Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, believes that picking the right coach is the hardest part of owning a team in the league, and knows that he has been lucky to have had only three coaches in his 15 years of ownership, the Dallas Morning News said on December 16.
Both Cuban and Dallas coach Rick Carlisle were a bit surprised when the owner of the Sacramento Kings fired coach Mike Malone despite that team’s winning record in games in which star DeMarcus Cousins has played, the report said.
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Cuban said there are different kinds of coaches for different kinds of jobs, including jobs that may inherently not be long-term fits. “What do you expect [from coaches], and are they living up to it?” Cuban said. “Is it wins and losses or player development?
“How many coaches do you know that they knew the team was going to be down [before taking the job]? We’ve all heard about coaches who were brought in and were there to take the beating until they turn things around. You hear about that all the time. I haven’t been in that position, fortunately. And it takes one type of coach rather than another, ” the report said.
Meanwhile, the New York Daily News said on December 17 that Cuban is a progressive thinker and one of the NBA’s best owners, while general manager Donnie Nelson is as good as they come and Rick Carlisle is clearly a top head coach. Championship clubs are always strong in those three areas, especially at the ownership level, the Daily News said.
Cuban was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in a Jewish, working-class family. His last name was shortened from Chaberinsky when his Russian grandparents immigrated to the United States.
The National Basketball Association only has a few Jewish players but nearly half the principal owners of the teams are Jewish, as are the league’s current commissioner Adam Silver and his predecessor David Stern. No other major pro league in the United States has such a high proportion of Jewish owners, according to a report in the Jewish Daily Forward on May 6.
