By now you’ve probably seen the Sports Illustrated story that alleges all sorts of misconduct inside the Dallas Mavericks organization.

It’s titled, “Exclusive: Inside the Corrosive Workplace Culture of the Dallas Mavericks,” and highlights former President and CEO Terdema Ussery as just one of many wrongdoers:

Ussery, who left the Mavericks in 2015, was hardly alone. Interviews with more than a dozen former and current Mavericks employees in different departments, conducted during a months-long SPORTS ILLUSTRATED investigation, paint a picture of a corporate culture rife with misogyny and predatory sexual behavior: alleged public fondling by the team president; outright domestic assault by a high-profile member of the Mavs.com staff; unsupportive or even intimidating responses from superiors who heard complaints of inappropriate behavior from their employees; even an employee who openly watched pornography at his desk. Most sources did not want their names used for a variety of reasons including fear of retaliation and ostracization and limits imposed by agreements they signed with the team.

….

It seems the investigation also hardly curtailed Ussery’s inappropriate office behavior. Two women claimed to SI that Ussery harassed them for years. These incidents ranged from inappropriate remarks to requests for sex to touching women’s calves and thighs during meetings. One of the women says she made (HR Director Buddy) Pittman aware—”countless times… I ‘leaned in’ so much I fell over”—of Ussery’s behavior; the other chose not to, frustrated by what she deemed to be Pittman’s unhelpful response to an unrelated complaint she had raised. “I felt trapped, frozen, scared,” says one of the women. “This was the CEO of the organization….and it was clear he wasn’t going to get fired.”

The issues reportedly were specific to the office environment and not the locker room:

While sources referred to the Mavericks office as a “locker room culture,” the team’s actual locker room was a refuge. Says one female former senior staffer: “I dealt with players all the time. I had hundreds of interactions with players and never once had an issue…they always knew how to treat people. Then I’d go to the office and it was this zoo, this complete shitshow. My anxiety would go down dealing with players; it would go up when I got to my desk.

Anyway, the story is obviously worth a read.

Cuban himself, the Mavericks’ owner, is quoted in the article in response to the allegations:

Reached by SI on Monday, Cuban expressed embarrassment and horror at the accusations—but insisted he had no knowledge of the corrosive culture in his offices. “This is all new to me,” he said. “The only awareness I have is because I heard you guys were looking into some things….  Based off of what I’ve read here, we just fired our HR person. I don’t have any tolerance for what I’ve read.”

Cuban continued in an emotional response: “It’s wrong. It’s abhorrent. It’s not a situation we condone. I can’t tell you how many times, particularly since all this [#MeToo] stuff has been coming out recently I asked our HR director, ‘Do we have a problem? Do we have any issues I have to be aware of?’ And the answer was no.”

The team released a statement acknowledging the report and explaining that a thorough investigation would take place:

Woof.

Anyway, Cuban was in the news earlier this week as well, for comments he made on Dr. J’s podcast where he admitted to his players that it might be better for them to lose games to finish the season.

“I’m probably not supposed to say this, but, like, I just had dinner with a bunch of our guys the other night and here we are, you know, we weren’t competing for the playoffs I was like, ‘Look, losing is our best option… Adam [Silver] would hate hearing that, but I at least sat down and I explained it to them. And I explained what our plans were going to be this summer, that we’re not going to tank again, this was, like, a year-and-a-half tanking and that was too brutal for me. But being transparent, I think that’s the key to being kind of a player’s owner and having stability.”

You can listen to the pod here:
The Mavs are 18-40 with the NBA’s third-worst winning percentage. They’ve lost 9 of 11.