'Miami Herald' Columnist Says He Was Wrong To Quote Mavericks Owner

By: Joe Strupp Miami Herald columnist Greg Cote admitted that he was wrong to quote Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban alleging that the NBA was rigged, but stopped short of apologizing for the accusation, which appeared in a Tuesday column.

"I was wrong to use the quote. That doesn't mean the words were never said, denial notwithstanding," Cote wrote on his Herald Web site blog late Tuesday. "I was wrong, journalistically, to put quotation marks around words I did not personally hear. I would be wrong even if Cuban had not denied having said it."

The regretful statement came just hours after Cote's column appeared in the Herald. It reported that the outspoken Cuban had yelled profane comments at NBA Commissioner David Stern following Sunday night's NBA Finals game in Miami in which the Miami Heat beat the Mavericks.

In the column titled, "Official Coverup? Conspiracy theories no excuse for Dallas," Cote wrote "there was Cuban, whose billions can buy just about anything but a mortal slump by D-Wade, careening onto the court in a blue Jerry Stackhouse jersey after the final buzzer, screaming profanity at referee Joe Derosa. Cuban then turned to Stern and other NBA officials who were seated at the scorer's table and was overheard to shout venomously in the jubilant din, '[bleep] you! [bleep] you. Your league is rigged.'"

Later in the day, Cuban responded on his own blog with a statement declaring that he never made the comments and criticizing Cote for printing them without asking for confirmation. "Apparently the Miami Herald is reporting I screamed at the NBA commissioner after the game the other night. Didn't happen. I didn't say a word to the man. Not a single word. And that was absolutely by intention," Cuban wrote. "Apparently the 'reporter' has written he has several 'sources.' Well they must be the same sources the tabloids use to find two-headed babies and aliens because it didn't happen."

Cote, in his blog, sought to explain that he used the quote after hearing about it from what he considered a good source. "Someone near the scorer's table who said he heard Cuban say what I quoted him saying passed the information to someone I trust who informed me. My source in turn trusted the person who reported hearing it," he wrote. "For the record, I never believed Cuban actually believed the fix was on. I believed then, and do now, that, in context, an outspoken owner was venting in the heat of the moment at a raw, emotional time."

But Cote did not back off completely, seeking to defend himself somewhat by noting that CBS SportsLine.com "reported today that Cuban, after yelling at referee Joe DeRosa on the court after the final buzzer, '... then stared and screamed toward commissioner David Stern and a group of league officials ...'" He also couldn't help but remind readers that Cuban had been fined $250,000 by the NBA "for 'several [unspecified] acts of misconduct' following the game."