The National Basketball Referees Association is aggressively asserting that the NBA is cowing to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, charging him with pursuing a competitive advantage for his team “via threats and intimidation” toward game referees. The Vertical obtained a series of memorandums distributed recently among the league's 64 referees – including correspondences between the NBRA and NBA – that describe over a year of discord between the referees and league office, largely centered on Cuban. In a recent letter to Byron Spruell, the NBA's president of league operations, NBRA general counsel Lee Seham outlined what the union considers to be a lengthy pattern of documented violations by Cuban of the NBA constitution and “undue influence of the league's management of its officials.”