Mark Cuban made headlines recently when he said during a podcast that he had a meeting with some of the players on the Dallas Mavericks and told them losing games was their best option. Well, it turns out star player Dirk Nowitzki thinks that wasn't the best idea.
The NBA, upon hearing the news of Cuban's advocation of tanking, fined the Mavericks owner $600,000. His comments were deemed “detrimental to the NBA” by commissioner Adam Silver.
Since then, the Mavericks have actually played like a team that is not trying to tank. They have won three of their last seven games, including wins against Indiana and Denver.
Dallas beat the slumping New York Knicks on Tuesday, and Nowitzki addressed the idea of the team possibly having to show the league that is, in fact, not trying to lose games. In his comments, he gave his opinions on what Cuban said back in February.
Dirk Nowitzki, on whether it's important to show that the Mavs aren't one of the tanking teams: "Well, I think Mark messed that up for us."
— Brian Mahoney (@briancmahoney) March 14, 2018
It's clear that Nowitzki is upset about what Cuban said. In reality, any player would be. The old mantra is organizations tank, but players don't.
Nowitzki is right to say that Cuban messing things up for the team. But it's unclear what he means exactly. All Cuban really did was publicly acknowledge what is rampant throughout all the bad teams in the NBA.
Perhaps Nowitzki knew that losing was part of the team's plans, and Cuban exposing that in public now makes it close to impossible for the Mavericks to actually do it because of the public perception. After all, Nowitzki and Cuban are likely very close and probably have talked about tanking to some extent this season.
Dallas fans know that the team is not good and is a lock for missing the playoffs this season. They know that losing will be the franchise's best chance to get a good player in the draft and prepare for what's left without Nowitzki.
But tanking hurts the NBA's reputation and loses them money. That could be what this whole thing is about.
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