Monday night’s NBA Draft Lottery worked out for the Dallas Mavericks, leading some basketball fans to suggest the whole thing was rigged.
By winning the lottery, the Mavericks have earned the No. 1 pick in next month’s draft. Most experts predict the team will select Duke freshman standout Cooper Flagg, who led the Blue Devils to the Final Four earlier this year.
The lottery win definitely helps the Mavs, who, earlier this year, traded superstar Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for Davis as part of a three-team deal.
Some people considered the trade lopsided in favor of the Lakers, with the Sporting News giving it an “F” grade when it happened.
The Mavericks’ NBA lottery win on Monday will go a long way toward helping the team rebuild, but many people on social media thought the lottery was rigged in favor of Dallas on purpose.
HuffPost reached out to the NBA for comment, but did not immediately hear back.
Still, people intimately familiar with how the lottery works insist it was not rigged.
Mavericks CEO Rick Welts told NBA writer Ben Golliver that he was shocked by the rigging allegations.
“I’m the only person who was in this room and the room 40 years ago. I was in charge of the NBA draft lottery 40 years ago when Patrick Ewing won. I’ve been doing conspiracy theory stories ever since. This is very surreal, personally.”
ESPN NBA writer Tim Bontemps also dismissed the rigging claims, saying that he sat and “watched the ping pong balls come out. There’s no rigging it.”
He added: “Rather than saying that, I do think a fair thing to wonder is if the new rules have helped, or if they’ve created more problems than they’ve solved. Today didn’t help that.”
Andy Larsen, who covers the NBA for the Salt Lake City Tribune, said he was onsite at the lottery and didn’t think there was any way to beat the system with so many eyewitnesses.
“You’d have to fool both cameras and dozens of witnesses,” he said. “Those witnesses are incentivized to catch any shenanigans. By definition, at least 10 of the 14 team representatives are leaving the lottery upset.”