The Dallas Mavericks benched their starters at the end of the season in an effort to help their draft position. It’s going to hurt owner Mark Cuban’s pocketbook.
The NBA fined the Mavericks $750K for “conduct detrimental to the league,” after they sat players against the Chicago Bulls on April 7 in a presumed attempt to intentionally lose the contest. Dallas put nearly its entire starting lineup on the injury report and pulled star Luka Doncic after one quarter.
While the league acknowledges that teams will rest players, particularly at the end of the season, it’s both the manner in which the Mavericks did it and their history with brazen tanking that drew such a big fine.
Joe Dumars, the NBA’s executive vice president and head of basketball operations said in a statement, “The Dallas Mavericks’ decision to restrict key players from fully participating in an elimination game last Friday against Chicago undermined the integrity of our sport. The Mavericks’ actions failed our fans and our league.”
There are plenty of teams that were not trying to win at the end of the season. For example, the Portland Trail Blazer’s starting lineups at the end of the season included players who had failed to impress in the G League. They have only won seven games after the All-Star break over the last two seasons combined.
Speaking on The Hoop Collective podcast, ESPN’s Tim Bontemps said, “The reason why the NBA is [fining the Mavericks] is because the Mavericks embarrassed the NBA and embarrassed the league office.” Bontemps called Dallas’ decision to prioritize their draft positioning over a chance at the play-in tournament as “a double middle finger”
“The bottom line is the Mavericks embarrassed the league’s play-in tournament, and they did it with two of the biggest stars in the NBA (Doncic and Kyrie Irving),” he concluded.
The brazen nature of the tanking is what really drew this fine. 22-year-old Josh Green was held out for “rest,” despite there being only two games remaining in the season. Coach Jason Kidd essentially admitted to tanking, saying, “We were going to play until told otherwise.”
But the Mavericks are also repeat offenders. The NBA fined Dallas owner Mark Cuban $600K in 2018 for admitting that he told the team’s players that “[l]osing is our best option.”
The NBA clearly has a problem with teams not trying to win at the end of the season. It’s not limited to bad teams, either. Leading MVP contender Nikola Jokic sat out five of the final seven games, while fellow superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo skipped the last three.
Those other teams did not quite rise to the “double middle finger” level of the Mavericks, though. If a superstar-laden team does not care about the play-in, how can fans be expected to?
The biggest beneficiary of the Mavericks’ tanking? The Oklahoma City Thunder, who grabbed the 10-seed Dallas disdained and promptly knocked off the New Orleans Pelicans. Now, they’re one win away from two guaranteed playoff home games. That’s going to earn them far more than $740K.
