On February 21st, Dallas Mavericks owner and billionaire businessman Mark Cuban was fined $600,000 in response to his comments that the team is “tanking” and that it would be better if they would continue to lose. On Julius “Dr. J” Irving’s new podcast, House Call with Dr. J, Cuban said:
“I’m probably not supposed to say this, but I just had dinner with a bunch of our guys the other night, and here we are, you know, we weren’t competing for the playoffs. I was like, ‘Look, losing is our best option,'”
“[NBA Commissioner] Adam [Silver] would hate hearing that, but at least I sat down and I explained it to them. And I explained what our plans were going to be this summer, that we’re not going to tank again. This was, like, a year and a half of tanking, and that was too brutal for me.
“But being transparent…I think that’s the key to being kind of a players’ owner and having stability — you’ve got to communicate.”
According to the NBA, Cuban’s comments were detrimental to the league. Cuban has never been one to mince words and usually is very vocal with his opinions. It seems the NBA didn’t take too kindly to Cuban saying what everyone already seemed to know: the Mavericks are tanking for a better draft pick. The Mavericks are 18-40 this season, the third worst in the league.
It hasn’t been a great week for Cuban, who also recently got caught up in a scandal involving allegations of rampant sexual harassment and misconduct in the Mavericks organization. Published in a story by Sports Illustrated, former employees have claimed that Cuban knew of these issues, but either didn’t do enough to investigate them or flat out ignored them.
In any case, Cuban’s fine for his comments shouldn’t hurt him too bad financially.