If Mark Cuban could have received a technical from the referees, he would have by now.
Instead, his assistant coaches have to take the lumps for him.
That's what happened Wednesday night, when NBA ref Nick Buchert slapped Dallas assistant coach Monte Mathis was a technical foul. The only problem was, Mathis was sitting there quietly at the time.
In fact, Mathis has a vocal cord condition that physically prevents him from yelling. Mathis, unaware that the technical foul was in response to Cuban's yelling, made his case to the ref, but to no avail.
Later, the referee came up and apologized to Mathis. Cuban said afterward that the technical was for him and shouldn't have been credited to Mathis, although league rules prohibit assigning a technical foul to a team owner.
Dallas coach Rick Carlisle said the team plans to write the league office and ask them to remove the technical foul from Mathis' record.
Over the years, Cuban has paid more than $1 million in fines for comments he has made about NBA officiating.
This time, though, he didn't feel a reprimand was warranted.
"All I said was, 'You've got to make that call,' " Cuban said to ESPN. "No cursing. Didn't curse the whole game. Quiet, relatively speaking, the whole game."
