The Dallas Mavericks winning the 2025 NBA Draft Lottery has led to conspiracy theories being floated around about it being rigged by the league. The Mavericks getting the first pick months after trading Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers has raised eyebrows, but Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix made it clear on The Ryen Russillo Podcast that it would be impossible for the NBA to rig the lottery.
"It is impossible to rig the NBA Draft Lottery," Mannix said. "The NBA goes to such great pains to ensure that there is no appearance of impropriety. The guy that is telling the ping pong ball selector when to draw from the bucket, he has his back turned to the whole proceeding.
"He is standing there, with his back to the drawing and has a stopwatch in his hand," Mannix continued. "And every 10 seconds, he will raise his hand, and that's when a ball is drawn. It would take a Houdini-esque act to be able to rig the NBA Draft Lottery. There's nothing suspect about what the lottery is."
Mannix was in the lottery room on Monday, and he didn't feel there was any foul play involved in the process.
Here is how the Mavericks ended up winning the NBA Draft Lottery.
It certainly would be almost impossible to rig that. You do understand why people would still believe there was foul play involved, though, as the Mavericks winning this lottery after trading Doncic was perfect conspiracy theory material. The fact that they only had a 1.8% chance to win it as well only made matters worse.
This isn't the first time that a team winning the lottery has led to that kind of talk, either. There are now eight total occasions in history when the NBA Draft Lottery has looked rigged.
One of those was the Cleveland Cavaliers winning it in 2003 to be able to select LeBron James. Earlier this year, James himself hinted that the lottery might have been rigged to ensure he went to his hometown team.
"During the lottery drop, Cleveland got the No. 1 pick and I don't think that was an accident," said James on the Pat McAfee Show. "Let's keep LeBron home, Patrick Ewing to the Knicks, Derrick Rose to the Bulls, I understand the assignment guys I had to make sure to do my part, I didn't want to be a f*ck up."
James reacted with laughing emojis when the Mavericks won the lottery, and he wouldn't have been the only one to feel that way. It was just way too perfect that they would get the opportunity to draft Cooper Flagg after trading Doncic to the Lakers.
According to ESPN's Tim MacMahon, the Mavericks will not be trading that top pick. They will almost certainly be selecting Flagg, and their projected starting lineup with him looks scary.
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