The NBA is investigating the Dallas Mavericks for tanking, although investigating doesn’t exactly seem like the right word. Really, what is there to investigate?
After all, it shouldn’t be too hard to look at the Mavericks’ injury report for last week’s game against the Chicago Bulls and figure out what was going on.
It’s not like the Mavericks were the first to do it either and it only lasted a few games. Some teams have been doing it all year. Why?
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Well, there’s was one big, 7-foot-4 reason. His name is Victor Wembanyama.
A talent so special that the term ‘unicorn’, typically reserved for players who resemble something unique and never seen before, wouldn’t suffice.
Instead, LeBron James called the French phenom an “alien” in an interview with Sports Illustrated last year. And Wembanyama was “really glad” the Lakers superstar said that.
“Because I didn’t like to be called a unicorn,” he added.
“I like it because it’s just something not from this world.”
There was already an expectation before a ball was tipped that there would be a ‘Tankathon’ for the otherworldly talent this season, with commissioner Adam Silver putting teams on “notice” as a result.
“We’re going to be paying particular attention to the issue this year,” Silver said in October last year.
Meanwhile, fans were paying particularly close attention to Wembanyama on the NBA App, which had been streaming his French league games for free.
The NBA clearly understood how much of a drawcard the 19-year-old was and will continue to be in years to come, so they did whatever it takes to capitalise on the surging interest.
Some teams have done the same. Others, who were expected to have actually done the exact opposite and in turn created one of the more intriguing NBA seasons in recent years.
Think of the Oklahoma City Thunder and Utah Jazz, two teams who were tipped to manage maybe just over 20 wins this season but instead stayed competitive right until the very end.
In fact, the Thunder are both planning for the future while thriving in the present — qualifying for this year’s play-in tournament and chasing an unlikely playoff berth.
But plenty of teams did participate in the ‘Tankathon’ for Wembanyama. The Dallas Mavericks though were technically not one of them.
They intentionally lost their final two games of the season for a very different reason, as ESPN’s Tim MacMahon explained last week on ‘NBA Today’.
“This is frankly just a transparent tank job,” he said at the time.
“The Mavericks decided they would rather prioritise lottery position than the slim chance of trying to fight for a play-in spot.”
By losing to the Bulls, the Mavericks are now most likely to land the 10th pick in the draft, which would mean salvaging something out of an otherwise substandard season.
There is still no guarantee that happens but the odds are a lot better as a result. Essentially, Dallas won by losing — and did it in an obvious way.
A lot of other teams did that in the last week of the season though, so why is it that they aren’t being investigated?
Well, it starts with comments from coach Jason Kidd which MacMahon described as the “smoking gun” on ‘Brian Windhorst & The Hoop Collective’.
You see, speaking before that Bulls game, Kidd made the mistake of being a little too honest.
“We all said that we want to have the opportunity to find a way to get in [to the playoffs] and we were going to play until told otherwise,” he told reporters.
“Today is the day that we’ve been told that we’re going do something different.”
“That’s why the Mavericks are in trouble,” ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said.
“In the NBA you can do something but when you say what you’re doing that’s when you get in trouble.”
Elsewhere in Portland, the Trail Blazers — who have won a total of seven games post All-Star break in the last two seasons — named a starting five of Skylar Mays, Kevin Knox, Jeenathan Williams, Shaedon Sharpe and Trendon Watford.
They went on to give up an NBA record 55 first-quarter points in the 157-101 defeat to the Golden State Warriors, their ninth loss in 10 games to finish the season.
But no word from the league office about any investigation. And as MacMahon went to point out, it’s not like tanking didn’t exist before Wembanyama.
A generational prospect like the 19-year-old just gives teams an even greater incentive to tank even harder.
“The tanking is a massive problem,” MacMahon said.
“This is not a one-year Victor is at the top of the draft thing, absolutely not, we are not buying that… these teams are all incentivised to do what they are doing, that is the problem here.”
The Mavericks definitely had an incentive to tank in the form of that first-round pick. But it wasn’t just Kidd’s pre-game comments that landed Dallas in trouble.
Rather, ESPN’s Tim Bontemps believes it was the sudden and blatant nature of the Mavericks’ attempt that left the NBA with little choice but to act.
“The reason why the NBA is doing this is the Mavericks embarrassed the NBA and embarrassed the league office,” he said on ‘Brian Windhorst & The Hoop Collective’.
“If those quotes were not said, if Jason Kidd didn’t say anything and walked away, [there would be] the outcry and furore around the Mavericks saying, ‘Hey, you’re play-in tournament, the thing you created to have everybody care about the end of the season, we’re going to give you the double middle finger and we’re not going to even attempt to play in these games, we’re going for a draft pick’.
“That’s why the league office is doing this. The reason we are doing this is because with Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving on the team and the Mavericks having a chance to win their way into the playoffs, there was an injury report put out that made it very clear that Dallas was trying to lose the game.
“Obviously J-Kidd’s comments laid out what they were doing on top of it. But the bottom line is the Mavericks embarrassed the league and embarrassed the league’s play-in tournament as a thing that was going to have teams motivated to play until the end of the season and they did it with two of the biggest stars in the league and the league is either going to come down like hell hath no fury on them or what has already been ridiculous open season with the embarrassment the Portland Trail Blazers have been in the past couple of years.”
Of course, this is not the first time the NBA has come down on tanking and, funnily enough, it was Mavericks owner Mark Cuban on the receiving end the last time. Coincidence much?
Cuban was slapped with a $600,000 fine in 2018 for publicly admitting that tanking was his team’s best option and communicating that reality to his playing group.
The league said in a statement that Cuban’s comments were “detrimental to the NBA”.
But in reality, all Cuban did was confirm what everyone else knew and the same goes for Kidd, who may be punished for admitting to what’s already an open secret in the league anyway.
There is never going to be a simple fix either. It would’ve already been in place otherwise. The lottery in its current form incentivises tanking but it also provides failing franchises with a chance to take a significant step towards improving their roster. It helps achieve parity.
Plus, it’s not like tanking was much of an issue this season until the very end, with the Trail Blazers and Mavericks being the two most well-publicised examples.
Zach Lowe probably said it best on ‘NBA Today’ last week, calling what the Mavericks did both “rational and embarrassing at the same time”.
“It’s a depressing place to land but it’s the incentive structure the NBA sets up with the lottery,” the ESPN reporter said.
So, what or who should the NBA really be investigating?