The thing to like most about Game 5 between Dallas and Denver is that Mavericks owner Mark Cuban won’t be at it. If nothing else, that improves the chances they’ll play basketball instead of celebrity smackdown.

Instead of Denver, Cuban plans to be in Las Vegas tonight, alongside Barry Manilow no less, honoring a prior commitment to pick up a “Clio” award for his contributions to the digital media industry. The announcement was made in March, nearly a month before the playoffs began, but the timing couldn’t have worked out better.
Nobody in the NBA needs a night off right now more than Cuban.
(And talk about coincidence: The third Clio honoree is Matthew Weiner, creator of a great TV series about the ad business called “Mad Men” — which would have been a perfect title for the Mavs-Nuggets series, too. Except that now, a few of the women involved are hopping mad as well).
The series officially spiraled out of control in the closing seconds of Game 3, when the refereeing crew twice ignored efforts by Dallas’ Antoine Wright to intentionally foul Denver’s Carmelo Anthony.
A suspicious man, knowing Cuban’s past battles with officials, might suggest the refs deliberately swallowed their whistles. But either way, Anthony wound up wriggling free for a game-winning 3-pointer and some two hours later, the league wound up acknowledging in a statement the refs had indeed blown the call.
By then, words had already been exchanged between players from both teams and Cuban had pitched a fit behind the scorer’s table. On his way off the court, he stopped and yelled at Kenyon Martin’s mother, Lydia Moore — something, apparently, about her son being a thug — and things have only gone downhill from there.
Before Game 4, Martin menacingly suggested he might take matters into his own hands.
“I’m not going to do the whole media thing, back and forth. That’s his thing,” Martin said. “I’m more of a face-to-face type of dude.”
By the end of that game, a win that left Dallas still trailing 3 games to 1, Cuban and the Nuggets’ forward were face to face. No word yet on exactly what was said, but it could have had something to do with the seating arrangements at the American Airlines center.
Martin’s girlfriend, a rap star named Trina, complained she was insulted repeatedly, and Anthony’s girlfriend, MTV veejay LaLa Vazquez, was removed from her seat by security guards for her safety. Even Martin’s mother required extra protection — though according to some accounts, all three women gave at least as good as they got.
Then something really strange happened.
Cuban apologized. Sort of.
“When tempers and such start impacting the fan experience both in Dallas and Denver, and it requires special security, that’s not what I want for Mavs or Nuggets fans. No one takes more abuse and gets more threats on the road than I do. So I know exactly how it feels,” Cuban wrote on his blog. “I’ve also had my family and friends spit on at games in this series. So I know how unpleasant that is as well. It’s a dirty secret that all arenas need to do a better job of protection for visiting team fans, particularly during the playoffs.”
Cuban went on to apologize to Martin, his mother, any other Nuggets family members and friends who “didn’t feel as comfortable as they should.” He also offered them use of a suite “when the series comes back to Dallas.”
Nowhere in the entry, however, did Cuban mention his own responsibility in all the hijinks.
Martin hasn’t reacted publicly to the apology, but his teammates waved it off as inadequate.
“You’re the owner of a team,” Nuggets guard Chancy Billups reminded Cuban. “You’re held at a different standard as far as professionalism. Yeah, you can root for your team, but that’s just not right. That’s not acceptable.”
Only an optimist would suggest Cuban has learned a lesson this time, since he’s paid out more in fines in the past for violating league standards than some people make in a lifetime. Behaving like that is the kind of willful ignorance a billionaire can afford forever, but something a shrewd, maturing owner ought to realize is costing his franchise way more trouble than it’s worth.
Former coach Don Nelson tried to pass that message along before he was let go, and Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki said it out loud not long after the infamous Game 5 in the 2006 finals against Miami, when Heat star Dwyane Wade went to the free throw line 25 times. If Cuban’s apology is any indication, he might finally be getting the point.
“So if we can put this behind us,” he wrote near the end of his apology, “I will make sure when the series comes back to Dallas, your family and friends, and that of your teammates are very comfortable at our Arena.”
The Nuggets, though, don’t plan to take Cuban up on his offer of hospitality.
“We don’t plan,” Billups explained, “on going back to Dallas.”