By the time Mark Cuban arrived in the Dallas Mavericks’ locker room, he’d already peeled off the Jerry Stackhouse jersey he had been wearing in support of his suspended forward.
The symbolism was fitting: Stackhouse’s hard foul in Game 4 of the NBA Finals was old news. The way Game 5 finished, Cuban had a whole new fight on his hands.
When time ran out, Cuban ran onto the court to vent at official Joe DeRosa, then stared down and screamed toward Commissioner David Stern and a group of league officials, from the court, then the stands. Cuban was still boiling about a half-hour later during a testy interview with reporters.
He wrote a blog entry Monday explaining why he used profanity during a response to a question about whether this was the worst loss he’d endured. Here’s an excerpt of what he wrote:
“When I was a kid, one of my favorite comedy routines was George Carlin’s `Seven Dirty Words.’ . . . I like to curse because I enjoy how it gets everyone in an uproar. . . . I won’t curse in an environment where I have accepted an invitation or am a guest of someone else. I will play by their rules.
“But if you come on my home turf and want something from me. It’s my rules.
“Last night in the locker room after we lost in overtime to the Heat, I was asked by reporters to answer some questions. I told them I would if they asked good questions and didn’t ask the same cliched questions they had asked after other games. It was interesting how quiet everyone got.
“Then someone asked, `Is this your worst loss ever?’ What the [expletive] kind of question is that? Is this for a VH1 special? `Worst Losses Ever ?’ If it was, then maybe it was a decent question. Otherwise, how do you answer that question? . . .
The reality is that it would be a waste of both of our time if I gave him the `this was a tough one’ answer, and a waste of my time to really think about it. Particularly given there were 10 other reporters wanting to ask questions and we had a bus to catch.
“So I told the reporter to `ask me a real [expletive] question.’
“Apparently some folks have taken exception to me cursing in my response. Well, in this case, the reporter was using my time, we were in a locker room and I was trying to provide a response that had no value to me, but could only help him. If he doesn’t think enough of either of our time to invest the brainpower and minutes it takes to come up with something different than has been asked a thousand times.
“[Expletive] ’em.”
