Apologies if this has been posted before. I hate Cuban with a passion and I haven't been to a Spurs game in years (live on the east coast), but I really hope he is wrong and we are not that coarse and profane. His wife was heckled? Someone please tell me he is full of shit.
Spurs-Mavs notebook: Cuban ranks S.A.'s faithful at bottom
Web Posted: 05/21/2006 12:00 AM CDT
Johnny Ludden
Express-News Staff Writer
Dallas owner Mark Cuban, who has accomplished his goal of inflaming the rivalry between the Spurs and Mavericks, called San Antonio fans the NBA's "rudest" in his Web blog Saturday.
"Some cities are great and heckle with style and humor," Cuban wrote on blogmaverick.com. "Then there are cities with zero sense of humor. ... The worst? San Antonio.
"There isn't even a close (second). The bleacher bums have filtered down to the lower bowl, and they are living up to their past."
Cuban said his pregnant wife was "verbally abused" at the AT&T Center last week.
"It didn't represent the city or Spurs fans," he wrote. "But that doesn't change the fact that they are the rudest and curse the most."
Cuban expects to hear more of the same when he returns to the AT&T Center on Monday for Game 7. He said the heckling doesn't bother him. His recent comments describing the city's River Walk as an "ugly-ass, muddy-watered thing" and calling Tim Duncan a "crybaby," he said, were intended to improve the rivalry between the two teams and draw national interest.
"The River Walk river is nasty," Cuban wrote Saturday. "I know it. Everyone who lives in San Antonio knows it. I said it. I just know that on crowded nights, everyone who walks that thing is afraid to death that some drunk is going to stumble by and knock them into the water. It's that nasty.
"I mean come on folks. They can clean up Lake Erie, but not the River Walk?"
"Fighting words, right?" Cuban continued. "Of course not. It's meaningless. Unless it comes from a rival."
Cuban answers Pop: Even though Cuban doesn't think much of the River Walk, that doesn't mean he isn't willing to pay it another visit.
After Cuban's comments on a radio show Thursday, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich suggested the Mavericks owner come back to San Antonio for a margarita so "he could look at life a little more maturely."
Responding to an e-mail sent Saturday, Cuban said he's open to the idea.
"Tell Pop I will take him up on the margarita this summer if he wants," Cuban wrote. "I would love to get his ideas about marketing the NBA and making the Spurs and Mavs a series that no one in America can live without watching. Dick's Last Resort is my spot on the River Walk, and I'm happy to let him buy!"
Centers without attention: Popovich said he hasn't played Nazr Mohammed and Rasho Nesterovic because of the matchup problems Dallas presents. And, to a lesser degree, because neither center contributed much in the limited time he was on the floor in the series' first 1 1/2 games.
"When they have gotten time, it hasn't been enough for them to really produce," Popovich said. "This particular series, it's difficult for big guys to guard Dallas' perimeter. It's tough to put a big guy on Dirk (Nowitzki).
"The way the rules are, offense really has an advantage, obviously. He has a huge advantage when big guys try to stay with him, so I can't afford to get somebody like Tim Duncan in foul trouble, and the other big guys don't have a shot with that."
Man bites dog: In a series characterized by complaints about official decisions, referee and otherwise, Cuban actually praised the job the referees did in Game 6 on Friday.
That did not mean he did not suggest to the NBA that it look at an offensive tactic employed by Duncan that Cuban claims gives him an illegal advantage.
"The officials did a good job (Friday)," Cuban wrote in an e-mail. "The only thing we are having them look at is the fact Tim Duncan slaps away the hand of his defender in the post, and that's supposed to be an automatic foul. When he does it, I think he scores or gets fouled like 70 percent of the time; and when he doesn't, it's like 30 percent of the time.
"It's a brilliant move on his part, seriously. (The) defender is leaning against him and just the quick slap of the hand away or into the body of the defender has the defender lean forward with his chest, and Duncan is so quick, he is already there to get the contact before the defender can respond and get the foul, or to get ahead of him and get space for a better shot. It's impressive.
"If the league agrees it's a foul, great. If not. Not. Either way, we go to battle Monday night, ready to go."
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Staff writers Mike Finger and Mike Monroe contributed to this report.
