Mavs Fined $750K for Sitting Kyrie Irving, More vs. Bulls to Try to Keep Draft Pick

The Dallas Mavericks will pay the price for their decision to sit Kyrie Irving and others during their April 7 loss to the Chicago Bulls when they still had a chance to make the playoffs.

On Friday, the NBA announced it fined the Mavericks $750,000 "for conduct detrimental to the league in an elimination game."

The league's statement explained: "The Mavericks violated the league's player resting policy and demonstrated through actions and public statements the organization's desire to lose the game in order to improve the chances of keeping its first-round pick in the 2023 NBA draft. The league did not find that the players who participated in the game were not playing to win."

Chicago defeated Dallas 115-112, but the final score was far from the biggest storyline to come out of the contest.

Irving, Tim Hardaway Jr., Maxi Kleber, Josh Green and Christian Wood all sat out the game, while Luka Dončić played for a single quarter. The NBA quickly revealed it was investigating the organization's tactics, and it took less than a week to reach a conclusion.

While the idea of tanking is nothing new in the NBA, seeing a team that still had postseason hopes approach a late-season game like that was rather jarring. The Mavericks would have needed to defeat the Bulls and the San Antonio Spurs and have the Memphis Grizzlies beat the Oklahoma City Thunder to make the play-in tournament.

The loss to Chicago eliminated any chance of that.

There was some benefit to losing, though, as the Mavericks' 2023 first-round pick is top-10-protected. It goes to the New York Knicks if it falls outside of the top 10, and the loss to Chicago dropped Dallas into 10th from the bottom in the league's overall standings.

It will still require some draft-lottery luck to keep that first-round pick, but the team is better positioned in that regard than it would have been if it had won its last two games.

That the NBA pointed to public statements in its announcement was notable because head coach Jason Kidd didn't exactly do much to dispel the idea his team was tanking when he talked about the strategy.

"It's not so much waving the white flag," he told reporters. "It's decisions sometimes are hard in this business. We're trying to build a championship team. With this decision, this is maybe a step back. But hopefully it leads to going forward."

Perhaps there will be some long-term benefit for the Mavericks.

But there is now a short-term cost as well.