Resource: Dallas Mavericks fire Tony Ronzone after July sexual assault allegation

Dallas Mavericks manager of player personnel Tony Ronzone was fired following the company learned new information pertaining to a sexual assault allegation made public , a source confirmed to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon on Monday.

Sports Illustrated reported in July a girl said Ronzone had forced himself on her at his Las Vegas hotel room throughout the NBA’s yearly summer league at July 2019. According to the report, the girl said Ronzone forcibly kissed her, then groped her, pinned her onto a bed and put her hands on his crotch after he’d encouraged her to his hotel to present her summer match tickets.

Mark Baute, Ronzone’s lawyer, told Sports Illustrated via email last summer the female’s”claims are meritless.”

The girl first informed the Mavericks of this alleged attack in an email to staff owner Mark Cuban at September 2019, resulting in an internal evaluation overseen by CEO Cynthia Marshall, that had been hired by Cuban to modify the culture of their business after a 2018 Sports Illustrated report detailed widespread improper sexual behaviour and misogyny from the franchise’s own business operations.

Marshall told Sports Illustrated past summer that Ronzone in the time stayed in his job with the group since”there was no evidence presented of sexual attack.”

The Mavericks known as the Sports Illustrated report a”one-sided, pristine and sensational kind of humor, with its inaccuracies, mischaracterizations and omissions” in a statement soon after it was released last summer.

The group said the formal research into the allegation was shut”pending further plausible evidence emerging along with the zero-tolerance policy stays.”