The Dallas Mavericks winning the NBA Lottery means that the NBA is rigged. Did I do that right?
Sports fans have long said that mysterious figures in hoods and cloaks pull the strings of professional sports like Geppetto. Somehow, those claim almost always come when their favorite team stumbles upon misfortune.
The reality of being a fan of professional sports, including the NBA, is that you will never know more than I if league operations are rigged. But not knowing is not an unfortunate sign of ignorance; it’s a blissful right to believe what we want.
Here, we will have a discussion I can only refer to as Schrödinger’s basketball: Why the NBA is and isn’t rigged. Prepare your mind for scientific silliness, basketball brouhahas, and a cacophonic chinwag.
Cooper Flagg is going to the Mavericks
To make sure everyone is on the same page, allow me to set the stage.
Basketball fans everywhere were outraged that the Mavericks received the first pick in the upcoming NBA Draft despite having only a 1.8 percent chance to do so.
The ping-pong ball combination of 10-14-11-7 gave Dallas the rights, according to near-unanimous belief, to make Duke Freshman phenom Cooper Flagg the next megastar in northeast Texas.
That’s despite the Mavs only being 11th in odds to land the top pick in the Draft. Here’s how the full list of odds looked before the drawing:
- Utah Jazz – 14%
- Washington Wizards – 14%
- Charlotte Hornets – 14%
- New Orleans Pelicans – 12.5%
- Philadelphia 76ers – 10.5%
- Brooklyn Nets – 9%
- Toronto Raptors – 7.5%
- San Antonio Spurs – 6%
- Houston Rockets (via Phoenix Suns) – 3.8%
- Portland Trail Blazers – 3.8%
- Dallas Mavericks – 1.8%
- Chicago Bulls – 1.8%
- Atlanta Hawks (via Sacramento Kings) – 0.8%
- San Antonio Spurs (via Atlanta Hawks) – 0.8%
The outrage over the Mavericks’ good fortune was tied to their front office’s decision to trade then-25-year-old megastar Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in February.
The unprecedented move, regarded as the most baffling trade in NBA history, left Dallas with a void in its franchise player slot that had been held for nearly 30 years by the combination of Doncic and Dirk Nowitzki. It didn’t help matters that Doncic landed in the NBA’s second-largest market, Los Angeles, with its greatest attraction, LeBron James, during a time when the league struggled for ratings.
Internet theorists quickly jumped to the conclusion that the NBA rigged the lottery to give Dallas the top pick in exchange for sending one of the world’s most popular players to a more marketable location.
What are you talking about?
For anyone who’s still confused by the theme of this piece…
Schrödinger’s Cat is a thought experiment that was devised by Erwin Schrödinger and Albert Einstein in 1935.
The hypothetical experiment positioned a cat in a closed box with a flask of poison and a radioactive source. If a radiation monitor detected radioactivity, it would release the vial of poison and kill the cat.
The purpose of the experiment is to prove that, while the box is closed, the cat is both dead and alive. It’s not until the box is opened that the cat is either dead or alive. Starting to make sense now, isn’t it?
This is not the first time an NBA franchise has traded a superstar player and received the first pick in the next draft. It happened in 2011 when the New Orleans Hornets traded Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Clippers and received the rights to the first pick in the 2012 Draft, which was turned into Anthony Davis.
The Hornets had a 13.7 percent chance to land the top pick in the draft, the fourth-highest of all teams. They ended up being the only team to outperform their expectation, while the top three teams all slid one spot back.
Davis was involved in the same paradox when the same franchise, then called the Pelicans, traded him to the Lakers in 2019. New Orleans was seventh with a six percent chance of landing the first pick in that year’s draft, yet they leapt six spots to secure the rights to take “the greatest prospect since LeBron,” Zion Williamson.
The NBA is… rigged?
I’ll admit the cat looks pretty alive right now… but let’s think about the vial of poison.
The Atlanta Hawks in the 2024 NBA Draft only had a three percent chance of landing the top pick. They outperformed their position by nine spots to get Zaccharie Risacher in the face of very little opposition from the basketball public.
The Cleveland Cavaliers in 2014 had a 1.7 percent chance of getting the first pick, but they somehow climbed to the top for the third time in four years to take Andrew Wiggins, who was immediately traded for Kevin Love.
So, pump the brakes a bit.
The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are roughly one in 292.2 million, but you know what? Someone eventually wins.
The reality is that coincidences happen all the time, but hunting them out removes their unique authenticity. It’s only when these one-offs are sought out that they begin to look nefarious or too good to be true.
Convenient, isn’t it?
Speaking of coincidences, how about a hometown hero coming to save his local franchise? Derrick Rose to the Chicago Bulls in 2008, LeBron in 2003?
“Listen, man, during the ball drop—you know, during the lottery drop—Cleveland got the number one pick; I just don’t think… what a coincidence,” LeBron James said during a March 26 appearance on the Pat McAfee Show. “I understand the assignment guys.”
The NBA stood to gain significantly from reigniting its markets with homegrown talent. According to Statista, the Bulls generated $168 million in Rose’s rookie season compared to $165 million the year before, despite a major economic recession.
Statista also reported that the Cavaliers’ franchise value ballooned 16.2 percent from 2003, the year LeBron was drafted, to 2004. It reached $476 million in 2010, the year he joined the Miami Heat, only to plummet 25.4 percent to $355 million in 2011.
At the same time, a rigged NBA would’ve been wise to send several other top draft picks to greener pastures. Let’s use Davis and Williamson as examples again, since they were shipped off to the league’s second-smallest market of New Orleans.
For good measure, Ja Morant, drafted second overall the same year as Williamson, was given to the league’s smallest market of Memphis.
Were Adam Silver and David Stern asleep at the wheel all of the years that they didn’t manipulate the draft order in their favor? It’s possible. Did they maintain a low profile to avoid raising suspicion? Now we’re talking.
Mo’ money, mo’ problems
The new era of legal sports betting throughout the United States has given the public another easy “rigged” button to press during NBA games.
Draymond Green did the league no favors when he was caught on camera allegedly encouraging his teammates to cover the spread in Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals.
Green appeared to say “five and a half (points) … the spread” to his teammates, who were down eight with 15.2 seconds remaining. Immediately after his words of encouragement, Jonathan Kuminga drilled a meaningless three-pointer to help Golden State lose the contest but cover the spread.
Did Draymond tell his team the spread?
The Warriors ended up hitting a 3 and covering the spread in the final seconds 🤔 pic.twitter.com/vpLM1afxrI
— Covers (@Covers) May 11, 2025
Sports betting is irrefutably in the NBA. Adam Silver last year issued a lifetime ban to ex-Toronto Raptors center Jontay Porter, who conspired with known sports bettors to limit his availability during games and help them win their bets.
NBA protectors will say Silver upheld his promise to preserve the integrity of the game. Cynics will say he sacrificed an unimportant two-way player to maintain an image.
Is the NBA actually rigged?
In the case of the 2025 NBA Lottery, the operations were overseen by the well-respected accounting company Ernst & Young. It seems extremely unlikely that a billion-dollar entity with a reputation to uphold would engage in manipulating results for some unclear reason… not to mention the league would also need to work with all of its top-level staff, camera crews, and everyone on-site just to keep up the charade.
Then again, Ernst & Young in 2022 was fined $100 million for allowing its employees to cheat on CPA Ethics Exams and misdirecting official investigations.
Here’s another wrinkle to the equation. Regardless of which of the top four teams—the Mavs, San Antonio Spurs, Philadelphia 76ers, and Charlotte Hornets—won the draft, there could’ve been claims of a rigged process.
The Spurs would’ve gotten a potentially generational talent in Flagg to pair with their current generational talent in Victor Wembanyama, just like they got to partner David Robinson with Tim Duncan.
The Sixers could’ve added Flagg to a frontcourt that included MVP Joel Embiid and a podcaster formerly known as Paul George.
The Hornets could’ve kept Flagg in North Carolina, just two hours from Duke’s campus, to give them three top-three draft picks, alongside LaMelo Ball and Brandon Miller.
Closing statement: NBA is/not rigged
Believe what you want to believe. Sports were made for differences of opinions, hot takes, and everlasting discourse.
Do I believe the NBA is rigged? No, I don’t. In fact, I think it’s insulting to believe that is it… but I haven’t peered into that box, and I likely never will.
What do I know?
I know that Cooper Flagg is a Dallas Maverick, and I know that I expect to hear the same level of outrage if a 38-44 team lands the first pick in 2026. And I know that I don’t know if I will.
