Bloggers are going crazy over Mark Cuban banning a blogger from his locker room. Newsflash: None of you complaining about him would have ever been allowed in his locker room in the first place.

MITCHELL BLATT

New media entrepreneur extradanaire and the best owner in the NBA, Mark Cuban, has drawn the fire of the sports blogosphere for banning all bloggers from his locker room. The policy was mostly aimed at Dallas Morning News blogger Tim MacMahon who has been critical of Cuban recently, but there has been collateral damage with visiting bloggers getting banned as Henry Abbott of True Hoop pointed out.

Cuban had to use stupid logic to defend his boycott, saying that he doesn’t have anything against bloggers, he just doesn’t think some should get preferential treatment just because they write for a credible news outlet like the Dallas Morning News or ESPN, as opposed to say, Juiced Sports Blog. But, isn’t that what he does with all the print reporters, letting ESPN and the Dallas Morning News get locker room access instead of some high school paper?

I can see why Henry Abbott or Andrew Kamenetzky of the Los Angeles Times, both of whom were banned from the Mav’s locker last night, would be mad about this; they actually deserve access. But, why is the entire sports blogosphere acting as if Stephen A. Smith spouted off about blogging?

The Serious Tip has started a Mark Cuban ban and other blogs have joined in saying they will no longer talk about him.

Well, they already did him a whole lot of good talking about him this past week. Look at how much his blog’s traffic has surged because of the hype surrounding his ban:

I don’t know if The Serious Tip is being intentionally over-the-top here in their post about banning Cuban, but they are taking Cuban’s ban too seriously and way out of context:

I have seen places where bloggers are prosecuted. I have read their struggles against oppression. In countries all over the world, the innocent who clamor only for a voice are arrested and jailed, many without representation. All for the ability and desire to express their thoughts. The power of unrestricted voice is frightening to the establishment, and too often that establishment has gone beyond the limits of comprehension to stifle the speech of the common blogger.

Something tells me there is a difference between political protesters being jailed and a professional NBA blogger being banned for posting about the Fire Avery Johnson crusade. If you want to talk about bloggers being prosecuted, talk about China, where bloggers are actually being jailed and censored for protesting human rights violations… not for getting paid to make smart-ass posts about whether Mark Cuban was being truthful when he stood behind Avery Johnson.

Furthermore, it’s not bloggers who are getting prosecuted in foreign lands. It’s anyone who protests the government overtly. It’s just that most of those countries already have a good grip on the mainstream media there, and blogging is the easier way to spread your protest.

The Serious Tip continues…

Here in America we are not jailed on account of our words. We are not prosecuted because of our announcements or analyses. We in the sports blogosphere are however, told how we can blog, where we can blog, and how often we can blog. Our undying desire to broadcast our opinions is being preempted by the heads of the very sports we love. We are being forced to choose between our hobby, or in few cases livelihood, or the leagues and organizations that we have followed, many since birth.

We aren’t being forced (or told) to do anything by any league execs. Most of us have no influence with any league execs. It’s the guys who work for major corporations who might have to watch what they say a little. This is nothing new. The NFL forced ESPN to stop producing “Playmakers.” The NFL (and I’m sure other leagues) has done that numerous other times on news stories that might hurt their image or a team’s image.

We aren’t being forced to choose between hobby and livelihood. Tim MacMahon was not a blogger until the Dallas Morning News hired him. It’s not his hobby, it’s his job. He can still do his job just as well as I, and 99% of the blogosphere, can do it as well: without credentials.

Blogging began as the unprofessional medium for people without any professional knowledge or access to get their thoughts out. You don’t need to be in the locker room to get a quote from Josh Howard saying, “I really want to win. It feels great.”

You find those quotes from the mainstream media then trash them. Granted, I can see how press access would help if you want to talk about the scene in the locker room or whatever, but most of us do it fine with no locker room access.

I will acknowledge that this is a vengeful policy, that individual media members should not be targeted like this, but this is hardly something to use to unite the entire blogosphere against Cuban. This was Cuban targeting a single member of the mainstream media. This is also the first time bloggers have ever been on the side of the mainstream media.

It is not, however, prosecution or censorship.

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