The cruel world of the NBA draft lottery

In a shocking twist of fate, the Dallas Mavericks captured the Flagg. Should it have even been possible?

Let me divulge my biases upfront. I’m a Cleveland Cavaliers fan, a team that won the NBA draft lottery a staggering three times in four years after LeBron left for the Miami Heat in 2010. Without that insane luck (and the luck to draft LeBron in the first place) they never would have won a title in 2016. Kyrie Irving would've gone somewhere else, and the Cavs wouldn't have gotten the Andrew Wiggins pick they needed to trade for Kevin Love and establish their big three.

The NBA draft lottery has been kind to my team. But I can also admit it’s an utterly broken system that subjects many of the worst teams to a state of perpetual basketball purgatory. In theory, the draft lottery gives the least successful teams in the league the greatest chance of acquiring a generational talent that could pull them out of that hole. This is especially important for smaller-market teams that are not likely to attract stars on their own, like the Charlotte Hornets or Washington Wizards (sorry for the stray).

But too often we see something akin to what happened last night: a team that has no real business at the top of the draft lucking their way into a premium pick and a literal jackpot (this time in the form of uber-talented prospect Cooper Flagg), all while the truly struggling teams continue to do so.

The four worst teams in the NBA this season were the Jazz, Wizards, Hornets, and Pelicans, yet after last night’s lottery drawing, those four teams are respectively picking 5th, 6th, 4th, and 7th in this year’s draft. None of them even cracked the top three. And while the current system is designed to root out "tanking" – actively trying to lose for a better draft position – I don't realistically know what other options some of these teams have. None of these franchises provide much allure for marquee free agents, and it'll be hard for that to change when they can't get a foundational player in the draft to build upon.

The Philadelphia 76ers drew the 3rd pick despite being in title contention for much of the last decade. This has been their most disastrous season in recent memory by far, and they’re immediately rewarded with a high-leverage spot in the draft that could turn their franchise back around. The 2nd pick belongs to the San Antonio Spurs, a historically dominant organization that’s already primed for the next decade-plus after winning the Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes two years prior.

And the number one pick in the 2025 NBA Draft goes to… the Dallas Mavericks. A franchise that went to the NBA Finals last season. A franchise that spent the last six months alienating their entire fanbase after making the worst trade in the history of the sport and handling the resulting controversy with the grace of a stubborn teenager. A franchise whose front office appears remarkably detached from the heart and soul of their city. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for the Mavericks fans themselves, but general manager Nico Harrison getting this sort of bail-out provides me with genuine crash-out material.

Do I have the answers? Not in the slightest. It’s not as simple as removing the draft lottery altogether, or even just adjusting the odds to make it easier for the worst teams to get the best picks. But my god, someone give these guys a chance! If you’re a fan of a team like the Bulls or Wizards, you’re already forced to treat every draft lottery like it’s the NBA Finals, and year after year it ends in disappointment.

This isn’t going to devolve into “the league is rigged” discourse, because I frankly don’t buy that for a second. Not only would it be way too blatant, but the theorized motivations are flimsy. The league would not risk their livelihood to get Luka Doncic to Los Angeles for better ratings when he’s already in one of the country’s biggest markets, and if they did, they’d be a hell of a lot smarter about it. And if this is all some grand conspiracy between the NBA, Mavericks, and Lakers, how do we explain the injuries sustained to players like Anthony Davis and Kyrie? Those guys stay healthy and there’s a good chance the Mavericks don’t even get a lottery pick in the first place.

The Luka trade, as covered by Tim MacMahon in a recent article, was ultimately a tale of a deeply fractured relationship that went beyond basketball. I’m not some shill for the NBA who’s going to protect them at all costs, but the NBA draft lottery is not rigged – it’s just broken.

At the end of it all, this is just one more rung on the sports ladder of heartbreak. Another example of the ebb-and-flow relationship where being a sports fan makes you want to pull your hair out one moment and scream Hallelujah the next. (How's it going, Mavericks fans?) But if anything, the madness surrounding last night’s draft lottery just shows us there’s no real fairness in sports. No justice, and no karma.

To quote Rob Mahoney, “There are no basketball gods.” Last night's lottery proved it.