Cuban bans bloggers from Mavs' locker room
Owner, a blogger himself, says behind-the-scenes access isn't needed
 George Frey / EPA file Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban yells at an official during a game at Utah on March 3. |
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DALLAS - Mark Cuban is the only blogger allowed in the Dallas Mavericks locker room.
At Cuban’s direction, the Mavericks have created the first blogger-free policy in the NBA, perhaps in all of pro sports. As a blogger himself, he believes people writing for blogs don’t need behind-the-scenes access to do their jobs, even if those blogs are run by newspapers.
The policy was put in place after Cuban decided to keep out a reporter for The Dallas Morning News whose primary job is writing for the newspaper’s sports blogs.
Cuban said his point is that if he allows one blogger in, then out of fairness he would have to allow all of them, even if it’s just a suburban teenager who runs a fan site. Instead, he said it’s better to keep them all out.
“My choice, my decision,” Cuban said, adding that he hasn’t discussed it with the league office. “We brought it to their attention after the fact. I think they recognized, look, it wasn’t a blogging issue, it was a space issue. If you run out of space, you’ve got to put the velvet rope somewhere. So what do you do? Do I say, ‘Oh, you’re major media, you can get in and little mavsforum and mavstalk and mavswiki, you can’t get in?’ I’m not going to do that.”
Working out on a treadmill, Cuban laughed and said his presence was OK because he’s there “as an owner, not a blogger.”
Actually, Cuban rarely writes about the Mavs or the NBA on his blog any more.
“I can’t be completely honest about basketball because of the league,” he said. “The No. 1 rule for me in blogging is being honest. ... That’s the fun part of blogging is you just get to say what’s on your mind and start a barroom conversation, which is completely different from the editorial standards that, hopefully, mainstream media has.”
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