SI has done a report on what is happening with the Dallas Mavericks.
It isn’t pretty.
Here are some of the lowlights.
As the woman sat down, the team president and CEO, Terdema Ussery, asked if he could join her. She grew nervous, not because Ussery was her boss’s boss, or because he was one of the most prominent figures in the Dallas sportscape. It was because his reputation as a serial sexual harasser of women preceded him.
At this meal, with ESPN crew members seated nearby, Ussery struck up an unusual conversation. As the woman recalls the exchange, Ussery claimed that he knew what she was going to do over the coming weekend. When the woman asked, confusedly, what Ussery meant, he smiled.
“You’re going to get gang-banged,” he asserted, “aren’t you?”
“No,” the woman responded, caught off-guard. “Actually, I’m going to the movies with friends.”
“No,” Ussery insisted. “You’re definitely getting gang-banged.”
One shared that Ussery had repeatedly propositioned her for sex, even offering to leave his marriage if the woman relented—an account the second woman confirmed to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED for this story.
Two women claimed to SI that Ussery harassed them for years. These incidents ranged from inappropriate remarks to requests for sex to touching women’s calves and thighs during meetings.
One woman recorded that she complained to her boss, Paul Monroe, then the Mavericks’ VP of marketing, about a culture unfriendly to women—citing Ussery’s behavior specifically. According to her notes, Monroe said he’d drive her to a meeting. Once they were settled in his car, Monroe threatened to fire her if she “didn’t shut up and do [your] job,” telling her to “just take” the abuse from Ussery, adding “he’s the boss.” Wrote the woman, I felt threatened not only for my safety but he was threatening my position within the company.
Here is a different individual that had an domestic violence issue with the Mavericks and how it was handled.
Earl K. Sneed was a few months removed from graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a journalism degree, and he was eager to work in the NBA. In a moment right out of Shark Tank, Sneed wrote an email directly to Mark Cuban in 2009, telling the Mavs owner, “I [am] somebody that could do something for you like nobody else is doing.”
Cuban didn’t respond directly, but Sneed was offered a job freelancing for the team’s website.
Earl K. Sneed was a few months removed from graduating from the University of Oklahoma with a journalism degree, and he was eager to work in the NBA. In a moment right out of Shark Tank, Sneed wrote an email directly to Mark Cuban in 2009, telling the Mavs owner, “I [am] somebody that could do something for you like nobody else is doing.”
Cuban didn’t respond directly, but Sneed was offered a job freelancing for the team’s website.
Midway through that season, Sneed was involved in a domestic dispute with a girlfriend. According to a Dallas police report, Sneed “sat on top of her and slapped her on the face and chest.” At one point he told the woman, “I’m going to f—— kick your ass. Today is gonna be the worst day of your life.” Sneed, according to the report, “fled before the reporting officer arrived.” The woman, according to the report, suffered a fractured right wrist and bruises on her arms and chest in the altercation.
After his plea, Sneed dated a Mavericks colleague, a relationship the two made public in keeping with the team’s fraternization policies. Multiple sources tell SI that in 2014 the couple had a dispute and Sneed turned violent, hitting the woman.
Her face swollen, she went to work but within days reported the incident to her immediate supervisor and to Pittman. The woman recalls Pittman being professional and supportive; she also recalls Pittman informing her of Sneed’s prior arrest. In retrospect, she wonders how Sneed could have stayed employed. “He shouldn’t have a job there,” she says.
Sneed continued with the Mavericks. He co-hosted Fox Sports Southwest’s “Mavs Insider” weekly television show until August of 2017 and remained the beat writer for Mavs.com. Asked why the team would continue employing Sneed when, already having pled guilty to criminal charges for violence against one woman, he allegedly physically assaulted another woman—who was also a team employee— Pittman declined comment.
Mark Cuban has pleaded the 5th.
Flip the page for Cuban’s thoughts.