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DALLAS – On Thursday morning, the Dallas Mavericks introduced their new general manager and head coach at a press conference. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and CEO Cynt Marshall were joined by Nico Harrison and Jason Kidd, who will fulfill these roles respectively on a center court stage at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.
As for press conferences, it was pretty routine. Everyone spoke enthusiastically about the future of the organization. Harrison and Kidd specifically said how excited they are to be working alongside Luka Doncic. Through all the smiles and platitudes, however, an elephant hung in the room. Kidd’s hiring drew a lot of criticism due to his guilty plea to domestic violence in 2001. While Kidd, Marshall, and Cuban spoke widely about his past, it was clear they didn’t want to tackle him. front to the case in public.
Cuban hired Marshall in 2018 following a report by Illustrated sports which revealed a deeply rooted culture of sexual harassment, domestic violence and workplace misconduct in order to change the internal culture of the organization. During her introductory press conference, Marshall said she was instituting a zero tolerance policy for all team employees for both the office and the organization’s basketball operations. Hiring Kidd, due to his history of domestic violence, called into question the Mavericks following their own self-imposed guidelines.
“We talked about his past,” Marshall said of his conversations with Kidd when he was hired. “We talked about part of the story and he guided me through his journey, which I will call a journey. He guided me through it. And at the end of this process, I really felt like we were doing the right thing. I did not feel at all that we were undermining our zero tolerance policy, our values or our code of conduct.
Marshall says she didn’t enlist outside help to assess Kidd and his past during the hiring process. Instead, she went through the process of controlling it on her own. However, when asked about the zero tolerance policy she enforced when she was hired, she turned the question around and spoke more broadly about the team’s code of conduct rather than how the Hiring Kidd falls within those parameters.
“The Dallas Mavericks have a set of values - character, respect, authenticity, fairness, teamwork and safety, both physical and emotional,” said Marshall. “We have a zero tolerance policy for misconduct, sexual harassment, false allegations or anything that puts our employees at risk. If you don’t follow our code of conduct and values, you are not getting a job with the Dallas Mavericks.
For his part, Kidd readily admits his past indiscretions. He did not go into details of his conversations with Marshall. He did, however, discuss his time in counseling and the tools the Mavericks have to tackle the issues he has dealt with over the past 20 years and the importance of being open and talking about the actions he has taken. .
“The course I have ridden has not always been perfect, but we are learning from our mistakes,” said Kidd. “Understanding God is great and it gives the opportunity to prove himself, to learn from his mistakes, to have the opportunity to talk about them. “
While Kidd’s willingness to talk about and learn from his past is to be commended, the tone of the Mavericks’ approach to his past domestic violence guilty plea at the press conference is at odds with previous statements by the organization. In July 2020, Illustrated sports posted another story that focused on the misconduct of a Mavericks employee. A woman has accused former Boy Scout Tony Ronzone of sexual assault. In a long and inflammatory statement responding to AND, the organization denounced the accusation saying, in part, “it traces the past of so many women and men in the Mav organization and some who no longer work in the Mavs”. A year after the Mavericks criticized the report, the organization quietly fired Ronzone.
Marshall, a victim of domestic violence herself, says she can’t speak for all the women who have been abused by another person. She says it took her a long time in counseling and prayer to be able to talk about her experiences. However, it does not address how hiring can negatively impact current or former team employees as well as members of the public who suffer the emotional toll of violence.
“What I can do is keep praying for them,” Marshall said. “I can’t give any advice because I don’t know their situation. I know my situation.
Rather than choosing to confront Kidd’s past, the Marshall and the Cuban chose to deflect the questions put to them. For an organization still shocked by the fallout from the first AND report in 2018, it was disappointing to see. They lost the opportunity to discuss the internal decision-making and conversations that took place during the hiring process and how Kidd aligned with the Mavericks’ stated culture. Instead, they more or less said “trust us,” giving their word that the organization is now a better place because they claim to adhere to an internal review process.
“It’s not just with our head coach in Jason, it’s for everyone that we bring,” Cuban said. “We go through a process that allows us to determine whether or not they can be part of the culture that we define. And, beyond that, once you’re in there is always a set of responsibilities that you have to take on. ”
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