How did Mavericks’ Cuban not know?
Sexual misconduct was happening in his offices
Mark Cuban should have known better.
The Dallas Mavericks owner should have known that his former CEO, Terdema Ussery, had a history of inappropriate workplace behavior dating to
1998, transgressions that led to a new sexual harassment policy and that was reported on by The Dallas Morning
News two years before Cuban bought the team.
He must have known about some of the allegations reported in the Sports
Illustrated story published Tuesday, all those years of women complaining about Ussery’s advances to the team’s human resources head, Buddy Pittman, and seeing nothing done as a result.
Along the way, Ussery was not only considered wildly successful as a top Mavericks executive but spent a decade as the CEO of Cuban’s television channel, HDNet. He went unchecked until the end of his Mavericks tenure, resigning in 2015 in order to pursue an opportunity with Under Armour, only to resign two months later amid complaints from a co-worker about his alleged sexual misconduct inside an elevator, according to the SI report.
Cuban knew that Mavs.com writer Earl Sneed had a history of domestic violence.
The first incident came during the
2010-11 season, when his girlfriend, according to SI, suffered a broken right wrist and bruises on her arms and chest and Sneed was later arrested at the team’s practice facility. (He later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge.)
The second alleged incident, according to SI, was when he was accused of assault in 2014 by a co-worker who was also his live-in girlfriend at the time. He knew that Sneed, per his own statement, had signed a contract four years ago prohibiting him from
having one-on-one contact or fraternizing with female co-workers while attending counseling along the way. Yet there was Sneed over the weekend, covering All-Star weekend as a member of the media in Los Angeles.
Cuban knew that these were changed times, too, that the Me Too movement that has swept the nation means the workplace bar must be raised. It took the unflattering glare of the media spotlight to force any real action — Pittman and Sneed have been fired in the wake of the SI report — and that’s the sad reality of it all. Maybe one day the titans of industry will demand a healthier work environment simply because it’s right.
Now we wait to see what the independent investigation conducted by the team yields. The Mavericks hired attorneys Evan Krutoy and Anne Milgram to lead the investigation, and the NBA will be closely monitoring it.
We learned through the Clippers’ Donald Sterling saga in 2014 that Commissioner Adam Silver has a zero-tolerance view when it comes to racism, and it’s fair to now wonder whether that same sort of standard will apply to this issue. Cuban has been contrite, but the question of what he knew and what he didn’t know will be front and center. Enter the legal team.
According to a Mavericks release, Krutoy served as a prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office for more than 20 years and as acting deputy bureau chief of the sex crimes unit. He started his own firm later, per the release, and has worked on numerous sexual misconduct allegations at colleges and universities throughout the country and has also conducted a number of internal sexual assault and domestic violence investigations for companies including professional sports organizations.
Milgram is a professor of practice and distinguished scholar in residence at New York University School of Law, serving as New Jersey’s Attorney General from 2007 to 2010 and as New Jersey’s chief law enforcement officer thereafter.
Silence has a scary way of serving as a stepladder for abusers of power, and that appears to have been the case for Ussery.
He was a celebrated member of the Mavericks brain trust, and came close to being a power broker of a whole different kind in NBA circles. In late July 2014, Ussery stood in front of 117 NBA players inside an Aria hotel conference room in Las Vegas and spent nearly an hour making the case for why he should serve as the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association.
He was one of three finalists for the position who put on a presentation that day, but the vote would ultimately go the way of then-trial lawyer Michele Roberts by a large margin. The players took the right action that day. If only Cuban had done the same.