Mark Cuban Fined for Weblog Entry
Monday, November 8th, 2004 by MR
Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team has a weblog. In it, he writes (not ghostwrites like other executives may be compelled to do) about real subjects that pertain to his life, his basketball franchise, and other things that Mavs fans would love to read about. The coolest thing about Cuban’s weblog is that he leaves the comments open so he can hear what the Mavericks’ fanbase thinks of his decisions and opinion — an absolutely brilliant decision in my mind.
The NBA held its opening night on election night last Tuesday, a dumb move because Cuban thought (correctly, I might add) that the kickoff games would get zero TV coverage the day after the election. So Cuban decided to inform his readers of his opinion on his weblog, and the NBA fined him for this. That’s right everyone, the NBA fined Mark Cuban because of a weblog entry he wrote.
I think that the NBA shows its weakness by doing this; an organization that cannot accept constructive criticism doesn’t seem like much of a well-managed organization to me.
But then again, I’m blown away at how far the weblog medium has come.
Reader Comments
32 Responses to “Mark Cuban Fined for Weblog Entry”
Yeah the NBA is getting kind of ridiculous with their fining of Cuban. Sometimes it’s warranted like when he bashes the refs and what not. They have to protect the refs. But not being able to accept constructive critism by one of the league owners is just lame. That’s one of the reasons I don’t care for the NBA anymore plus the game has gotten soft.
November 8th, 2004 at 9:42 pm
Ahhh… he deserved it.
Cuban had a lot of nerve critisizing them like he did and hurting the poor little NBA’s feelings. Aww, there there, don’t worry NBA, it’s going to be alright.
Didn’t Cuban once consider how the NBA would feel after saying something like that? You can’t say bad things about the NBA without paying for the concequences.
They are infallable! Omnipotent! Perfect! Asshats!
November 9th, 2004 at 7:06 am
I think it’s a mixed thing, good in a way.
Why? If only because it shows that the big cheeses are paying real attention to blogging…
November 9th, 2004 at 7:28 am
Ok guys, as brand and reputation strategy experts, how would you handle the situation?
If the NBA were your client, and you had a highly recognized and renegade owner essentially slamming your marketing department’s decisions on his well-read blog, how would you handle this for your client to either fix it or have prevented it from occuring in the first place?
Or, what if you have a guy (Bob) who is a franchise owner of a large world-wide, mutli-billion dollar hamburger company, who also has his own blog, and starts “commenting” on the decisions the corporate office makes?
Or, lets forget the billion dollar babies and go with a gung ho 3-person company with a bunch of dreams and life ahead of them. One of the partners posts on his well-read design blog that he’s down and depressed because he’s not making any money and part of the reason is because his partners are making some really bone-headed decisions.
BTW: I see this is your priciest service offering, so I’m not expecting you to give away your offering here, but I would like to see more than a “write us a check and we’ll show you” type response.
November 9th, 2004 at 8:49 am
Leapin’ in on something not my business…
>If the NBA were your client, and you had a highly recognized and renegade owner essentially slamming your marketing department’s decisions on his well-read blog, how would you handle this for your client to either fix it or have prevented it from occuring in the first place?
Experience suggests that ‘attempts to control’ are almost effectively futile. In requiring a sideways shift of resources which are best be deployed toward driving ‘your own business’ forward, paying too much attention to ‘the other guy’ is often a negative drain.
And ‘opinions are only opinions’ - however well-versed/funded/respected the originator.
Focus on your own stuff whilst recognising the right of others to do as they see fit - and don’t get drawn.
November 9th, 2004 at 12:44 pm
Mark-
It’s very difficult to give a straight answer without knowing the full business side of the NBAs decision to open their season on election night, but I’ll give it a shot.
I’m an NBA fan, and I like to watch basketball games on TV, but for all the marketing promos (if there were any!) I had no clue at all that opening night was election night. And even if I did, there’s no way in the world I was changing the channel from CNN or C-SPAN, that just doesn’t make sense.
I think the marketing department of the league needs to step back and re-evaluate their decision to even start on that date (forget about Cuban and his weblog for a second) because it was definitely a bonehead move on their part. If they — just for a second — could jump outside of their own POV for a second, they’d understand that nothing is more important on election night than the electioins, and that it was going to be a Lose-Lose situation for them any way you slice it.
If they could see the stupidity of the scheduling decision just for a second, then I’m sure they could see why Cuban was upset, and then instead of vilifying him they’d take his criticisms and not make the same mistake twice. That should be the big goal here. Forget about Cuban and his weblog (obviously not read by all NBA fans everywhere, not even 50%, and I’d venture to say not even 10%) the real thought process that should be going through the league’s mind is, “that was a bad decision to start last Tuesday, Cuban made a good point, let’s not do that again.”
November 9th, 2004 at 12:52 pm
Following on what Mike said, but taking a different approach.
If the NBA were our client we embrace the fact that an owner is conscious enough to want to reach out to people. We try to convince him that he isn’t a renegade at all, but one who is doing more grassroots marketing than even we could’ve achieved. I mean how many more people become interested in the NBA through Mark’s writings. At the very least I bet you a lot more people are curious to see how well the Mavericks are doing.
The scheduling issue hurt for sure, but in the long run it is a non-issue. Instead of trying to stop Cuban, we convince them to embrace him. All he is trying to do is make a better product.
November 9th, 2004 at 1:11 pm
Thanks Paul, that was more the direction of response I was looking for.
In terms of brand / reputation management, I think this instance is a two-edged sword. Sure, it could turn into a positive by the employer learning / improving from the grassroots opinions expressed - although I’d be hard-pressed to express as anything other than utopian the idea that it would work in the instance present in your response.
But what happens when other owners start blogging and expressing their opinions? What about the players? What about the organization itself?
Are we going to have a great big group hug at that point?
No, you’ll have mass chaos in no time at all. You have a noise-to-signal ration which is outrageous, and the only voice that is heard is that of the one who is most popular at the time. The product doesn’t get better, but is rather on the brink of being destroyed and thousands of people and companies are losing millions of dollars per day.
Television executives and marketers are consistently putting two great shows / events against each other, (heck, even Cuban himself was pitted against the slot winning Apprentice) so it’s really not too far out of the realm of possibility to think that the NBA would launch against the campaign returns – after all, there were a lot of people out there who expressed they were tired of the whole ordeal – so why not offer them a sports break from the political BS?
In an organization with a history a teetering on a strike at any time, do you really think they need to “embrace” owners throwing out one-sided opinions about their organizations on a medium as explosive as a blog?
Or would it be far better to fine him and nip it in the bud before it gets out of hand? Isn’t part of a brand / reputation strategy knowing when it’s best to shut things down because the information being received or sent out there to the public is unreliable.
November 9th, 2004 at 1:51 pm
I wonder how the NBA calculates arbitrary fines like that? Is it a word count of what Stern finds “unbecoming a NBA basketball organization”?
The NBA is certainly in a huge slump since the loss of MJ (the BULLS era MJ). I think they should worry about the defensive player of the year being to stupid to shut up or how there are way too many expansion teams in crappy markets….eh, whatever.
November 17th, 2004 at 9:46 pm
Heh, I’d fine him over his grassroots spamming techniques. Every time Cuban starts a new search engine (Mama, Ice Rocket), he spams bloggers in an attempt to get users.
Right guy to fine, wrong reason to do it.
November 18th, 2004 at 8:25 am
I think it’s more that the NBA has certain rules for their owners, and they enforce them. He knows it’s against the rules to criticize business decisions publically. He chose to. He got fined. It was his choice to break/ignore that rule and he figured it was worth whatever fine he got. No biggie. Mr. Cuban is just one of those people that calls BS when he sees it, so he can’t help himself.
November 18th, 2004 at 10:02 am
re: Mark’s comments on Nov. 9, “on the brink of being destroyed and thousands of people and companies are losing millions of dollars per day…”
Dogs and Cats, living together… (give me a break.)
Given the insanely high priority placed on Spelling, Grammar, and English Composition in the life of a young, up-and-coming ball player, I’d love to see exactly what some of them would have to say in a blog, and how they’d say it.
Their thoughts would probably reveal any biases or skewed world-views, a natural result of being put on a pedestal and paid ridiculous amounts of money. It might even be a good thing for their young fans to read.
But that’s why these people have handlers and agents. They don’t have to be eloquent or even literate; they have people for that. They just have to be able to play ball. Their agents hastily step in if the player has a microphone stuck in their face and starts to say what’s really on their mind.
I’d suggest that the above comment is a mountain-from-a-molehill, and that there’s nothing from stopping other owners, players, or whoever else from blogging. But surprisingly, not many else have.
“A medium as explosive as a blog” ? — Switch to decaf, sir.
November 18th, 2004 at 10:13 am
Rule one of blogging: do not blog about any specifics having to do with your job unless you’re blogging for your employer. You violate this rule at your own peril, whether you’re a relatively poor temp at Microsoft snapping pictures of equipment in their warehouse or a middle-income flight attendant or a rich NBA owner. I have little sympathy for a rich person to begin with, but even less for people who don’t use common sense whilst blogging.
November 18th, 2004 at 10:30 am
> No, you’ll have mass chaos in no time at all. You have a noise-to-signal ration which is outrageous, and the only voice that is heard is that of the one who is most popular at the time. The product doesn’t get better, but is rather on the brink of being destroyed and thousands of people and companies are losing millions of dollars per day.
Yeah, that’s the whole problem with freedom of speech ;)
Seriously, this is the bottom line danger of the corporate state. I hear your argument, I know what you’res saying: corporations have the legal right to control their employees even outside of the corporate space (that is if they want to remain employed or keep whatever relationship). But we’re talking about near monopolies and mega-corps here. What’s Cuban going to do if he doesn’t like NBA policies? Start a new league?
If I work customer service for AOL in Tuscon under this logic I guess I could get fired for blogging about CNN coverage in Iraq, or maybe just a bad movie made by Warner Bros.
November 18th, 2004 at 10:44 am
Uh, not disagreeing with your main point about censorship, but he comments were not “constructive” criticism. Constructive criticism is when you make a suggestion for how things could be better. e.g. “Your hair would look nice short” vs. “Your hair looks stupid.” His comments were just criticism (like this post, for example), which should still be allowed, but sometimes we like to put the “constructive” modifier on it to make it sound better, even though it’s not actually constructive criticism
November 18th, 2004 at 11:50 am
If I had an employee that was blogging about the foolish decisions at my company, the first thing I would do is read his blog. There are really only two things to look for: Is he right? Very often employees have information or insight that is desperately needed by upper management, but has no channel to get there. And: is he miserable? When people start lashing out in random directions, you can treat it as a cry for help, and try to make sure they get some.
As for the wide range of other cases, the most I’d do is have a sit-down with the blogger and remind him that what he posts there is in our faces, and if he’s not comfortable saying those things in our faces he should rethink his blogging strategy. I’d remind him of his confidentialty requirements, if necessary.
Beyond that, all you have is free publicity and some insight into what your low-level employees are thinking. If he’s really confused about some policy, hold meetings and educate everyone; that sort of thing.
In Cuban’s case, he’s not an employee, he’s a shareholder. If he’s ressurecting an argument that he lost in the boardroom, I’d suggest he try to be more mature. If he just wants to put his opinion on the record so he won’t look as foolish as we will, that’s cool.
After all, the NBA could have proven Cuban an idiot just by getting good numbers. The whole point of their fine is because they lost.
November 18th, 2004 at 1:10 pm
“I mean how many more people become interested in the NBA through Mark’s writings.”
I would say likely none.
Do you have any reason to believe otherwise?
November 18th, 2004 at 2:00 pm
One data point:
I’m something of an ex-basketball fan; I watched a lot in my college years, but since I started working, got married, and had a kid; I just don’t seem to have time for it. Mark Cuban’s blog does interest me, and make me want to start watching basketball again.
November 18th, 2004 at 2:56 pm
Does this not fall under the first amendment? Please don’t accept that question as rhetorical. I am serious. Does it? It seems to me that the right to say that an organization that you belong to is making a bad decision should not be subject to punishment. If he is on his own time, writing in a blog owned by him, writing his own opinions about what was an obvious mistake by an organization that should know better, how can the NBA even consider fining him? If I make a comment on something bad about the NBA, like the poor state that the rules have fallen to, or the ridiculousness of the little semi-circle under the goal where you cannot draw an offensive foul, can the NBA fine me for expressing my opinions? Is it because he belongs to the organization, because I don’t understand why that matters if he is off the clock and using his own web space?
In a fashion that is more directed at Mark’s original post, in each case, there is truly nothing you can do in which case the best thing to do is nothing. Even by acknowledging the blogs, you are only making things worse for yourself. On a more dramatic and ridiculous level it’s like tabloids with celebrities. The best thing for a celebrity to do is ignore the comments made in the articles and move on because there is nothing they can do to prevent it. All they will do is draw attention to something that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
November 18th, 2004 at 3:53 pm
I personally find it incomprehensible that a sports association has the balls to treat one of the people who owns a team as one of their employees. It’s no wonder Baseball has an image problem… they might as well script all the contests like professional wrestlers do. If they’re not going to act like an association of competing ball clubs, why make any pretense at all that they are?
November 18th, 2004 at 4:25 pm
ASSHAT! I LOVE IT!!
Mark Cuban rawks. Free speech covers the man’s damn web blog.
p.s. I bet the same people whined when that stupid housewife dropped her towel too.
November 18th, 2004 at 6:23 pm
Who Cares!
Honestly. The NBA is going to be like the NHL, sometime in the near future no one is going to miss basketball like they don’t miss hockey. Both sports have become so mediocre no one cares. Then there will be football and frizbee golf, ah can’t wait.
November 18th, 2004 at 7:13 pm
I think the NBA is trying to push Cuban to a point where he breaks. I don’t think it will happen nor should it. I think they are scared that other owners will take a more active interest in bettering the game. Cuban clearly loves the game and has its best interests at heart. I wonder what or whom Stern’s interests benefit?
I read Cuban’s blog regularly… I not only think he has a right to post what he thinks, I usually agree with what he’s saying.
Cuban’s got billions and billions anyways, I’d like to see Stern put HIS money where HIS mouth is. Its because of people like Cuban that Stern’s got a job!!! Its just too bad that Stern’s position in league isn’t voted on like a politician. I’d Vote or Die trying!
November 18th, 2004 at 7:19 pm
I couldn’t make sense of the article especially about why Cuban was fined. Weblogs suck, that’s why you are not a journalist. Please learn to communicate clearly in the future.
November 18th, 2004 at 8:21 pm
It’s the NBA for crying out loud. Nobody gives a damn about it until the playoffs start. (and some of us don’t even give a damn then!)
November 18th, 2004 at 8:28 pm
I too got in big trouble by my employer by “blogging”, when criticizing them. Its almost like the company can take away your first amendment rights.
November 18th, 2004 at 10:16 pm
I just had a blogging mishap as well. I’ve had my blog for just over 2 years. I didn’t told anyone at my university about it (faculty OR student), but someone found it and then showed it to a professor. This professor called me yesterday and requested that I immediately delete an entry in which she’s mentioned. I did it, because she has to give me a grade. But…it’s irritating to be told what I can and can’t record in my personal blog. Grrrrr.
November 19th, 2004 at 6:52 am
I guess the NBA must have some legal right to fine Mark Cuban, but did it help their case at all to do it? Probably not. Whoever in their marketing department chose the start date probably helped in the decision to issue the fine.
I agree the best response would have been to ignore the comments, or if they were going to acknowledge them, (and if their ratings were actually not too good)agree with him! Maybe then the NBA would be getting some positive publicity in Cuban’s blog, instead of all the negative publicity in here, and in other blogs and media.
November 19th, 2004 at 3:56 pm
Did anyone think of or mention what the companies running commercials might have thought about them running games on Nov 2. They pay big money to have commercials on during sporting events. I’d be pissed if I was say Ford, chevy, AOL, or whomever that bought commercial time, expecting a huge audience for Game 1 of the NBA season, and then finding out its on November 2nd, and therefore likely to get far fewer views. Maybe Cuban could have phrased it as a loss of revenue for his business (The Mavs) and the NBA in general. And went on to say he would discuss it w/ other owners and the NBA to avoid that situation in the future. And finally, for those that say the NHL isn’t missed, yer wrong, I miss is desperately.
November 19th, 2004 at 4:55 pm
A similar thing happened in the last NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Race:
Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s spotter was suspended by NASCAR for the weekend for criticizing NASCAR during qualifying. And it wasn’t even in public–it was over the team’s in-car audio communication system!
November 28th, 2004 at 8:40 am
The nba is getting painfull to wacth somone needs to organize a lockout untill they change these rules, simple do somthing publicy or in house, reffs determaining the outcome of games is bull. Soft soft soft steve nash runs circle around players brush against him foul, its just plain stupid. Change the rules these men get paid millions to play, do they want it to be a shooters leage I guss so the way they act, But pleaes let the players play I cant wacth this anymore, man please do somthing I love this game but it sucks. A bunch of oversized clumsbuckets that get paid too much to not play hard. Speak out and speak loud its the american way
May 10th, 2006 at 8:25 pm
Leave Mr. Cuban alone ;what happend to the First Admendment?
June 20th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
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