviews the posts before they go out though. Notice he does not have comments or trackback enabled.
posted by billsaysthis at 10:55 AM on March 17, 2004
Love the weblog. Basketball was dead in Dallas when Mark Cuban bought the Mavericks. I think this weblog is more about accessibility than attention for Cuban; he already gets plenty of attention. One of the reasons the Mavericks are now a great franchise is because Cuban listens to the fans. You can often send the guy an e-mail after returning from a game and get a reply that night, and he does a lot of stuff like sitting in different fan sections at different games, to make sure the experience is good anywhere in the house. When you compare it to Cowboys games, where they play in a foul smelling concrete urinal and the only contact with management is the announcement of ticket price hikes, Cuban looks even better.
posted by rcade at 10:02 AM on March 18, 2004
rcade, we should only be so lucky here in the Bay Area to have someone like Cuban, who has an actual personality, buy the Wounds from Chris "Mr. More Invisible than God" Cohan and you'd think that with all the people here who made bucks like him in the dot com boom, there'd be one guy to step up.
posted by billsaysthis at 10:09 AM on March 18, 2004
Hey, who's going to invite Cuban to join SpoFi??? Ufez, you're a local...
posted by billsaysthis at 07:52 PM on March 18, 2004
I like Cuban because he is nothing more than a fanboy who has passion for his team and being a geek. I can relate to that and would probably be the same way if I were in his position.