The NBA has suspended the regular season after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus, but Mark Cuban isn’t letting this stop him from taking care of his hourly workers at American Airlines Center.
What We Know:
- “There’s going to be hourly employees that aren’t working,” Cuban said on ESPN’s Get Up Thursday morning. “For the next four Mavs games we have a program where, the next four would-have-been Mavs games, we’ll pay our employees, our hourly employees as if they worked.”
- According to Forbes, should the league have postponed prior to when they actually did, the Dallas Mavericks team owner would have already had a game plan in place to protect his workers regardless. During a court side interview at the Denver Nuggets primetime game, he provided reassurance that they would be paid regardless of the league’s decision.
- The season’s suspension was certainly a shock to many, including Cuban himself. A video posted on ESPN’s Twitter caught the exact moment Cuban received the news.
Mark Cuban reacts moments after the NBA season was suspended. pic.twitter.com/4g8Z7yLts6
— ESPN (@espn) March 12, 2020
- Several other sports leagues have followed suit, with the MLS and NHL suspending its seasons, alongside the MLB pushing back spring training.
Cuban’s announcement comes after Golden State Warriors general manager Bob Myers told reporters, “We feel for the workers mostly, the low-income wage earners that count on working our games. If you’re going to have empathy, have it for them, not for us. We play basketball. It’s a big business, but we’re just playing basketball.”
