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What Are the Mavericks Doing?

Does the NBA need to investigate the team's investigation?
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After the Mavericks held a press conference September 19 at the AAC to announce the findings of the independent seven-month investigation into sexual harassment and other misconduct within the organization, I was a bit puzzled. Maybe a little skeptical. I found it curious that after interviewing several hundred people and plowing through more than a million pages of documents, all the report did was confirm what had basically been known from the beginning — adding details and assigning blame, but not uncovering any further bad actors or bad actions. In what was more or less described as a consequence-free environment, no one else took advantage of the situation in almost two decades? I found that hard to believe.

Now it really is hard to believe. As Matt mentioned in Leading Off, four women accused longtime team employee Danny Bollinger of propositioning them for sex, making lewd comments, and showing inappropriate photos of the Mavs dance team and fans that he kept on his work computer in a special folder. This Morning News story, to me, is pretty damning. And it only brings up more questions, since the allegations against Bollinger are confined in the report to a footnote that reads:

“over the course of our investigation into serious workplace misconduct, we deferred to the new Mavericks leadership to handle allegations of other misconduct that fell outside the scope of our investigation or that we felt would be most appropriately addressed internally.”

How many other allegations fell outside the scope? Unless the NBA gets involved, we will likely never know.

“We responded fully to the findings of the independent investigation and took immediate and complete action before the press conference,” new Mavs CEO Cynt Marshall told the DMN. “Our complaint processes are working and any resulting personnel action is a matter of employee privacy. We were transparent about the findings of the independent investigation. Our own internal investigations will not yield transparency. It’s private. It’s the normal course of doing business.”

She’s not wrong. That is the normal course of doing business. But this stopped being normal business in February, as soon as the Sports Illustrated report hit. When the Morning News followed up on it with even more allegations, the idea of a non-transparent internal investigation should have been blown up entirely.

Marshall made a big point about how the team can set an example for everyone moving forward at that September 19 press conference and very confidently said this was all behind them. It seems to me that it is going to be difficult to move forward as things like this keep coming out. And I do believe there will be more.

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