The Dallas Mavericks Face the Kings in a Battle for Draft Position

The Dallas Mavericks are by no means the type of team that is going to intentionally lose. That being said, this matchup with the Sacramento Kings will be highlighted by the 2.5 game difference between the teams in standings.

Harrison Barnes, Wesley Matthews, Dirk Nowitzki and the rest of the Dallas Mavericks team are a proud group. The thoughts of tanking are ones that never went through their mind, even after they learned of the notorious “e” that would accompany them in every display of the NBA standings for the remainder of the season.

Really, this should never come as a surprise to the fans of the Mavs out there. On paper, it seems obvious that Dallas should be battling for a draft position and forgetting these last 6 games, but professional athletes don’t really adhere to that kind of logic.

Competitiveness from players is what makes this game fun and there is a whole lot of it in Dallas. This means that sometimes, Rick Carlisle and Mark Cuban have to take things into their own hands in order to keep the team from throwing away a potential Top 10 pick. The problem with that is that Carlisle hates the idea of tanking too.

Tonight, the Mavericks head to Sacramento to play the Kings, a team struggling in their own right to keep their draft position as they have won 3 of their last 5 games. Both teams are guaranteed to have less than 40 wins on the season but they continue to fight night in and night out.

I can respect that.

Dallas is likely to be without Harrison Barnes, J.J. Barea, Seth Curry, Dirk Nowitzki, and Wesley Matthews for tonight. Missing 4 starters is a tough way to win a game but expect to see a lot of run time for some of our younger players tonight against the Kings.

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The Mavs and Kings will start at 9:30 CT. After this game, the Mavericks will finish out the week with the Clippers tomorrow and the Spurs on Friday.