When the NBA had to frantically cram together their post-lockout 66-game schedule, how dare they not take into account the Dallas Mavericks’ trip to the White House. It’s always been a tradition for the team that wins the championship in any of the four major American professional sports to meet with the President, but the NBA schedulers didn’t give the Mavs a game at the Wizards this year.
Well, Mavs owner Mark Cuban isn’t one to take this lying down, he’s always been such a stickler for tradition. Maybe that was a little sarcastic, but we all know he’d never miss a chance to put himself or his team in the spotlight. So he scheduled a trip to meet with President Obama next Monday before they go to play Detroit and Boston.
Cuban had no faith in the NBA schedulers to accommodate his team, so he just went and booked the trip himself. You can tell he wasn’t pleased.
“There’s no point in calling them. It’s bull—- by the league not to schedule it,” Cuban said. “I figured I’d do it myself since the league wasn’t smart enough to figure it out. How can you be that stupid? All you’ve got to do is when you’re putting in the scheduling software, say Dallas at Washington, yes. They managed to get Dallas and Miami and all the games set on certain days.”
If this happened during a normal season, I would side with Cuban. It is tradition and the league should honor that. But they had to put together an abbreviated, compact season in a very short amount of time, they didn’t have time to take into account all the “extra-curricular” activities. I imagine putting together a schedule must be extremely tough as it is, but putting one together that’s different from normal under a lot of pressure must have been excruciating.
I don’t have a problem with Mark Cuban arranging his own trip to the White House, it is something his team is due. But he doesn’t need to criticize the NBA and make a big spectacle of it. Would it have been so hard to just go to the White House, take some pictures, have a good time and have that be it? Can Mark Cuban ever do anything quietly?
