I dont know if he will make the cut, but I have to say I LOVE people who do something. Chris McKeever, I tip my hat to you. Most people come up with creative ways to ask, you came up with creative action that leveraged pretty much everything Ihave an interest in.

The casting process for The Benefactor show has a specific process, so I cant do anything to give you an edge, but I can give you props. Good job Chris.

http://www.chrismckeever.com/benefactor/

and yes, that email was from me and my sidekick. And no, I dont have ADD. I was tested. I think. What were we talking about ?

m

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Got a chance to attend my first Benefactor auditions in Atlanta. What a frickin’ blast. We had people of all shapes, sizes, colors, andlooks represented. We had a guy that I swear was the reincarnation of Kramer from Seinfeld, with the addition of some colorful tattoos and the obvious fact that he probably hadn’t slept for days, and it wasn’t insomnia that kept him up… We had a famous actress send in an audition tape which was incredible.She is a favorite of mine, who is and will always bepart of one of my all time favorite movie scenes. We had scam artists come in and tell some of the most bizarre stories. Most of all we had people just having fun.

It’s going to be hard to pick from all the tapes and auditions, but it’s going to be fun trying. I can’t wait till this weekend when we hit Dallas and Vegas. Both should be a zoo. If you want to apply, get there early. We have had people lineup from the night before to get in first. I suspect that’s the way it will be at Eddie Dean’s in Dallas, and at the Palms in Vegas, they probably will just party all night and go the audition. From the thousands and thousands of applicants, getting to 16 is going to be an adventure. Still, even with that number, your chances of winning 1mm dollars from me, 1 in 10k lets say, are still a hell of a lot better than buying a lottery ticket!

The game itself is really shaping up as well. This is looking to be so much fun that they have convinced me to let the contestants get a little deeper into my day-to-day life. From travelling on my plane, to behind the scenes at the Mavs, HDNet and all the other business and fun I’m involved with, those 16 are definitely going to get a taste of my day-to-day life. Woven into all the fun are going to be tests and tasks they don’t even know they are being evaluated on. When the producers started telling them to me, I was cracking up.Viewers are going to be shocked at what getscontestants kicked out of the game, and the people who get kicked out are going to kick themselves for blowing the chance at the money. I wish I could tell you, but it would be soobvious, it would ruin it.

I will be at the Dallas auditions in the morning this coming Saturday, thenflying directly to Vegas for the auditions therein the afternoon. Hope to see you at one of them thisweekend!

As always, for more info go to www.abc.com keyword casting.

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I’m about as competitive as they come. I hate to lose in anythingI do. I love to work with people who hate to lose. I want to be around people who get sick and can’t sleep when things don’t go well. People who won’t go to sleep until problems are solved. HDNet, The Benefactor, The Mavs, any of the businesses I’m involved with, I judge the success of each on a 24×7x365 basis.

Passion in business demands passion. A byproduct of passion is saying exactly how you feel in a way that you know will get someone’s attention, and listening to exactly how someone else feels when they need to get your attention. All of this is my way of saying that I expect people who work for me to yell at me, and I expect them to know that at times I will do the same. If someone is pissed off, if they think I’m doing something wrong, or the wrong way, and I’m being too pigheaded to see it. Blast me.

I have told just about everyone who has ever partnered or reported directly to me, that I can get so focused or involved that I lose sight of something(s). When that happens, you have done your homework and are confident in your position,and when I don’t listen, raise your voice. Figuratively, literally, I don’t care. I don’t see decibels as a sign of disrespect. I see fear to communicate a needed message to me as a sign of disrespect. If you don’t care enough about our product, customer, company, employee, whatever it may be to step up and let me have it when I’m screwing up, then you don’t care enough to be here.

Why say all of this? Because to me, a little contention can go along way whether its HDNet or the Mavericks or any business. If I disagree or raise an issue with someone on something, there is only positive that can come from it. One of us is probably going to have a valid solution, and the organization will benefit. If raised voices allows us tocome to a solution, I’m all for it.

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An officiating crew blows a 24 sec call. Every player on the floor knows it. Every fan in the building knows it. All but the 3 with whistles seem to know it. When it results in an easy basket and a player reacts demonstratively to the miss, should he get a tech ? If the official called a technical because the player reacted, should the other 2 officials rescind the tech once they realize they missed the call that precipitated the tech?

If a coach then jumps out of his seat and yells, “what the hell is that all about “, after the player tech, should a tech be issued to the coach?

What happens to the game when what should have been a turnover, turns into a 4 point play?

Which leads to the question, when should refs call technicals on players or coachs?

If a player, without anyone else other than the official he is talking to hear or know he is saying something, says “you fucked up that call”, or “that was a bullshit call”. Should a tech get called? What if another player had said the same thing ot one ref without response, but when it was said to another ref, it elicited a technical. Was it justified?

Should the relationship between official and player be like teacher and student, where cursing is off limits? Or should the relationship, as it relates to vocabulary be equal to what players say to each other?

I personally think the relationship should be more like football. Who cares what the player or coach says. There is no part of the officials job that is defined by how a player, coach or fan feels, thinks or responds to an official. The officials have the obligation to enforce the rules. Fortunately in basketall, play continues on after a basket, and when it does not, the officials move away from the benchs. If a player wants to sit and gab to an official, regardless of what or how he says it, play moves on, and he puts his team at a disadvantage, and the official is running to his spot on the court where he needs to be to do his job.

Now if a player or coach, keeps a ref from doing his job, by getting in his path, standing in front of, or next to the official during play and distracting him or her, then he deserves a technical. If hebumps or touchsan official, he deserves to be ejected. At no point should the safety of any personon the court be at risk. But vocabulary, respect, “showing up ” by being “demonstrative”, those are not reasons to give a tech.

What does it mean to “show up a ref”? What does it mean to”Show respect”? If a ref is “shown up”, “respected” or “disrespected ” does it really matter? The ref is still empowered to enforce the rules regardless of any player or coachs’ actions or words away from the official.Ifyou think about it, trying to protect oneself againstbeing “shown up” orbeing “disrespected”is really about presenting an image. I can understand the natural inclination of an official to want to respond to someone yelling at them, or jumping up and down in respone to them, just as I want to turn around and respond to fans that heckle me or one of our players during a game. It’s a natural reaction. It’s also a reaction that we supress every single time it happens to us. If we can, why can’t the officials ?

If you agree that giving a technical when “being shown up” or “disrespected “is about image, then the logical extension of the line of thought is that refs are impacting the score, and potentially the outcome of the game to protect their image. How can that be right?

Let me also say, I’m only talking in the context of the NBA. Pee wee league officials are volunteers, or paid minimal wages. High school officiating may or may not be a profession for the official, but its certainly not a high paying profession. In most cases, it’s the same with college officials. NBA officials can make as much as a half a million dollars per year for 6 months work, with the opportunity to make more money in the off season running camps and doing other work related to officiating. Some even have had jobs during theNBA season scheduling and trainingrefs for other organizations.Being cursed at is part of the job for all of us involved with the NBA, and in just about every other job on the planet for that matter. Dear Abby might not like it, but it’s a reality. It’s a reality that we all deal with, and so should officials. When an official calls a technical for any reason other than a player violating the rules of play, (operative words being “of play”), for preventing an official from doing his job, or for touching an official, then the call is about the official and not the game, and there is no place for that in an NBA game.

Which leads me to the NBA’s operations manual. There is a rule that says that teams can not replay a controversial play, meaning a missed call by the officials, for fear of inciting the crowd. Hello, McFly, the whole reason people come to games is to be “incited.” Fans booing officials is as much a part of the game as fans booing players, coaches and owners for that matter (some of my most memorableexperiences are being booed by an entire arena. I love it!) Getting involved in the game is what people pay their hard earned money to do. It’s what seperates the going, from the watching on TV. Replaying controversial calls helps the fan experience, and the league needs to realize this.

And finally, what is up with Indiana Pacers fans. Your team has the best record in the NBA and you aren’t selling out games. That’s not the state of Indiana that I remember.

m

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Ok, the ball is rolling everyone. Auditions start this week! I will be at the Dallas, Atlanta and Las Vegas auditions. I can’t wait to see what people come up with.

The promo ads started running last night on ABC, and the tapes that have come in have been great. Regular people doing stuff that is amazing, funny, wierd, interesting, a little bit of everything. It’s going to be tough to narrow to the first sixteen, but it will be fun!

If you can’t make the auditions, no worries, put together a tape. The tape will get watched!

I would love to hear any feedback from those who went to the auditions, or if you saw the commercial on ABC.

m

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Ron Higgins asked some good questions , so I thought I would post the questions and answers here.

> Just a few questions about it.
> 1. What finally prompted you to do this?

Despite best intentions of most media, they don’t have the space, inclination or knowledge to write in-depth on many different subjects. When those subjects are important to me, I want an outlet that wasn’t space or time constrained to give an indepth pespective.

It also is the best forum to share publicly information I have no other way to disseminate, such as personal experiences, or rebuttals to Jayson Blair practicioners of journalism like Sam Smith of the chitribune.

Or, I can post this entire email exchange and then watch and see what is actually written.

> 2. I know time and money is no question for you, so who tracks
> the officiating? Does a guy lock himself in a room and study tapes of
> every game?

No, we have the play by plays run through a computer and it dissects each play and call

> 3. Do you think it will have any effect on improvingofficiating?

I don’t know if the blog will at theNBA level, but based on the responses I have gotten from officials at other levels, it sure has sparked discussionparticularly the piece asking if refs cheat.

> 4. Does the league need to be more publicly accoutable for its officiating, such as beingavailable after games to the media or specified media reps?

If you are good at your job than transparency reinforces the quality of your work. People congratulate you on a job well done, all involved learn from mistakes.

Lack of transparency breeds questions of integrity and approach. As a result we get “conventional wisdom” inside the league about things like respect. What cracks me up is when someone says they didn’t get respect because he isn’t an all star or is a rookie, or got respect because he is. That’s the equivalent of saying, “we all agree that officials are biased and basically cheat.”

The league never fines anyone for talking about respect from officials, nor do they deny it. Is it real…only the shadow knows for sure.

Transparency solves that problem inside the league, for media and fans. The league should post their gradings of each game if not after the game, than at least after the season. Then we could quantify “if it all evens out” in the end.

Transparency also allows the officials to be more fairly evaluated. Right now teams evaluate all the officials at the end of the year. We have to apply judgement to a ref we might have only seen 3x in a year, the last of which was 4 months ago. The league expects us to do it from memory. Team evals apply to how much the officials get paid.. What premium assignments they get.

We have asked and offered to do evaluations online after each game, the league has refused. That’s not fair to refs that may not be as visible or public as others. And it also means that teams that we have talked to don’t take the evals all that seriously with many having assistants fill out the evaluations in a quick sitting.

Transparency goes to the heart of better information so that teams can do a better job understanding the impact of officiating on the game, teams can do abetter job of evaluating officials so they are rewarded for a good job, and fans better understand and appreciate officials

Hope this helps, I will post this on my blog, since they are great questions.

Thx

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Let’s say we are watching a hypothetical basketball game. High School, college, NBA, doesn’t matter. And let’s say that with 10 seconds to go in the game a player throws an errant pass directly out of bounds. Rather than giving the ball to the other team, the official gives the ball to the team throwing the errant pass. When asked why, he said it was because the player throwing the pass got fouled, and he didn’t want to call the foul. To add some substance, let’s just say that this ref is one of the 5 most highly rated officials in his organization.

Did the ref just cheat? Did he just change the potential outcome of the game? Did he make up his own rule to push an agenda of “letting them play” at the end of the game rather than enforce the rule as written in the rule book?

Does the answer change if there are 10 seconds gone in the game rather than left in the game? If a player fouls another on a rebound, and theball goes out of bounds off the fouled player, and the ref gives the ball to the fouled player’s team, is it the same answer.

Does the answer change if a refwaits to see if the ball goes in the basket before calling or not calling a shooting foul?

My answer is the same for all. The officialdidn’t cheat the teams, but he cheated the game. In all examples, the official completely changed the outcome of the game. That is wrong. The rule book doesn’t say, “Change the rules to fit an agenda.” The rulebook doesn’t say to add context to the calling of all fouls. If it did, we wouldn’t have rules, we would have guidelines.

Officials do the above all the time at all levels. To me, its an unethical move. More importantly, it’sinsulting to all those involved in the game. Are players so stupid they won’t be able to adjust if the game is called by the rules? If officials call over the back or fouls on rebounds knocked out of bounds, rebounders would be less likely to contest obvious possession rebounds, and the game would move quicker. If they contest and the foul is called, then team fouls add up quicker, maybe the player needs to come out of the game, maybe the other team goes at the player to pick up another foul. Etc., etc., etc. Same with every other foul or violation not called because of the context of the situation.

But wait: there is more. One of the reasons that I’m such a stickler for calling the game by the book is because not doing so makes poor officials out of good officials. We all know the discussion about how fast the game is, and how difficult it is to officiate as a result. What happens to the difficulty factor when before blowing the whistle for a split second decision, the official has to add context. What’s the score. How many fouls or team fouls. How much time is left. Who is the player is he a rookie or not.

Then of course there is the confusion among players, coaches and fans it creates when we all try to figure out the context. Since we have no idea, we and the media invent explanations.
“He is letting them play.” “Let the players decide the game.” “Star treatment.” “Rookie call.” “Makeup call.” “They never call that.” “How can they miss that or not make that call, they must hate/love myteam/their team.” Etc., etc., etc.

The game is different for all involved because of these contextual suspension of the rules by officials. It’s for the worse, not the better.

Call the rules as written and the game becomes simpler and more enjoyable for all involved.

While I’m on the topic, here are a couple things that again apply to all levels that I just can’t figure out.

1. Why isn’t the 24 sec clock or a clock on the court used to count down the 5 secs for an inbounds play? Talk about drama as the fans, players etc see the clock. There would be more violations as well with good defense rewarded.

2. Why is it that officials will confer and can and will take as long as they need to correct the 24 sec clock, yet won’t for just about any other play or issue that arises?

3. Why is it that everyone says that Shaq is so hard to officiate? Just because he is big and when guys hammer him they don’t impact his shot, doesn’t make it not a foul. On the flipside, if he lowers his shoulder or powers through someone, its a foul. The big guy should probably go to the foul line and foul out three times as often as he does.

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Since this information is all public it’s just that no one but me cares to collect it I decided to post
it for the first time. This is posted for your enjoyment only and is not to be used for gambling, April Fool’s gags,
or coming to conclusions. This data means absolutely nothing other than what it means.

Here are updated ref tendencies.

Since all star break (relative to whole season)

3 seconds – down 13%

Def 3 sec – down 15%

Palming – down 45%

Flagrant 1 – down 18%

Lane violation – down 7%

Off foul – down 8%

Tech foul – up 17%

Those stats are through March 13th.

These are stats by referee through March 20th:

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Apply to be on my upcoming show The Benefactor. No special skills required, but we will put you in a pressure cooker with such potential tasks and challenges as playing solitaire and for the more advanced contestants our old favorite card game, war. For the speed freaks out there, you could win showing off your bumper car skills.

As you can tell, I’m up late at night coming up with challenges that work the mind, body and soul, individually, and in teams. More often than not, we will simply put you someplace interesting with something interesting going on, and see how you and all your new friends get along with a million bucks on the line.

If you are daring enough to be yourself on network television, here is how you apply.

Casting: The Benefactor, Open Calls/Application Information Open Auditions Set for Atlanta, Boise, Boston, Dallas and Las Vegas.

How would you like to win a million dollars? Billionaire businessman and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is set to give away a million bucks to a complete stranger. Why? Because he can. How will he decide? However he wants. One million. His rules. YOUR chance! Mark Cuban is “The Benefactor.”

Candidates can visit abc.com, keyword: casting, for information on how to apply and eligibility requirements.

Participants must be legal U.S. residents and at least 21 years of age. Open auditions are being held in the following cities: Saturday, March 27 Boise, ID Doubletree Hotel Boise – Riverside 2900 Chinden Boulevard Boise, ID 83714 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Saturday, March 27 Boston, MA Il Panino 295 Franklin Street Boston, MA 02110 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Sunday, March 28 Atlanta, GA Earthlink Live 1374 West Peachtree St. Atlanta, GA 30309 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Saturday, April 3 Dallas, TX Eddie Deen 944 South Lamar Dallas, Texas 75202 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Saturday, April 3 Las Vegas, NV Location and time TBD.

If you can’t make the auditions in person, you may also download an application from abc.com, keyword: casting. Completed participant applications, along with a one to three-minute videotape of yourself answering four questions about why you feel worthy to receive a million bucks from Mark, can be sent to the following address (the deadline for submissions is April 2, 2004): “The Benefactor” 6230 Wilshire Blvd., #1803 Los Angeles, CA 90048-5104.

Mark has these words of wisdom for the applicants: “Everyone has dreamed of getting rich, and I want to help one lucky person get there. This isn’t a traditional contest. You don’t need special talents. I’m not looking to find out who is the grossest, funniest, prettiest, smartest or able to go without food or water the longest. The right person is going to get on my good side at the right time and, whoever that is, is going to walk away with a check for one million dollars.” “From the millions of applicants we expect, I will then invite approximately 15 finalists to visit with me and begin the journey to win the money. And I can promise you it will be a journey… with some of the rules made up along the way. So if you are ready to take a voyage to a one million dollar check, go to abc.com keyword: casting.”

Six episodes of “The Benefactor” are slated to air during the summer of 2004. “The Benefactor” was created by and will be executive-produced by David Young for 12 Yard Productions. Clay Newbill (producer of “The Mole,” “Celebrity Mole” and “The Bachelorette”) of Dog-Fight Industries and Todd Wagner, CEO of 29 29 Productions, will also serve as executive producers.

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It was a long night for me. I guess I have to apologize to all Mavs fans for last night’s game. I took the Hawks too lightly. I thought I could prove to myself that superstitions are ridiculous. I thought of any game, this was the game where I didn’t have to wear the right shirt. I didn’t have to stop at 7-Eleven and get my two sugar-free Red Bulls and Diet Mountain Dew.

I tried to right the wrong at halftime when we were way down by changing shirts. It wasn’t enough.

It was a tough lesson, but I learned once again to never underestimate an NBA opponent.

To switch topics for those who asked, the movie Todd Wagner and I produced, Godsend, with Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Greg Kinnear and Robert De Niro, is set to premiere on April 30th.

Over the next few weeks I will share some of the stories yes she is that hot and some of the hassles due to the subject matter.

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