Mavs Cuban: NBA and Sports 'Vital to Bringing Us Back Together'
DALLAS - It was a week ago when circumstances - the COVID-19 issue in the NBA and beyond - pushed Mark Cuban into the forefront, as his Dallas Mavericks just happened to be performing on national TV in what would be the league's final game before its hiatus. Cuban took a leadership position then, expressing logical action with a calm demeanor.
And now? The Mavs owner is in the spotlight again - this time with an even more voluntary push to how the Mavs, the NBA and sports should handle the coronavirus.
“Hopefully when the NBA, the NHL, Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball, football, all start to really happen again, we’ll all get excited about our teams and as communities we’ll come together,” Cuban said as a guest on CNBC's "Squawk Box.'' (ht NBA.com.) "Sports will be a vital mechanism for bringing people back together when this happens.''
Cuban was also careful to add that "basketball is the last thing on my mind right now.'' But the use of basketball as a tool for entertainment while so many of us are self-quarantined (or worse off than that)? And the use of sports as a tool for recovery once we get through the crisis?
The Mavericks owner once again hits the right notes, as he did when he immediately set up a method for AAC workers to get paid despite the absence of games and then soon after committed to donate more than $100,000 to area nonprofits.
He said the Mavericks are trying "to do as much as we can to keep people energized and engaged while everybody’s stuck at home.” And as an entertainment outlet, that's smart, and relatively easy. Social media allows the Mavs to do that.
But there is a bigger picture. And Cuban sees it.
"We all use sports as a way to celebrate, a way to get excited, a way to come together," Cuban said. "Nobody throws a parade when Apple or Google will have the most amazing quarter they’ve ever had, but when a team wins a championship, they throw a parade.
“And so hopefully we’ll have the (2020 Tokyo) Olympics, and we’ll be able to come together as a country around our team, the U.S. Olympics team, and that’ll be great for us. We’ll all get out of the house, we’ll all celebrate together.”
