Mark Cuban Has Been Fined $600,000 By The NBA For His Tanking Comments

The days following NBA All-Star Weekend have brought a lot of attention to the Dallas Mavericks organization for all the wrong reasons.

A bombshell report from Sports Illustrated dropped on Tuesday night detailing numerous allegations of sexual misconduct from high-ranking members of the Mavs organization, chiefly former CEO Terdema Ussery and former Mavs.com writer Earl Sneed. The latter of those was fired following the Sports Illustrated story that made public his history of domestic violence against two women.

Cuban has plead ignorance to the stories that have come out about Ussery, which many have questioned how an owner known for being so hands on could possibly be that unaware of so many different allegations, and expressed regret over not firing Sneed sooner. The NBA will be “closely monitoring” the team’s independent investigation into the matter, but before that even begins the league announced Cuban would be paying a significant fine for comments unrelated to the allegations of rampant misconduct within the organization.

The league announced on Wednesday that Cuban would be fined $600,000 for comments he made on Dr. J’s new podcast, House Call, in which Cuban said he told his team losing is in the organization’s best interests.

Unsurprisingly, the NBA did not take kindly to Cuban admitting to tanking and admitting to telling his players that the organization wanted them to lose. The $600,000 fine is hefty in a vacuum, but to a billionaire like Cuban is not nearly as painful as the sticker shock of that fine appears to the average person. That said, it is the largest fine the NBA has ever levied against Cuban, who has been penalized plenty of times by the league.

In any case, this is the least of Cuban’s worries right now as the pending investigation into the Mavs could yield much bigger punishments for him.