Heat Owner Wishes He Was Great For The Game Like Mark Cuban

MIAMI--Mickey Arison, owner of the Miami Heat, has spent the past week celebrating his team’s victory over the Dallas Mavericks in the 2006 NBA Finals. Like Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, Arison is a billionaire businessman with a passion for basketball. But unlike Cuban, he is not great for the game. He’s a bore.

“I guess I’m just not an exciting owner,” said Arison, who made his fortune as CEO of Carnival Corporation. “I don’t really do anything to draw attention to myself, I never run onto the court and berate officials, and I don’t make myself accessible to fans with an internet blog. All I did was build a great team and then stand politely in the background while they won a championship. Oh, God I am so boring. I’m the one who should be fined by David Stern. I am single handedly bringing the NBA down with my lameness.”

Arison has taken some steps to change his image but those steps had little or no impact, and now he must accept the fact that he’s a boring owner who is doing nothing to make the NBA a more colorful, entertaining league.

“This year, just to go a little nuts, I wore a crazy t-shirt to some of the games that read ‘Go Heat,’” Arison said. “I also got angry at a referee and glared at him with my arms folded from up in the owner’s box. But none of it made much of an impact. I guess I’m just not cut out to be a colorful, charismatic attention-whore.”

Cuban has become a household name in recent years due to his flamboyant personality and harsh, outspoken criticism of the league’s referees. After Game 5 of the Finals, Cuban rushed onto the court and cursed at Joe Crawford, then glared at Commissioner David Stern for several seconds. He was fined $250,000 for the incident.

Afterwards, Cuban was praised for his “personality.”

“Say what you want about Mark Cuban, but more NBA owners need to be like him,” said David Thompson of the Forth Worth Star Telegram. “The guy is great for the game. Mickey Arison, on the other hand, is not. Nice guy? Sure. Good owner? Absolutely. Great for the game? Not even close. Mickey wouldn’t berate a referee if he walked in on the guy nailing his wife. And don’t think a referee wouldn’t do that. These guys are horrible, crooked, scheming monsters and we have Mark Cuban to thank for exposing that.”

Commissioner Stern has had several run-ins with Cuban and has often been the target of his criticism. However, even he can admit that Cuban’s larger-than-life personality is good for the game.

“Mark is a very passionate and energetic owner,” Stern said Tuesday on Pardon the Interruption. “Sometimes he goes too far, but in this business we call that ‘colorful.’ Do I wish there were more owners like him? Yes, as annoying as he is, he does draw a lot of attention to the league. Guys like Mickey Arison don’t do anything. They just sit there in their ivory towers and never act like dipshits. That’s because Mickey’s from the old school, before acting like a dipshit was considered a virtue.”

With the 2006 season behind him, Arison will now turn his focus to the draft and the signing of Dwyane Wade to a contract extension. Though he knows he’ll never be good for the game, Arison is content in knowing that he is a world champion.

“It feels good to be a champion,” Arison said. “I guess I don’t need to try and be something that I’m not. I don’t need to be ‘good for the game’ by making a spectacle of myself. I don’t need to manufacture controversies to be spoon fed to the boring, predictable media. All I need to do is sit here, count my billions, polish my championship trophy, and try like hell to get Dwyane Wade to sign an extension here. It’s not going to be easy. Mark Cuban just offered him his own personal locker room and a fleet of jets that actually have missiles attached to them.”

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