Dallas Mavericks team owner Mark Cuban, left, sits with players Luka Doncic, center, and Kyrie Irving on the sidelines during the first quarter against the Memphis Grizzlies in an NBA basketball game in Dallas, Monday, March 13, 2023. (AP Photo/LM Otero) (LM Otero, AP)
Adam Silver’s biggest tweak to the NBA since taking over for David Stern — the play-in tournament — produced this year both a finalist and semifinalist.
The Heat and Lakers got through Silver’s extra game(s) and demonstrated there’s hope for the play-in teams beyond extra revenue for postseason gates. On a broader scale, the league is wide open because the Warriors and LeBron James lost their fizzle. We’re guaranteed five different champions over five years for the first time since (get this!) 1977 to 1981.
Which brings us to the Dallas Mavericks and their decision to sit this one out. It’s impossible to overstate just how badly they botched it.
Armed with one of the league’s top players in Luka Doncic, they made a hard and rapid pivot from going all-in on the season to tanking it away. They traded for a win-now piece and the picture of instability, Kyrie Irving. Then they lost and lost more before deciding that keeping a lottery pick outweighed whatever chances Doncic and Irving might’ve had at a playoff run.
Now Mark Cuban, the orchestrator of the tank job, is watching the eighth-seeded Heat emerge from the second play-in round to shock the NBA world. The Heat, by the way, never tank.
Never ever. Pat Riley doesn’t allow it.
“Looking at what Jimmy Butler and the Heat have done, you can undersell your great talent in Doncic,” ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy said. “I’m not saying they would’ve advanced and made the playoffs and won big in the playoffs, but Doncic is that good where you always have a fighting chance. So it wouldn’t have been my preferred style if I was Dallas and yet I understand why they did what they did. I would’ve just given Doncic and Irving a chance or any chance they could have to do the unthinkable.”
With all respect to Van Gundy, it would’ve been more ‘unthinkable’ — at least before the playoffs started — to see Butler in the Finals with his group of Heat castaways than Doncic and the Mavericks. The idea behind acquiring Irving should’ve been about catching lightning in a bottle, not sustainability or some long-term plan that the point guard will undoubtedly sabotage anyway.
Irving is like the Gravitron ride at the carnival. Fun in the beginning. Dizzying euphoria in small doses. But too much exposure and you’re left nauseous with a headache. Perhaps some vomiting.
Now the Mavericks have boxed themselves into a position of HAVING to give Irving a long-term contract this summer just to keep him. If not, the draft picks and assets used to relieve the Nets of their Irving headache would be a complete waste.
Oh, and by the way, Dallas has no idea if Doncic and Irving can play together. The only evidence — which was cut short by the tank job — points to the contrary. They’re not compatible. Doncic was miserable at the end of the season and openly defied the organizational tank decision.
That 10th overall pick better turn into something special.
()
Originally published at Tribune News Service