Ask an NBA referee if Mark Cuban is a complainer and the answer will likely be a belly laugh. The Dallas Mavericks owner, after all, is a notorious courtside leather-lung. … Hey, he's a fan, too, and fans can be that way.
But you might think that someone with Cuban's fame, money and track record in business would find a way to acquire some thicker skin so that he doesn't come off looking so petty, especially when musing on his popular blog. Hasn't happened yet, witness yesterday's post headlined: "Is this ethical for a blogger/journalist?"
In a nutshell, Cuban's miffed because he submitted to an interview with GQ, a magazine that he says he enjoys and respects. However, after publication of that article -- which again, Cuban liked - the writer, Will Leitch, made passing reference to the interview in a blog post on Valleywag, a blog Cuban apparently neither enjoys nor respects. (Cuban didn't provide the names of the parties involved, curiously, even though readers took all of about two minutes to fill in the blanks.)
Try to follow the bouncing ball as Cuban makes his case, with names provided by me:
Then yesterday, the person who interviewed me (Leitch), who is also a blogger, decided to blog about our interview. The blog ran on a site that he is associated with (Valleywag), but is not affiliated at all with the magazine the interview was for (GQ). He never asked, nor told me that our interview would be blogged about. While I respect the magazine (GQ), I am not a fan of the site he works for (Deadspin), or of its affiliated site that the blog ran on (Valleywag). A point I let him know. I would not have done the interview had I known he would blog about it for this site.
Cuban then pleads for his readers to call a foul on the unnamed writer, and a good deal of those posting comments indulge the wounded billionaire.
They're all as wrong as Cuban. Leitch did nothing unethical, or even out of the ordinary. He said he was writing an interview for GQ, he wrote an interview for GQ, and anything beyond that is none of Cuban's business.
If you want to read Leitch's reply to Cuban, you'll find it here.
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