Maybe you were among those who never bought into conspiracy theories. You believed that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, moon landings were real, and referees were not helping Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.
You were fine with all that.
But then the Dallas Mavericks won the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA “lottery” against all odds this week.
Was there anybody who didn’t wince when they saw that?
Conspiracy theorists are having a field day with this one. The rest of us … hmmm.
Three months after the Mavericks made the dumbest trade in sports history — sending Luka Doncic, the best player in the league, to the Lakers in an insanely lopsided deal — and it somehow wasn’t vetoed by the NBA, even though there are precedents for such action (the attempted trade of Chris Paul to the Lakers in 2011). Then the very same Mavericks somehow won the lottery with only a 1.8% chance of doing so (10 teams had better odds).
It certainly is not a good look for the NBA. It was a little too convenient and symmetrical.
You can’t pin a conspiracy on the NBA, but you can blame the league for its ridiculous lottery system, which provides scant opportunity for losing teams to gain traction with the rest of the league via the draft. The lottery system does not promote parity, a la the NFL.
Since the lottery system was adopted in 1985, the team with the worst regular-season record has won the lottery only six times, the last time occurring in 2018, the year before the league flattened the odds from 25% to 14%.
The Pistons had the worst record in the league in 2022-23 and 2023-24 and wound up with the fifth pick in both drafts. The Atlanta Hawks won the lottery last year after finishing with the 10th-worst record in the league. They had only a 3% chance of winning.
The Mavericks moved up 10 spots in next month’s draft, the biggest move in lottery history, according to ESPN.
So fate has granted the Mavericks a mulligan after the idiotic Doncic trade. Now they will draft Cooper Flagg, a generational talent from Duke University.
“I don’t know who we’re going to take, but should we take him, I think his résumé is pretty strong,” said Mavericks CEO Rick Welts. Insert big eyeroll here. Welts was being disingenuous (then again, he did allow the Doncic trade, so …. ). Memo to Welts: Go ahead and pass on Flagg (or trade the pick to the Lakers) and see what happens.
The results of the lottery demonstrated again that the system is a complete failure. Not only does it not promote parity, it does not prevent tanking, which was the intent of the lottery in the first place. It actually encourages more tanking now that comparable odds are spread among so many teams.
Nobody committed to tanking more than the Utah Jazz, and for what? All that losing, all those trades and collecting of draft picks, all that urging fans to be patient, and they got no better than the fifth overall pick.
You have to second-guess the direction the Jazz have taken for the past three years (if you haven’t already). Two years after finishing with the league’s best record, they began purging their roster of talent in order to collect lottery draft picks via trades and losing. It’s Year 3 of the Great Tank, one in which they have fallen from a league-leading 52 wins in 2020-21 to 49 wins a year later, then 37 wins, 31 wins, 17 wins.
They easily could have been a playoff team in any or all of those seasons; instead, they committed to tanking and banked on striking gold. That hasn’t happened, and it’s unlikely to happen in a future draft. They lost the Cooper Flagg Sweepstakes. They’ll draft behind the Mavericks, Spurs, Sixers and Hornets.
What do they do now? Tank for a fourth straight season?
Team representatives attend the NBA basketball draft lottery in Chicago, Monday, May 12, 2025.
Team representatives attend the NBA basketball draft lottery in Chicago, Monday, May 12, 2025.| Nam Y. Huh, Associated Press