Day: April 3, 2023

The Dallas Mavericks could shut down Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving for the final games of the season if they completely fall out of the play-in picture.

As of Monday, the Mavericks are one game behind the Oklahoma City Thunder for 10th. The Thunder also own the tiebreaker over the Mavericks. When pivoting to the lottery, the Mavericks are currently 10th and could get to ninth depending on how they and the Utah Jazz finish.

If their pick is outside the top-10, it conveys to the New York Knicks.

“I’m told the organization is seriously considering the possibility of shutting down those two guys,” said Shams Charania. “They have a top-10 protected pick. Being out of the play-in race, it behooves them not to try to keep their pick and at that point you have the flexibility of potentially having that top-10 pick, you have three first round picks you can trade this offseason to go get a star and potentially more players on the marketplace. They are going to be one of the more active teams.”

The NBPA was adamant in their opposition to a hard cap, which was initially proposed by the owners but fairly quickly abandoned in negotations. There was some concern from small market teams how a hard cap could hurt them as much as the traditionally high payroll teams it would ostensibly be instituted to punish.

“Even what a lot of small market teams were worried about a hard cap in places, like let’s say Cleveland, where all of a sudden you’re good enough to win a championship,” said Adrian Wojnarowski on his podcast. “You have a team and you’re willing to go into the tax to keep that team together. Then all of a sudden with a hard cap and guaranteed contracts, the Cavs, using them as an example, or Oklahoma City four or five years from now, the smaller market teams worried ‘This is going to work against us.’

“If Cleveland can’t keep Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell. Or Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen. They have to pick one of them and one of those guys leaves and goes to a market, it defeats the purpose of why you wanted a hard cap to protect yourselves from Steve Ballmer spending or Joe Lacob spending and that didn’t happen. That was off the table fairly early.”