To Tank or not to Tank?

A topic of much discussion this year in the NBA has been tanking. Many teams unloaded their rosters in the hope of being bad enough to secure a high draft pick in what is supposed to be a loaded draft class led by Kansas' Andrew Wiggins. Shockingly the team who was supposed the worst of all the tankers, the Philadelphia 76ers, have gotten off to a 3-0 start.

One team who is definitely not tanking however is the Dallas Mavericks. After losings out on  big ticket free-agents Deron Williams and Dwight Howard the last two years, the Mavs decided their best course of action was to put together as good a roster as possible this year by signing the likes of Monta Ellis and Jose Calderon to long term deals.
Was this the best course of action for the franchise or should the Mavs have gotten in on the tankapalooza and sold off their best assets including even Dirk Nowitzki?
I believe the organization made the right decision with their off-season moves for a number of reasons. The biggest reason not to tank is the presence of Dirk. Unlike teams like the 76ers or the Suns they already have a franchise player, albeit an aging one. Despite his age the Mavs believe and so do I that Dirk has a number of good years left in him, and the key should be to maximize those years while you can. With Dirk being a free-agent at the end of this year they will also be able to sign him to a lesser contract, which he says is willing to do, so they will still be able to be aggressive in the free-agent and trade market. That will enable the front office to put together a roster that while still having Dirk as a focal point, will put less of a burden on him to have to carry the team as he gets even further up in years
While this year's Mavericks roster is probably not a championship contender it can be a playoff team and by adding even more pieces next offseason maybe become more of a contender.  If you were to commit yourself in the other direction and chase more ping pong balls you might get lucky and get a franchise changing player but more likely than not you won't get a Wiggins type player and even if you do he still will need good players to surround him, and most likely you will be back in that same situation year after year. You can look at the Mavericks of the 90's for an example of that scenario.

Which gets me into another reason not to tank that Mark Cuban himself has brought as a reason he is against tanking. Since Cuban has owned the team and with Dirk as its star player, the Mavs have developed a winning culture that has cultivated  sustained success for a long period of time. If the team reached the bottom of the standing a different culture would start to take over, a culture that would be indifferent to losing and a culture that looked more for quick fixes and easy solutions. Who knows how long it would take to overcome that type of losing attitude? We saw a whole decade of truly terrible basketball in this city in the 90's and I for one don't want to return to those losing ways. The Mavericks front office led by Cuban and Donnie Nelson have truly developed an organization that is first class and considered one the best in the entire league. Although they haven't been able to lure in a big name free agent it does not mean they can't once again put together a championship contender hopefully with Dirk still playing a big part of it.
While tanking might be the best course of action for other franchises the Mavs are still in a position that with a few  moves that work out right they can once again reach the league's elite level. When Dallas traded for Tyson Chandler no one thought he would the piece that would put the Mavs over the top into a championship team. But that's exactly what happened. You don't know when the next Tyson Chandler or Jason Terry will fall into your lap, so you keep at adding quality pieces such as Ellis and Calderon but also hopefully setting your self up for future success. You might fail in the long run, but I believe the path the Mavericks on is the right one for everybody involved, and hope that sometime in the near future we will once again see the Mavs playing deep into the postseason.