Mark Cuban admitted the Dallas Mavericks tanked at the end of the season, but says it’s not as orchestrated an effort as you might think. The Mavs owner appeared on The Dan Patrick Show Wednesday morning, hours after the NBA Draft Lottery rewarded Dallas with the ninth pick in next month’s NBA Draft.
The segment starts with Patrick asking Cuban about the lottery process, which Cuban says works “well enough, I guess.” Patrick pitches him on an alternative lottery system, one that gives teams an extra ping pong ball for every win they get after being officially eliminated from playoff contention. Cuban’s response is that teams could just not wait to tank, losing a lot early and then figuring things out after that to get a few more wins and get extra ping pong balls.
That’s when Cuban admitted that the Mavericks themselves were tanking this year.
The Mavs… once we were eliminated from the playoffs we did everything possible to lose games. And so if we did it up front. If we knew it was a rebuild season and we did it up front, you kind of know what kind of team you have. If you could get eliminated early and build some momentum, you could finish your season 30-10 and end up with a boatload of ping pong balls.
Patrick asked how a team tanks, and Cuban had a pretty simple response to that as well.
“You play all your young players,” Cuban said.
Patrick then wondered if there’s something more orchestrated to it, which Cuban denied.
“No, no. Because the guys—once a guy walks out onto the court—they’re going to play their heart out. Particularly the young guys, because they have something to prove. So Dorian Finney-Smith, Yogi Ferrell. there’s nothing you could say or do to them to say ‘Don’t play hard or try to lose this game.’ That won’t be right and I don’t think any NBA team would try to do that. But when you have Salah Mejri shooting threes…”
That’s a good line, and a pretty fair point. It’s not outright collusion with players that constitutes tanking, but in ownership and management. The best players might not be on the court, but those that are there are probably going to put in their best effort because they might need to play for a contract or roster spot.
Patrick also asked Cuban about LaVar Ball, including a question he’d asked fellow Shark Tank investor Daymon John about last week: how would LaVar Ball do on the show?
Oh, we would love it. I mean, he’d be confident. We always support entrepreneurs. He’d have a high-end product with lots of margin, but then we’d ask him about his sales. You know, it’s all great to talk but what are you selling? But if he got any traction, we’d probably be interested.
Ball’s entire Big Baller Brand schtick is about getting attention and growing a brand, but Cuban says it’s not that easy. He said there are two ways to make a brad: get lots of PR through money or good marketing, or finding a “loyal, growing, organic customer base.”
I tend to like the latter, and so on Shark Tank we see it all the time. Someone comes on the show, they get an obvious burst of PR, they get a big burst of sales, but from an execution standpoint they still don’t know how to sell, they don’t know how to go out and acquire customers, so—execution-wise—they’re going to have challenges. And so just because you have a lot of PR doesn’t mean you’ve built a brand, and it doesn’t mean you have a successful business.
So what happens now is really what’s key for their business.
Cuban balked at giving LaVar Ball direct advice—maybe because he’s seen how that works out if the name is big enough. “If they’re selling them, I’d say keep on doing what they’re doing,” he said. “And if you’re not selling them, I’d say you might want to take a look at what you’re doing.”
