The loss of the Mavericks against Chicago on the penultimate day of the regular season has been one of the main topics of conversation around the NBA for a few weeks. The league has recently imposed a financial sanction on the Texan franchise considering that their decisions in that clash went against the rules of resting players and had the intention of making them lose, as it finally ended up happening. However, it seems that this was not a decision that Dallas made only in the face of this clash, but rather that it had been mulling over before.
This is what Kevin O’Connor, a journalist for The Ringerwho affirms that in the franchise they considered starting the tanking at the end of March and cancel the season before the last week. According to this information, the coaching staff met with the players and told them that men like Markieff Morris and JaVale McGee were going to have more minutes on court from that moment on, something that was perceived by the squad as a way of giving up in the fight for the play-in. In effect, this marked the point at which the offices intended to start the tankingbut Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving protested the decision and refused to sit out while the team was in the fight.
The objective of this idea was, of course, to drop a few more positions in the table and try to improve the chances of obtaining one of the first 10 picks in the 2023 draft, since otherwise it will be transferred to New York. Had they finished behind Utah in the standings, the Mavs would have only had a 3.1% chance of losing their pick; Currently, these are 20.2%.
Most troubling, though, is perhaps the stark discrepancy between the franchise and Luka that this story reflects. In Dallas they have already begun to worry about how their star will digest this failure and how much it will fill the glass of their patience. And although all this will be easier to forget if the situation changes from the next course, they will have to work hard for this to happen.
(Cover photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
