Last year's NBA draft lottery was rigged (my editors say I have to say *has been accused of being rigged*, but c'mon). This year's wasn't. And it is public knowledge that the draft process is going to permanently change going forward from here.
This isn't a conspiracy theory post. Rather, it's my opinion about how Adam Silver and the NBA's alleged cover-up will shape the future of the league. Namely, it has forced them to finally shoehorn in anti-tanking draft lottery changes.
Because there's no way the Dallas Mavericks would inexplicably trade generational superstar Luka Doncic to the league darling Los Angeles Lakers. Oh wait, that happened. Ok, but it would stretch credulity if those same Dallas Mavericks would then win the rights to the 2025 no.1 pick (Cooper Flagg), despite only having 1.8% odds of doing so. Unless...
The NBA sure looks like it rigged the 2025 lottery for the Dallas Mavericks
Nico Harrison, former General Manager of the Dallas Mavericks, worked with Adam Silver and the NBA to push the Luka-to-Los Angeles deal through, with the backroom quid-pro-quo being that the league would make sure the Mavericks landed the first overall pick (and thus the rights to Flagg).
Former Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison and Dallas Mavericks forward Cooper Flagg (32) Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images
That's the 'conspiracy theory' in a nutshell. I'm not alone in my suspicion - according to Pulitzer-winning journalist Pablo Torre at least two other owners have called the 2025 lottery's legitimacy into question.
The fallout? Well, personally, for Nico Harrison, it meant an internet-wide roasting at the time of the trade, Mavericks fans souring against him, calls of conspiracy and betrayal when the Mavericks did land that first overall pick, and being fired by the Mavs organization in November 2025 when the Flagg-led team had a rocky start. Per ESPN's Nick Wright, Harrison won't find employment in the league ever again.
For the teams involved, the outcome has been much peachier.
The Lakers can ignore that they just got swept by the Oklahoma City Thunder AND that they might be losing Lebron in the offseason, because they have Luka, a relatively young superstar, on hand and under contract until 2029.
The Mavericks, on the other hand, just hired Masai Ujiri, architect of the 2019 Toronto Raptors championship, to be their new general manager. Ujiri is optimistic in a way that belies his levelheadedness (and how not Nico Harrison he is) about the Mavs future.
As for the league...
The NBA gave the 2026 first pick to the Wizards to make up for 2025
In a spring miracle, the worst team in the NBA got the first overall pick in the 2026 NBA Lottery.
If you couldn't tell, I'm being facetious there. It makes sense for the worst teams to land the highest picks, which is what made last year's, uh, surprise outcome such an outlier.
This year, the statistics actually bore out: the Washington Wizards, one of the top three teams with the worst records and thus the highest odds (Washington, Brooklyn, Indiana) of landing the top spot. Now, Brooklyn fell to sixth and Indiana missed out entirely as their pick fell out of top-four protections and thus went to the Los Angeles Clippers, but that's the nature of chance.
That's the key concept here: chance.
Unlike the NFL, which automatically grants the worst overall team the first overall pick (unless it has been traded) aka not a lottery, the NBA *is* a lottery, and thus there are percentage chances for an upset.
The amount of chance will change next year, with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announcing the league's proposal to 'flatten' lottery odds going forward.
In super super brief, the proposal is being called the 3-2-1 lottery, with three groups of teams (1-3, 4-10, and 11-16) all with 'flattened' odds - meaning teams within each group have the same percentage chance at each pick. Per ESPN, "In addition, no team would be able to win the top pick in consecutive years or be able to win three consecutive top-five picks".
Compared to today's lottery system, this flattened or 'anti-tanking' lottery system disincentivizes teams from egregiously tanking (losing on purposes) given that moving from group to group will be much harder than leapfrogging individual teams (as is the case in the current system). The final two stipulations drive that nail home further by severely punishing perennial bottom feeders.
The 2025 Lottery prompted the anti-tanking changes
While I think these anti tanking measures are intriguing, potentially necessary, and will likely be positive for the league, I think they are a better-late-than-never bandage being applied to a preexisting wound.
The wound itself - meaning the current problem with the NBA draft - was deepened by Adam Silver and the NBA's 2025 Draft Lottery fiasco.
I think it's a smart and savvy move from Silver and the league office. In my opinion, they snuck one more rigged lottery under our noses, and now they're using it as a fulcrum to implement long overdue changes.
See, the cries of 'tanking ruining the NBA' were louder than ever this year (25/26). However, they were only able to reach this unprecedented decibel level because of the disgust at the potential cover-up leading into the season.
Adam Silver's defense that 1.8% chance will happen now and then (see below) infuriated fans. Sure, it's not one-in-a-million, but it's awfully convenient that it just happened to occur the year that one of the most controversial and lopsided trades in NBA history - and one that favored a prominent league franchise - went through.
"Dallas had roughly a 2% chance, so the losingest team had a seven times better chance," Adam Silver said last June. "Two percent is two percent, it's going to happen and when people say, 'therefore the lottery is broken,' I have a different view."
If you're like me, that's frustrating equivocating and company line toeing.
It's easy to spin math any number of ways. If the Mavericks have a 1.8% chance, that means 98.8% of the time another team gets that pick. That means only 18 out of every 1000 times, Dallas gets the pick. Given that the NBA has been in operation for 80 years, and this is the only superstar trade of this caliber that Bill Simmons can remember, then I'd say that it's more like 18 out of 80,000 times (80x1000), or a .0225% chance that Dallas gets the no.1 pick the same year that this exact kind of superstar trade goes through.
See, I can spin the math, too. Point being, it's awfully convenient. Especially given that the NBA has a history of lottery rigging conspiracies (looking at you David Ewing to the Knicks frozen envelope) aaaand I'm not buying it.
The result that the NBA and its fans will bear going forwards, however, remains the same.
There was anger about the (rigged or not) 2025 NBA Draft Lottery Results, the league used the 2026 NBA Draft Lottery to cover their tracks, then-NOW they're using the remaining ennui and the preexisting frustrations about tanking to leverage this flattened, anti-tanking proposal into existence for 2027 and beyond.
It's a masterstroke by Adam Silver. He's able to paper over potential backroom wrongdoing and address a longstanding issue at the same time.
Now, given that it may help fix tanking, who can complain? They've buried the 2025 Draft conspiracy with the 2027 anti-tanking changes, and we're going to like it. But Pepperidge Farm remembers. The smaller media markets remember.
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