Animal House: Sports Illustrated Releases Investigation Into Dallas Mavericks Sexual Misconduct

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Even though Sports Illustrated gets a lot of flack these days, that hasn’t stopped them from doing what they do best — providing quality sports journalism from top to bottom.

Whether it be their declining number of actual magazines released or the fact they’re even in the magazine business at all, the old-heads of the sports media world have continued to press on.

And on Tuesday night, they continued on their beat with one of the biggest stories they’ve reported in a long time — an investigation into sexual misconduct in the Dallas Mavericks organization.

Written by veteran NBA writer Jon Wertheim and Jessica Luther, the story details the “real-life Animal House” culture of Mark Cuban’s empire. The pair of reporters spoke with more than a dozen current and former employees during the investigation, culminating in a fascinating read all the way around.

One thing to note about the story is that the misconduct came from outside the roster of players, with one staffer referring to the Mavs’ locker room as a “refuge” from the team office.

While sources referred to the Mavericks office as a “locker room culture,” the team’s actual locker room was a refuge. Says one female former senior staffer: “I dealt with players all the time. I had hundreds of interactions with players and never once had an issue…they always knew how to treat people. Then I’d go to the office and it was this zoo, this complete shitshow. My anxiety would go down dealing with players; it would go up when I got to my desk.”

With that said, one of the main targets of the allegations was Terdema Ussery, the former CEO and President of the Dallas Mavericks. Ussery was with the team for nearly 20 years before leaving in 2015 to join Under Armour.

In a conversation with SI, Ussery denied all allegations.

Mark Cuban, the front-facing owner of the team, denied any knowledge of the claims but said he doesn’t “have any tolerance for what I’ve read”.

Overall, it was truly a fantastic piece of reporting and needs to be read immediately. Good work, SI.

The Mavericks official statement regarding the piece.

You can read the full story here.