Ussery literally fucked his career.
Mark Cuban will be under fire but apparently he wasn't aware of what was happening in his organization. But hmmm ... snippets for those who didn't read the article below the video which was in the link they didn't click:
To a person, they make clear that, to their knowledge, Cuban was never a perpetrator, never involved in sexual harassment himself. Yet, most also find it hard to imagine that Cuban is unaware of the corrosive culture in some corners of his organization. “Trust me, Mark knows everything that goes on,” says one longtime former Mavericks employee. “Of course Mark knew [about the instances of harassment and assault]. Everyone knew.”
In the forthcoming book, The Soul of Basketball, author Ian Thomsen asks Cuban how he is different from other owners. Cuban’s response: “The big difference is, being that I’m so close to everything that’s going around, you can’t bullshit me.”
Pressed on how it is that a proudly hyperattentive owner could be so oblivious, Cuban said, “I deferred to the CEO, who at the time was Terdema, and to HR…. I was involved in basketball operations, but other than getting the financials and reports, I was not involved in the day to day [of the business side] at all. That’s why I just deferred. I let people do their jobs. And if there were anything like this at all I was supposed to be made aware, obviously I was not.”
One of the women alleging harassment has another theory: Cuban turned a blind eye as long as revenue came in. Which it did. By all accounts, under Ussery the Mavericks’ finances improved dramatically. He was instrumental in securing $240 million in public funding for the American Airlines Center, which opened in 2001.
“I want to deal with this issue,” Cuban told SI. “I mean, this is, obviously there’s a problem in the Mavericks organization and we’ve got to fix it. That’s it. And we’re going to take every step. It’s not something we tolerate. I don’t want it. It’s not something that’s acceptable. I’m embarrassed, to be honest with you, that it happened under my ownership, and it needs to be fixed. Period. End of story.”
Yeah, I don't think this is the end of the story but I'm sure the Mavs will try to squash it ASAP.