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Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is good for the NBA because he’s so unfiltered. You need someone that unorthodox to balance a room full of Brooks Brother’s suits at the owners meetings.
So I wasn’t surprised Cuban would tell ESPN of the Jeremy Lin phenomenon: “If it was happening in Charlotte, no one would know.’’
He’s wrong. The Harvard-educated, twice-cut, Asian-American Lin would be a national story the past two weeks whether he played in Sacramento, Portland or -- yes, even Charlotte. But, as Cuban was trying to say, it’s that much bigger because of the juice excelling in New York represents.
“New York is still kind of the mecca of the media for basketball,’’ Cuban added.
Of course it is, and of course the five newspapers that cover the Knicks rev up “Linsanity’’ daily. But Cuban disregards that Oklahoma City and Kevin Durant are on late-night television as much as David Letterman. He also disregards that if point guard Lin was putting up these numbers in Charlotte, the Bobcats would not be that team losing 16 straight.
No one thought Charlotte was an NBA outpost when the Hornets were annually setting home attendance records. Ancient history? Perhaps, but there’s nothing wrong with this basketball market that the right product wouldn’t fix.
