After Mark Cuban got fined a significant amount of money for straight-up saying that the Mavs have tanked/will be tanking, you know he’s gonna take steps to make it look like he’s not doing the exact thing he said he was doing. And that means winning some games. As much as it hurts the placement of their draft pick, they’re gonna win some damn games.
Normally I would pin this win on the small, short shoulders of J.J. “Best Backup PG in the League” Barea, who sort of dominated the fourth quarter with his scoring and passing, but I know it’s not his fault. If the Mavs really didn’t want to win they would have played Yogi Ferrell at the PG spot for the entire fourth quarter. But they did want to win, so they played Barea instead, and what do you know, they actually DID come away with a win against a solid Eastern Conference playoff team.
I think this has built up enough goodwill with the league for the Mavs to blatantly tank away at least the next three or four games, as long as Cubes shuts up about what the real plan is.