The Mavericks decided to drop the towel as they rested five key players, including Kyrie Irving, in a must-win game against the Bulls.
Furthermore, Dallas played Luka Doncic just 13 minutes and used mainly young players as the team lost to Chicago, a team that has already secured its spot in the play-in tournament and also rested its main players.
Dallas lost the game 112-115 and was eliminated from the play-in tournament. Mavs head coach Jason Kidd was asked how it feels to waive the white flag at the end of the season during the postgame press conference.
“Just understanding it’s not so much waving the white flag, it’s decisions sometimes are hard in this business and you have to make hard decisions,” Kidd said after the game.
“We’re trying to build a championship team and sometimes you got to take a step back and understanding, again, with this decision maybe this is a step back, but hopefully it leads to going up forward.
“So again, it’s not always easy to make decision, but these are decisions that are made from my bosses and we got to follow them. We trust [Mark] Cuban and Nico [Williams] are going to put the pieces together to put us a in a position to win a champion and so that’s just starting the process today.”
By being eliminated from the play-in tournament, the Mavericks secured a potential top 10 draft pick which would have gone to the Knicks otherwise.
