A day after Donald Trump compared his standing ovation from his own aides at the CIA to Peyton Manning’s after the Super Bowl, Mark Cuban is claiming their may have been All-Star voting fraud thanks to the Electoral College. What a time to be alive. Sports and politics are woke.
Mark Cuban is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and has been outspoken about his disapproval of the new President of the United States. After the past week of political news, Cuban decided to mock both the league he loves and the President he dislikes.
The NBA All-Star Game in New Orleans is less than a month away and some of the players who received votes or who aren’t starting (*cough* Russell Westbrook *cough*) are a little surprising. Some of this may be because people decided to play around with the league and vote for players who doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the All-Star game.
While speaking with the Star-Telegram, Cuban keyed in on how JaVale McGee, the backup starting center for the Golden State Warriors, got four votes.
“There must have been voter fraud, because I would have bet JaVale McGee really got three million (votes), and him and (Mavs rookie center) A. J. Hammons probably split that,’’ Cuban said. “I know I was registered with five different teams, and I’m not eligible to vote”
That quote is just laced with multiple references making fun of the new executive branch of the United States government. And it didn’t stop there either.
“I’m calling for an executive investigation and I’m going to sit down with (NBA commissioner) Adam Silver and we’re going to get to the heart of this, I truly believe. If we can’t protect the integrity of All-Star voting, this league has serious problems. I think Space Ghost even got a vote in there,’’ Cuban added.
Cuban isn’t actually that mad here, in my opinion. While it is a little ridiculous McGee and some others got votes and players like Westbrook aren’t starting, the Mavs owner probably doesn’t actually think there should be an executive investigation.
What makes the story even more interesting is it’s not like it was just the fans who thought McGee should get votes. This was the first time NBA players were allowed to vote for the starters and the voting system was altered.
This year, the fan vote accounted for 50% of the final total, the media got 25% of the vote, and the players covered the final 25% of the tally. 324 players voted for the starters and of those 324, 154 didn’t vote for Kevin Durant while 128 didn’t pick LeBron James.
That’s a little crazy and Cuban thinks he knows why.
“It’s just unfortunate, but when we went to the Electoral College format, and there were segments of the NBA who got votes,” Cuban said. “I know they won the popular vote, but we went away from just the popular vote to the Electoral College version of NBA voting, and that is what you get.
“I think (President) Donald Trump tweeted about it a couple of years ago, and he was right.”
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012
This was an obvious dig at the new Commander in Chief by Cuban, as Trump won the Electoral College, but lost the popular vote, in case you hadn’t been keeping up with the news for the last three months or so.
The thing is, Cuban didn’t stop there – he just kept going with his analogy.
The three branches of NBA government — the players, the media, and the fans — you would think would be able to make it all work. But I understand if the guys who are All-Stars won in the NBA Electoral College, if they would have thought they were at risk they would have campaigned at different games.
“But the system is the system. They campaigned in the states — and in Zaza (Pachulia’s) case — the countries where they needed to. There’s a Pew Study that talks about the difference between digital straight-up fan voting and the NBA Electoral College, and that’s what I pin my hat on.”’
The final dig Cuban made at Trump was his reference of the Pew Study. The Pew Study is the study the new President has consistently used to justify his belief there was widespread voter fraud in the recent election. However, the author of that study says his Pew Study says nothing like that, and instead makes it clear there was not widespread voter fraud.
