Man Vs. Momma

Leave it to Mark Cuban to go after a mother during this weekend. The Dallas Mavericks owner was angry after a controversial ending to the Mavs game 3 loss against the Denver Nuggets and he popped off. Again. Shocker.

Here is the ending to the game if you didn't see the highlights:



The argument is that a Dallas player intentionally fouled Carmelo Anthony before he got the shot off to ensure there would be no three pointer. Surprise! A basketball game has a controversial ending because of a call/non-call! Come experience the NBA playoffs where star players play by a different set of rules and refs change criteria depending on circumstance! But this is nothing new, so it shouldn't surprise anyone, especially the owner of a basketball team.

But it's Mark Cuban and he gets mad anytime something goes wrong. In fact, he already had an argument with a ref earlier this season when Dallas was playing Denver:


Cuban argues so often that his fits must simply bombinate around a refs ears. Maybe that's why Cuban decided to go after Kenyon Martin's mom.

In defense of Cuban, the Nuggets do play a thuggish style of hard-nosed basketball and Kenyon Martin is the leader of the pack. He was a thug in college playing for Bob Huggins' bully-laden Cincinnati teams. In the NBA, he's a rough-housing player who would have fit right into those Bad Boy Detroit Pistons teams. Those kinds of players get your blood boiling if you're an opposing fan.

But you aren't going to win if you call a woman's son a thug. Especially not on Mothers Day weekend. You just can't do it and expect the sympathy vote even if it's true and even if the mom is a little bonkers herself. No one will ever confuse Lydia Moore with June Cleaver and I wouldn't want to have her over for a dinner party, but she's a mom. Don't insult a mom's kid in front of her face. You won't win that.

I know I get pissed when my teams lose and I make up excuses in my head as though some cosmic energy conspired to ruin my team' s date with championship destiny. But I don't have video cameras in my face at all times. Cuban does and he's become the boy who cried foul amongst NBA owners. Unlike E.F. Hutton, when Cuban speaks, no one listens.

But he's a damn fine dancer.

Crazy Cuban Would Have Made it Fun

The Cubs are being sold to some billionaire family of Cubs fans headed by Tom Ricketts. No word if they made their money by discovering a cure for the disease that could now be named after them. Apparently one of the family members even met his wife at a Cubs game. Awwww.

You can bet baseball will try to sell that story to every fan in a P.R. attempt entitled "See, our blackened ash heart still beats occasionally." The problem is, the Cubs already had a billionaire baseball fan who was interested in the team. And the inflexible baseball owners refused to call Mark Cuban out from the bullpen. In fact, I'm pretty sure they cut the phone line, so Cuban couldn't even get a call from the dugout. And the Cubs fans will probably lose out yet again.

As a Dallas Maverick fan, I can tell you this with certainty: Mark Cuban is 4-alarm crazy nuts.

He's not in the Scarface realm of crazy Cubans, but he's definitely in desperate need of attention at all times. And he's exactly what baseball could have used for a team like the Chicago Cubs.

Even though his act has worn thin in Dallas, think how much media attention the Mavs have gotten because of their owner. For better or worse, the Mavs became an NBA storyline.

Then you have the Cubs, a baseball team whose fans consider themselves the most damned in sports despite a network dedicated to the team and enough merchandise to make a blip on the Yankee radar.

It was a perfect marriage: Cuban gets tons of the media attention he so desperately craves since he clearly wasn't shown enough love as a child, and the Cubs fans would get an owner that wanted to win as desperately as they supposedly do. They could even make up catchy nicknames for the team and new owner since the names are so similar.

But the baseball owners stepped up and proved yet again that they are scared to death of change and can't handle anyone who might actually think differently. It's like a giant pro-sports boarding school. Dead Owners Society.

He drives me bonkers sometimes, but before Cuban arrived to Reunion Arena, the Mavs were a joke. One of the worst franchises in all of sports who were lucky to make the local news let alone any kind of national sports story.

Then comes this giant Maverick fan who happened to make a gazillion dollars in the dot com boom. He purchased the franchise from joke owner Ross Perot Jr. who was holding the team hostage for a real estate deal. He overpaid for a crap team. That's how much he wanted it.

Then he added video games and televisions to every locker. Suddenly, players were digging Dallas. Cuban copied the trick that old San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo used: treat players well and they will want to play well for you.

You know the rest, the Mavs went from the toilet to the top and were a Dwyane Wade from the NBA Championship. Not bad for a team without a sure-fire superstar draft pick leading them. Along the way Cuban was out on the floor yelling at refs and serving soft ice cream at a Dairy Queen. It was too much sometimes, but a Mavs game was never boring.

The Cubs have infinite more exposure than those Mavs did. They would be the premiere team to see in the National League with Cuban running the show. And Cuban would be right there in the front row screaming at umpires and doing somersaults on top of the dugout. You might love him, you might hate him, but he would make the Cubs relevant.

I know nothing about Mr. Ricketts and his family, but I can guarantee you that he doesn't have a Mark Cuban personality or he wouldn't have been allowed to buy the team. If he helps the Cubs reach the Fall Classic, all will be wonderful. If he doesn't, he will just be another boring owner who couldn't help the Cubs.

At least Cuban would have gone down in a blaze of crazy.