INDIANAPOLIS — The Dallas Mavericks enter Sunday’s road game against the Indiana Pacers riding a 10-game losing streak, the franchise’s most amount of consecutive losses in almost three decades.
The losses haven’t piled up this much since Dallas finished 20-62 during the 1997-98 season, which immediately led to the acquisition of Dirk Nowitzki on draft night. Even minority shareholder Mark Cuban hasn’t seen a streak of this magnitude during his 23 years of owning the team.
This rapid frequency of defeats could signal to some skeptics that Dallas has officially entered the league’s race of tanking.
Tanking — purposely losing to improve a team’s chances with the draft lottery — is a popular topic of discussion throughout the NBA this season. Commissioner Adam Silver said taking is “worse this year than we’ve seen in recent memory” during his annual news conference during All-Star Weekend.
Shortly before the Mavericks suffered their 10th straight loss on Friday, Kidd was asked about tanking and how the league plans to address the issue.
“That word ‘tanking’ is sometimes misused,” Kidd said. “Sometimes teams aren’t trying to tank. They just don’t have enough firepower to win. A serious injury to a star player can pivot a franchise, and that happens but I think we’re in good hands with the league.”
Kidd could be speaking broadly, but that logic applies to his own team. The Mavericks (19-36) have struggled mightily this season because of injuries, ranging from Kyrie Irving, Dereck Lively II, Daniel Gafford and formerly, Anthony Davis. Even Cooper Flagg, who was drafted with the No. 1 pick last summer, is currently sidelined with a left midfoot sprain.
The Pacers were recently fined $100,000 by the NBA for violating the Player Participation Policy in connection with the team’s game against the Utah Jazz on Feb. 3. The league said an investigation, including review by an independent physician, determined that Pascal Siakam, a star player under the policy, and two other Pacers starters, neither of whom participated in the game, could have played.
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Indiana (15-57) has the worst record in the Eastern Conference after losing Tyrese Haliburton to a torn Achilles in Game 7 of last season’s NBA Finals. Subsequently, former All-Star center Myles Turner left in free agency to join Milwaukee.
The Jazz was also fined $500,000 for conduct detrimental to the league also related to the management of its roster. Both teams are destined for this year’s lottery, Utah for the fourth straight year.
“Overt behavior like this that prioritizes draft position over winning undermines the foundation of NBA competition and we will respond accordingly to any further actions that compromise the integrity of our games,” Silver said in a prepared statement to address the fines. “Additionally, we are working with our Competition Committee and Board of Governors to implement further measures to root out this type of conduct.”
Silver informed the league’s general managers Thursday that changes to prevent tanking will occur as soon as next season, according to a report by ESPN’s Shams Charania.
Those changes include, but are not limited to:
– No longer allowing a team to pick in the top four in consecutive years and/or after consecutive bottom-three finishes
– Teams can’t pick in the top four the year after making the conference finals
– Lottery extended to include all play-in teams
– Flatten odds for all lottery teams
The first two rules would affect the Mavericks this summer if they were already in place. One season after the Mavericks’ Finals run in 2024, they won the draft lottery and received the opportunity to select Flagg with the No. 1 pick last May.
They would not be able to pick in the first four of a top-heavy 2026 draft class if the rules were in place this season.
Nonetheless, Kidd expects the NBA to buckle down on the tanking epidemic soon.
“They’ll come up with some new rule to try to stay away from that word ‘tanking,’” Kidd said. “When we talk about tanking, there’s only a few. Hopefully that doesn’t ruin the batch for the others that are trying to play.”
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