I get my newsalerts every morning, and click through them from my sidekick. Usually when there is an article written about me, I pretty much know its coming. Why ? Because other than Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune (if they let him work there, how does anybody think the Cubs have a chance at all ?), sportswriters will at least ask questions to make sure they are at least on the right path before they spew.
Add another to the Sam Smith brigade.
I recently wrote a tongue in cheek blog about TNT not putting the Mavs in their graphic for the Conference Finals website. TNT emailed, I told them it was all in fun. Then Michael Heistand from USA Today emailed me, thinking I was serious. I told him I wasnt, that it really was in fun, and that my biggest laugh was going to come from the media person who thought it was serious.
To Michaels credit, he not only asked me, he asked TNT, all of which he reported in his column.
“But don’t assume it’s all that serious. Consider Cuban’s reaction to TNT’s home page after the Mavs had made the NBA’s final four it still featured players from last year’s NBA final four. On his blog blogmaverick.com Cuban protested the omission while defiantly adding, “We don’t care what the national media think.”
The blog drew responses from angry fans feeling slighted by TNT. The problem, spokesman Jeff Pomeroy says, was that TNT was simply in the process of updating its home page. When he told Cuban that in an e-mail, Cuban e-mailed back: “That ruins all the fun speculation” signing off with a smiley face.
By e-mail Thursday, Cuban says his blog shot at TNT “was tongue-in-cheek humor.”
Now compare that to Mark Heisler of the LA Times in this column. IN particular
“His team, he claims, either wins or has it stolen by referees, supervised by the bumbling league office while the national press, which hates Cuban, the Mavericks and Dallas, makes up lies.
Cuban’s May 23 blog, the day after his team eliminated the Spurs, was standard conspiracy theory, noting TNT’s website had put up a montage of players from Detroit, Miami and Phoenix, with San Antonio’s Tim Duncan where Dallas’ Dirk Nowitzki should have been.
“I guess we didn’t get the memo,” wrote Cuban. “Unbelievable? Not to the Mavs family. We don’t care what the national media thinks. We don’t care what the NBA thinks. We believe!” “
So Heisler wins the award for not really having a clue. This isnt the first time he just ranted with nothing to say and used the Sam Smith approach of “if someone said it somewhere, I can use it as reference and it must be true”
Now this isnt to say that Heisler has never asked me questions about issues important to him. He did at one point ask me questions about the MBA degree he was seeking. So I know he knows how to reach me. I guess he only needs to source information for the things he is involved with that he thinks are important. Did you ever get that MBA Mark ?