Half of the punishment was for going on the court Sunday to complain during the Mavericks' 87-85 loss to the San Antonio Spurs in Game 1 of their second-round series. The rest was for some critical comments made in a blog entry he posted Sunday under the title, "How to improve NBA Playoff Officiating."
While Cuban may have been out-of-line going on the court during a game, he would seem to be well within his constitutional rights when writing about how he thought officiating could be improved on his blog. At any rate, the fines totalling $200,000, appearing to be highly excessive, were obviously intended to discourage Cuban from future criticism of the NBA.
That the NBA under the direction of David Stern is a sovereign force within itself is describe fully by Mickey Charles in See no evil, hear no evil and certainly speak no evil:
Apparently, freedom of speech and the First Amendment applies to the rest of the civilized world but certainly not to professional basketball. Their plenipotent prince, David Stern, has limitless power over his universe and his sovereignty does not permit anything but denial of the facts. To think differently or dissent is an offensive crime, foul if you will, that interferes with reality and the NBA has a low tolerance level for anything that interferes with their capacity to rule with unlimited power in an incontestable framework of authoritativeness
You can certainly criticize the President of this nation but not the NBA. You can call to task your employer and critique the very product for which you are responsible but you cannot find fault with the officiating in the NBA. You can watch ineptitude and incompetency unfold before you and on the big screen that hangs above the arena floor but you cannot point it out if you are a coach in the NBA. You might even be able to scream at a referee during a game and question his capabilities in the heat of the action but, in professional basketball, you cannot elaborate upon that in public or at a press conference
Where are the liberal adherents of individual rights and the ACLU on what would appear to be an obvious infraction of the freedom of speech clause of the 1st amendment? Well, the liberals are probably too occupied with Bush bashing to give any heed to this question and as for the ACLU, their agenda appears to be full with anti-Christian and pro-Muslim lawsuits.
For one brief moment in 2002, a principle liberal spokesmen of that time , Ralph Nader, took some action against the NBA speech suppression when he wrote a letter to the NBA which stated in part that:
No government in our country can lawfully stifle free speech and fine those who exercise it; the NBA under present circumstances can both stifle and fine players and coaches who speak up. There is no guarantee that this tyrannical status quo will remain stable over time, should you refuse to bend to reason and the reality of what occurred. A review that satisfies the fans' sense of fairness and deters future recurrences would be a salutary contribution to the public trust that the NBA badly needs.
Unfortunately, Nader does not appear to have gone beyond that statement to pursue a legal challenge of the NBA speech suppression policy. Today, that apathy seems to be shared by everyone, sports enthusiasts or not.