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Sports of The Times

Cuban Talks His Way Onto a Limb Occupied by Sterling

The Mavericks' owner, Mark Cuban, standing during a game in April, discussed racism Wednesday at a business conference.Credit...Ashley Landis/European Pressphoto Agency

For nearly a month, Adam Silver, the commissioner of the N.B.A., has managed to isolate Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, on an island. With one salvo of explosive comments, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has put his fellow team owners on that island as well.

In April, Sterling was barred from the N.B.A. for life and fined $2.5 million by the N.B.A. after recordings of him making racist comments about African-Americans were made public.

At a business conference Wednesday, Cuban admitted to being less than enlightened. “I know I’m prejudiced and I know I’m bigoted in a lot of different ways,” Cuban said.

Then he made the gaffe.

“If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the street,” he said in a video interview for Inc.’s GrowCo Conference in Nashville. “And if on that side of the street, there’s a guy that has tattoos all over his face — white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere — I’m walking back to the other side of the street.”

It is one thing to initiate a dialogue about racism but something else to spew tone deaf ignorance in an interview. The shooting death of Trayvon Martin in 2012, the acquittal of George Zimmerman and the miscarriage of justice that the not-guilty verdict represented are wounds that, for many, have not healed. Some N.B.A. players, most notably LeBron James and his Miami Heat teammates, wore hoodies to protest the stereotyping that led to Martin’s death.

“In hindsight, I should have used different examples,” Cuban said. “I didn’t consider the Trayvon Martin family, and I apologize to them for that.”

By implying that not only Sterling, but also everyone else — team owners in the N.B.A. included — has a bias or two and believes in some unexpressed, bigoted stereotypes, Cuban was basically saying, Why isolate one owner?

My initial reaction to Cuban’s comments was that he had just given Sterling substantial legal wiggle room. Sterling was being swept down a river by a fast-moving moral current and Cuban gave him a low-hanging limb to grab on to. Or, perhaps, Cuban saw an owner trapped in that gray space between public and private, and simply wanted to extricate him.

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At a business conference in Nashville on Wednesday, Mark Cuban admitted to being less than enlightened. “I know I’m prejudiced and I know I’m bigoted in a lot of different ways.” Credit...Eric Gay/Associated Press

“I know that I’m not perfect,” Cuban also said Wednesday. “While we all have our prejudices and bigotries, we have to learn that it’s an issue that we have to control, that it’s part of my responsibility as an entrepreneur to try to solve it, not just to kick the problem down the road.

“I think we’re all bigots, and I don’t think there’s any question about that.”

I wonder what Cuban’s fellow owners feel about that? Do they think they are bigots?

Is Robert Sarver, the majority owner of the Phoenix Suns, a bigot? In 2010 he had his team wear Los Suns jerseys to protest an immigration law Arizona had adopted.

Is Richard DeVos, the 88-year-old owner of the Orlando Magic, a bigot? He does not support same-sex marriage and once gave $100,000 to an effort to ban it in Florida.

What Cuban is suggesting is that every one of us harbors unexpressed prejudices. Could any of us stand the scrutiny of having all of our private conversations made public? That day may be fast approaching: Social media is ushering in an era of transparency that is shrinking the distance between one’s private words and publicly expressed views.

“The thing that scares me about this whole thing is, I don’t want to be a hypocrite and I think I might have to be,” Cuban said, quite likely referring to the expected vote by the N.B.A. owners to expel Sterling. “Being a hypocrite bothers me more than anything, after my family, so it won’t be fun.”

Asked how he might be hypocritical, Cuban said, “Well, I just sat here and said I’m a bigot.”

More than the legal exercise, Sterling’s remarks, expressed in private, and Cuban’s, expressed in public, raise questions about the qualifications to own an N.B.A. franchise.

“Cuban’s comment calls the question: What standards besides wealth qualify one to own an N.B.A. franchise?” said Linda S. Greene, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “These teams may be privately held, but the ownership of one is a privilege and constitutes a public trust. Therefore, the N.B.A. has a duty to probe deeply both beliefs and actions to ensure that those who steward these unique community institutions are worthy of that trust.”

Greene added, “In our post-Sterling world, the possession of billions of dollars may be necessary to the ownership of an N.B.A. franchise, but it will never again be sufficient.”

Cuban was a thorn in the side of the former commissioner David Stern. Now he is pricking the consciousness of the new commissioner and the owners. Silver has said he is open to beginning a dialogue about racism. The league’s lawyers are probably wondering why Cuban had to start one now.

Email: wcr@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section D, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Cuban Talks His Way Onto a Limb Occupied by Sterling. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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