Mark Cuban: Mavericks to ‘financially support’ American Airlines Center hourly workers
The NBA’s decision to suspend its season after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus will be an inconvenience for players and coaches.
But most of them are set up well financially.
Not so for hourly workers at arenas: vendors, cleaning staff and others.
Those people were on the mind of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban when he learned the NBA season would be put on hold.
When asked if he had concerns for his team, Cuban said on ESPN during Dallas’ win over Denver: “It’s not about the team. It’s just about the country and life in general. We’ve got the pieces in place, I’m concerned now that we’re not playing games, what about all the people working here on an hourly basis? We’ll put together a program for them but there are just so many things that go through your head, right? It’s hard to know exactly what’s right.”
Like many people, Cuban was amazed at the turn of events.
“It seems more out of a movie than reality,” Cuban said. “It’s really not about basketball and money. Literally, this thing is just exploding where all of a sudden players and others have it, you think about your family, you want to make sure you’re doing this the right way. Now it’s much more personal.”
Here is the clip:
Cuban talked again after the game about helping hourly workers: “I reached out to the folks at the arena and our folks at the Mavs to find out what it would cost to financially support people who aren’t going to be able to come to work. They get paid by the hour and this was the source of income, so we’ll do some things there. ... We’ve already started the process of having a program in place.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 9:08 AM.
