Blogger's Rights

So Mark Cuban is out 200 large for walking onto the court during a playoff game and posting "inflammatory" comments about NBA officiating on his blog.

On the first offense: yeah, okay. Anyone who has ever attended an NBA game in person has heard the obligatory warning from the public address announcer. Something along the lines of "fans entering the court during play will be ejected and subject to arrest." In this case, Cuban's status as a team owner, as opposed to a ticket-buying fan at the AT&T Center, kept him out of the pokey, but lightened his wallet considerably.

Nobody walks onto the court during an NBA game, no matter what their job title, no matter the size of their portfolio. I get it.

On the second offense: did you read what Cuban wrote? Never mind the accuracy of his argument. I'll even ignore the questionable grammar. How can the NBA get away with this?

Nowhere on Cuban's blog does the NBA logo appear. There's a link to the Mavericks' official site, but that's the extent of the professional basketball content. In fact, Cuban spends much of his blog space discussing the latest breakthroughs in technology, pimping his own investment vehicles, and singing the praises of Dirk Nowitzki. He writes whatever comes to mind, and at the bottom of every entry, there's a line of text that reads "All contents copyright (c) 2006, Mark Cuban." Not the Mavs, not the NBA. Mark Cuban. One guy. One guy who happens to own the Dallas Mavericks, but one guy nonetheless.

Again, I ask: how can the NBA justify fining him for something he wrote on his own blog, one that has absolutely no visible connection to his NBA franchise?

I'm no attorney, but if I were Cuban - with all the money in the world and enough free time to be a pain in the ass if I so desired - I would be hiring one right now. If I were Cuban, I'd be threatening one honking lawsuit. Maybe I'm just hoping he does, because the precedent set by this NBA fine worries me.

A couple of things to understand about what it means to be an NBA team owner: you own nothing tangible. What you own is the right to field a team in the league. Your players have contracts not with you, but with the NBA itself. You merely own their "rights." You have to pay them, but technically, they work for the league. It's similar in many ways to any other "franchise" operation, be it McDonald's, Jiffy Lube, or Starbucks: as an owner-operator, you are responsible for the daily expenses of your local outlet - but you have to play by the rules laid out at corporate headquarters, or risk losing your right to profit from the company's powerful brand.

Without the benefit of a law school education, that's my guess as to how the NBA can justify punishing Cuban for what he wrote on his blog. Even though the site has no connection to the league or the NBA-granted "Mavericks" franchise, it still has Cuban's name on it, and he's the franchise's rights-holder. Thus, he's liable. Again, I lack the course work to know this for a fact, but it sounds awfully tenuous. The kind of thing one could fight, if only to make a point.

Frankly, if Bruce Bowen doesn't harass Dirk Nowitzki into an 8-for-20 in Game 1, we never hear a peep from Cuban, but he makes some valid observations. Yes, politics play a role in the NBA's assignment of officials to certain games. The league doesn't make those choices completely at random - please welcome Dick Bavetta, the Human Momentum Killer - and those officials do miss calls. Points granted.

But $200K? For walking onto the floor and publicizing the fact that NBA referee playoff assignments are based not on merit, but on seniority? Has anyone brought up the fact that NFL referees are graded via videotape on a weekly basis, and their future assignments hinge on past performance - i.e., on merit? Was Cuban that far off?

He wasn't. What he was, was Mark Cuban, the dot-com renegade who has been a spectacularly entertaining (Rod) thorn in the NBA's side over the last few years, to the tune of over $1 million dollars in fines in his first two years of Maverick ownership alone. He may be blunt, but he's telling it as he thinks it is. A personal blog, I should think, is a perfect outlet for such pontification. Better there than on the front page of the Dallas Morning News, right?

With this fine, the NBA has accomplished two goals: one, they've unwittingly legitimized the blogosphere in major professional sports. If we were all so irrelevant, as august publications like Sports Illustrated desperately want to believe, the league would have ignored Cuban's post. But they didn't.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. We won't let you down.

Second, they've thrown the fear of God into anyone with an "official" connection to the league from ever mouthing off in similar fashion, which was precisely their intent. Smart business from an entity that values its public image above all else, but worrisome for the blogging masses.

Ever see the movie "Men In Black?" In the climactic scene, Agent K hops up and down in front of the menacing alien monster, desperately trying to gain its attention by hollering, "You're nothing but a smear on the Sports page to me, you slimy, ugly, intestinal parasite! Eat me! EAT ME!"

And the bug does. Game over, right? Wrong. Once inside the gullet of the bug, K retrieves his gun and blows the thing's head off.

Mark Cuban jumped up and down and hollered, and was swept into the belly of the beast. Game over, right?

Stay tuned.