Mark Cuban says the NBA should embrace tanking and criticizes recent punishments for teams

DALLAS — Mark Cuban wrote in a pair of lengthy posts on social media that the NBA should embrace tanking, and the minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks criticized the league for punishing teams that appear to be losing on purpose to improve their chances of landing a high pick in the draft.

Cuban's posts on X on Tuesday came three days after Commissioner Adam Silver said the NBA was considering changes to the draft lottery and the possibility of revoking picks.

When announcing a $500,000 fine last week for Utah after the Jazz sat star players Lauri Markkanen and Jaren Jackson Jr. in the fourth quarter of a loss to Orlando, Silver said the league “would respond accordingly to any further actions that compromise the integrity of our games.”

The sharpest comments from Cuban amounted to a response to Silver's strong words.

“The worst that the NBA dishes out is that if you don’t lie to your fans about what you are doing, even though it’s obvious to them, you get fined,” Cuban wrote. “And (they) threaten you with losing picks.”

Indiana president of basketball operations Kevin Pritchard, whose Pacers were fined $100,000 at the same time as the Jazz over roster management decisions, asked his fans in a post if they agreed with Cuban. Most did.

The Pacers reached the NBA Finals last season, losing to Oklahoma City. Their best player, Tyrese Haliburton, tore an Achilles tendon in Game 7, and the expectation was he would miss the entire 2025-26 season. Indiana lost 12 of its first 13 games and had a 13-game losing streak to drop to 6-31, but has a .500 record since then.

The Mavericks are in a similar situation a year after trading generational superstar Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for a package centered around oft-injured big man Anthony Davis, just nine months after Dallas reached the NBA Finals.

Davis missed more games than he played for the Mavs before getting sent to Washington in a trade deadline deal this year. It was the final step in moving on from an ill-fated trade. The first was the November firing of general manager Nico Harrison, who orchestrated the Doncic deal.

Dallas converted just a 1.8% chance in the lottery for the rights to draft former Duke star Cooper Flagg first overall this past summer.

Flagg is now the future of the franchise, and the Mavs have to decide, presumably soon, whether Kyrie Irving will play at all this season. The nine-time All-Star tore an ACL last March, and the Mavs entered the All-Star break on a nine-game losing streak, their longest in 28 years.

While Cuban is no longer in a decision-making role after selling majority ownership of the Mavs, he was fined $600,000 by the league when he was still in charge late in the 2022-23 season for admitting Dallas was tanking to try to protect a first-round pick. The Mavs ended up getting center Dereck Lively II, a promising talent who has been plagued by injuries.

With tanking a hot topic again, Cuban started his post with “Why the NBA should embrace tanking,” and went on to say fans don't mind tanking because they want to have hope that the team can improve.

“Few can remember the score from the last game they saw or went to,” Cuban wrote. “They can’t remember the dunks or shots. What they remember is who they were with. Their family, friends, a date. That’s what makes the experience special.”

With that in mind, Cuban said, the league should focus more on affordability than the integrity issue that is at the heart of tanking.

“The NBA should worry more about fan experience than tanking,” he wrote. “It should worry more about pricing fans out of games than tanking.”

Though the Mavericks weren't accused of tanking in 2017-18, Cuban essentially wrote in his post that they did. Dallas finished with its worst record in 30 years at 24-58, but didn't get lucky in the lottery like this past year. The Mavs ended up with the fifth pick and had to trade up two spots to get Doncic.

“We didn't tank often,” wrote Cuban, who also noted that current salary cap rules have made productive rookies even more valuable for winning rosters. “Only a few times over 23 years, but when we did, our fans appreciated it. And it got us to where we could improve, trade up to get Luka and improve our team.”