Mavericks owner says team tanked late-season games

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May 17, 2017 9:01 PM

The Mavericks went 2-5 after being eliminated from playoff chances to finish 33-49 after having started the campaign a woeful 3-15.

Owner Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks reacts during the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on February 17, 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said Wednesday he made moves to lower his teams chances to win in order to "tank" gamaes after being eliminated from NBA playoff contention.

The famously outspoken owner said on "The Dan Patrick Show" he made the moves to obtain a poorer record to improve the team's chances of gaining a high pick from the NBA Draft Lottery.

"Once we were eliminated from the playoffs, we did everything possible to lose games," Cuban said.

Cuban did not say players deliberately dropped matches, but pushed to have younger, less experienced players on the court more in the late-season contests after being eliminated from playoff hopes on April 1.

"Once a guy walks on the court, they're going to play their heart out, particularly the young guys because they have something to prove," Cuban said.

But it didn't help the Mavericks. Dallas had 6.1 percent odds of obtaining a top-three pick in next month's NBA Draft from Tuesday's NBA Draft Lottery but did not move up and will select ninth overall.

"It works well enough, I guess," Cuban said of the lottery system. "It obviously creates some misincentives toward the end of the season for teams that aren't going to make the playoffs. Until you come up with a better solution, that's what we've got."

NBA commissioner Adam Silver has ripped any sort of intentional losing to improve lottery chances. The lottery was developed to prevent the top pick from being assured of going to the worst overall team, removing incentive for finishing last by removing the ensured reward of the top pick.

"We're going to have to react and change incentives a bit. I do think it's frustrating," Silver told ESPN radio in April, bringing up the notion of relegation as takes place in European football.

"I'm not saying we're going to do it in the NBA but they have the best incentives of all because teams actually get relegated from the league," Silver said.

"Think of the consequences there -- they lose their television money, they lose their big ticket revenue by not playing the top teams. So teams have every incentive not to fall to the bottom."

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