The Dallas Mavericks might have had the NBA’s best offseason thanks to their signing of DeAndre Jordan and Wes Matthews, two of the most in-demand players on the open market.
It’s no secret that Matthews wanted to play alongside Jordan and signed with the Mavs because of that. But what if the Mavs had whiffed on signing the big man and he re-signed with his former team, the Los Angeles Clippers? Had that happened, the Mavs planned to tank the season in effort to get a high draft pick.
While the sentiment probably doesn’t sit well with Dirk Nowitzki, that’s the word according to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
“We wanted to get Wes, he was a target for us all summer, and obviously DeAndre as well. But if we got shut out, we weren’t going to just try to fill the roster,” Cuban said during a recent radio interview with KTCK-AM 1310 in Dallas. “We had the discussion that if we couldn’t get a serious free agent, whether it was one of the guys still out there or some of the guys who already went, then it was time to take a step back.”
Cuban and tanking don’t really go hand-in-hand so it’s hard to tell if he’s actually being serious or just going for a dramatic effect here. Either way, disaster avoided for Dallas Mavericks fans.
