This is an excerpt from Berry Tramel's Wednesday ScissorTales. Read it in its entirety here.
The Dallas Mavericks won the NBA Lottery on Monday night, giving them dibs on Duke superstar Cooper Flagg, a stunning result for a beleaguered franchise that traded away the iconic Luka Doncic in February and had only a 1.8% chance of landing the top pick in the NBA Draft.
Good for the Mavericks. Bad for the NBA.
The westward tilt of basketball continues.
The Western Conference has dominated the NBA for most of the 21st century. And the draft lottery enforces that status every time a transcendent player comes up in the draft.
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Victor Wembanyama went to the Spurs in 2023. Zion Williamson went to the Pelicans in 2019. Doncic went to the Mavericks in 2018 (the Hawks foolishly traded his rights to Dallas). Anthony Davis went to the Pelicans in 2012. Kevin Durant went to the SuperSonics (and thus the Thunder) in 2007. Not since LeBron James in 2003 (Cleveand) has an Eastern Conference team secured a draft pick that seems likely to turn the league upside down.
Even when there’s a whiff — Portland had the top pick in 2007 and chose the star-crossed Greg Oden — the West comes out swell. Seattle had the next pick and secured Durant. And in 2003, Detroit had the second choice and inexplicably passed on Carmelo Anthony, in favor of Darko Milicic. Some things you can’t fix.
The Spurs’ dynasty was sealed with lottery balls that sent David Robinson (1987) and Tim Duncan (1997) to San Antonio.
Before LeBron, the East’s previous lottery winner in a year with an obvious game-changer was Orlando in 1992, with Shaquille O’Neal. And that was 33 years ago.
Flagg is being hyped as a generational talent. We’ll see. Williamson has been mostly a bust in New Orleans, because of injuries. But Wembanyama figures to get San Antonio back into title contention soon, and now with the Lakers fortified with Doncic and Dallas getting Flagg, the West seems likely to be deeper than ever.
That’s not good for the Thunder, which seems capable of a long runway of NBA title contention but will face an increasingly difficult road in the coming years just to get to the Finals. No East team can find lottery luck. But collectively, they seem to be doing just fine, with the talented overloaded in the other conference.
berry.tramel@tulsaworld.com
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