NBA Fans Are Convinced The Draft Lottery Was Rigged As The Dallas Mavericks Get The No. 1 Overall Pick Just Months After Trading Away Luka Doncic

Excuse me while I put on my tinfoil cap… it’s conspiracy time.

What’s the old saying? If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck? Well if there was ever an argument for the NBA being rigged, the latest news out of the National Basketball Association has a lot of people clamoring that the league is in the midst of it’s latest conspiracy.

I say latest because, who could forget the Frozen Envelope Conspiracy Theory from the 1985 NBA Draft Lottery? To make a long story short, back in the 80s, the NBA introduced the draft lottery: where some of the worst teams in the league would all have a chance at obtaining the No. 1 pick.

The first pick ended up going to the New York Knicks, who were one of seven teams that had a chance to get the top pick. And that year was a valuable year to have the No. 1 pick (kind of like this year), because the generational talent known as Patrick Ewing out of Georgetown was expected to immediately lead an NBA franchise.

I said I’d make this short, so basically what happened was the big market New York Knicks got the No. 1 pick after Commissioner David Stern reached into a randomly mixed collection of envelopes and pulled out the one that belonged to the Knicks. Some theorized that the New York envelope was frozen – or at least chilled – so that Stern knew to grab that one and pull it out.

Ewing to the Knicks certainly worked out for New York and the league at large.

Fast forward to 2025, and we’ve got another NBA conspiracy brewing. Now, the league uses ping pong balls to determine the draft lottery order. The Utah Jazz, Charlotte Hornets, and Washington Wizards all had the highest percent chance (14%) at obtaining the first pick. None of them got it… because the first pick went to the Dallas Mavericks, who had a 1.8% chance of getting the top pick.

The same Dallas Mavericks team that, just a few months ago, made headlines when they traded away their perennial and still very young superstar Luka Doncić to the Los Angeles Lakers. Everyone was asking, “Why would Mavs General Manager Nico Harrison do that?”

Even though it didn’t work out for either team in the short term (both the Mavs and Lakers didn’t get past the first round of the NBA Playoffs), the decision to let a generational player go with plenty of their prime left was baffling. That is unless the Dallas Mavericks knew they were going to get another, younger generational star for free a couple of months later.

The most touted prospect out of college basketball this year is Duke’s Cooper Flagg. He, like Ewing, is expected to immediately contribute to an NBA team. Flagg even scrimmaged against the Team USA team as prep for the 2024 Olympics, and reports claim that he more than held his own… and that was last summer.

So now, it looks like Cooper Flagg to the Mavericks is all but confirmed. Pretty convenient, right? The Dallas Mavericks trade away their best superstar only to be coincidentally gifted another superstar with the first pick in the 2025 NBA Draft? Some might call that serendipitous, or incredibly fortunate.

Others might call it rigged:

Adam Silver made Nico Harrison trade Luka to LA to get the NBA ratings as they were tanking, and in exchange for that they rigged the lottery so Dallas gets Cooper Flagg

Nothing can convince me otherwise at this point pic.twitter.com/Aoc7Wy42UK

— Joel Penfield (@jtpenfield) May 12, 2025

I believe in the legitimacy of the NBA draft lottery like I believe in Sasquatch, the tooth fairy, and Santa

— Todd Fuhrman (@ToddFuhrman) May 12, 2025

“Nico Harrison made the worst trade in NBA history. The Mavs missed the playoffs and found themselves in the draft lottery. Now why would he do that?” pic.twitter.com/kpl9BcEY6F

— Kendall Baker (@kendallbaker) May 12, 2025

So you’re telling me Adam Silver gave The Mavericks Cooper Flagg by a coincidence after he traded Luka Doncic

Most rigged draft lottery in NBA history pic.twitter.com/rkuDnM4tCU

— Russ’ TD (@RussFcb) May 12, 2025

Live look at the NBA doctoring a video to show how the Mavs won the draft lottery “legitimately” pic.twitter.com/x7kfAKI7sv

— Matt Perrault (@sportstalkmatt) May 12, 2025

“Trade Luka to our biggest market and we’ll get you Flagg” pic.twitter.com/nJpM7jPTBO

— NBA University (@NBA_University) May 12, 2025

Could NBA Commissioner Adam Silver have really called in a favor for the Dallas Mavericks? Or made a deal with them a couple of months ago saying if you traded one of the game’s young stars to one of the league’s biggest markets, he’d reward them with the top draft pick? That all seems pretty far fetched, does it not?

Or does it?