Refs union: Cuban exerting influence over us 'via threats and intimidation'
Mark Cuban has never been shy about his gripes with NBA officials, and they're being very up front about their issues with him.
According to memorandums obtained by The Vertical's Adrian Wojnarowski, the National Basketball Referees Association has been lodging complaints to the NBA about the Dallas Mavericks owner, alleging that he's been using "threats and intimidation" with the league office to gain leverage over referees and affect how his team's games are called.
The correspondence between the NBRA and NBA "describe over a year of discord between the referees and league office, largely centered on Cuban," Wojnarowski reports.
Cuban responded to the allegations in an email to Wojnarowski. An excerpt:
To suggest I have influence is to suggest that the NBA officials can be influenced. If an official can be influenced by pressure from anyone they should not be in the NBA. I don't believe they can be influenced. As far as my influence on employment, several years ago I sent a list to the NBA of officials who had been NBA officials for more than a decade and never made the playoffs. I asked why we weren't bringing in better officials than those who weren’t able to crack the top half of officials. (I think it's 37 who get selected as playoff refs). I also asked if being an NBA official was a lifetime job and at what point do we recognize that there is someone else out there that can do a better job? I did this knowing that any terminated refs could receive substantial pensions. As far as anything else, I've been the same way since I bought the team and have no reason to change.
The email can be read in full on The Vertical's Facebook page.
Cuban's long history of referee beef includes having allegedly consulted with a former FBI agent about potentially investigating the NBA after the Mavericks' controversial 2006 Finals loss to the Miami Heat. Earlier this season, Cuban called out referee Ken Mauer for missing a blatant traveling violation, saying an example should've been made of Mauer - "Suspend him, demote him, make him ref a game in the D-League" - and hinting that there were ulterior motives at play.
"That wasn't an error in judgment," Cuban said. "This wasn't just a missed call. This was something else."
Wojnarowski obtained a recent letter sent by the NBRA's general counsel, Lee Seham, to the NBA's president of league operations, Byron Spruell, accusing the league of allowing Cuban to exert "undue influence of the league's management of its officials."
"We consider the threat to the integrity of NBA basketball presented by Mr. Cuban's misconduct to be real and growing," Seham wrote.
The league is apparently having none of it.
"We have no specific response to Lee Seham, the lawyer who represents the referees union," NBA spokesman Mike Bass told Wojnarowski. "This approach is just the latest in a series of steps Mr. Seham has taken in an attempt to undermine the necessary transparency we have brought to our game.
"We will not be deterred or distracted from continuing to focus on improving our officiating."