Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was fined US$600,000 for public statements detrimental to the NBA, league commissioner Adam Silver announced on Wednesday.
On Monday’s episode of the House Call with Dr. J podcast, Cuban said it was in the Mavericks’ best interest to lose games on purpose and improve their chances of landing a higher draft pick.
“I’m probably not supposed to say this, but ... I just had dinner with a bunch of our guys the other night, and here we are ... we weren’t competing for the playoffs. I was like: ‘Look, losing is our best option,’” Cuban said. “Adam would hate hearing that, but I at least sat down and I explained it to them. And I explained what our plans were going to be this summer, that we’re not going to tank again.”
“This was, like, a year-and-a-half of tanking, and that was too brutal for me, but being transparent, I think that’s the key to being kind of a players’ owner and having stability,” he added.
Under the current format, the team with the worst record has a 25 percent chance of landing the No. 1 overall draft pick, followed by 19.9 percent for the second-worst record and 15.6 percent for the third.
The league’s board of governors in September last year approved changes that, starting next year, would see the three worst regular-season teams each have a 14 percent chance of winning the lottery.
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Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
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