If you own a small part of the Dallas Mavericks, a team that has won over at least 50 games for 11 straight years and ended up winning a title in 2011, it's probably best not to term the team's outspoken owner "reckless" in a lawsuit that can be thrown back in your face.Minority partners in the Mavericks, the Hillwood Investment Properties, had sued Mark Cuban, alleging that he spent too much money on the team and should have instead paid out to the partners. These were the minority owners who owned the Mavericks before Cuban when the team was one of the worst in the league.
And what did Cuban do? Well, he tried to end the lawsuit against him by using a photo of the team .
Read:
(Link via SB Jimmy Traina.)
Cuban can be annoying, though we wouldn't term him "reckless." He performs on reality TV shows. He enjoys wearing T-shirts that wouldn't look out of place on online scribes that ask LeBron James(notes) about "shrinking" in the fourth quarter, after James had spent an entire fourth quarter initiating a potent offense and dominating on defense. Cuban is full of conspiracies, frailties, and he hardly respects what people like me do for a living.
He's also a fantastic team owner. He lets the people he's hired do the job he's hired them to do, without attempting to do that job for them. And though he probably (read: definitely) knows the on/off court per-possession stats of particular players more than any other owner, and though he had a strong hand in his team's first wave of trades and signings after taking over as Mavericks owner in 2000, Cuban has by and large meddled less than most other owners in his decade-plus of running the team. And earlier this month, his team medal'd, winning its first NBA championship.
Which is what makes a Mavericks' minority owner's lawsuit against a "reckless" Cuban so ill-timed. Which is also why Cuban took great joy in handing in a response to the minority owner Wednesday in a Dallas court. This isn't a humblebrag, my friends. This is an owner that wants you and his minority shareholder and the court to know exactly what the Dallas Mavericks did a week and a half ago.
Sorry, the "World Champion Dallas Mavericks."
There's little beyond the pictures I posted to the document, though you can (and should) read the rest here.
Has there ever been a legal case decided by a judge yelling "SCOREBOARD" while he or she slams their gavel?
UPDATE: Upon further surfing, this particular defendant noticed that Deadspin beat me to the "scoreboard" joke first. My objection remains. Also, bad courtroom jokes.
