Draft Lotto Thread (2025 edition)

[Padrino]

Nobody said they fix games giving certain teams advantages ref wise is what they do and you can only do so much if the lakers are getting smacked and Boston loses Tatum. Giannis and his G-League team didn’t stand a chance either as well as that roster Jokic dragged and Jokic isn’t even pushed by the nba like LeBron and Steph

Plenty of people have said they fix games. Plenty of people, including yourself, have argued in this very thread that titles are "stolen" from teams by a league that rigs the outcomes in favor of marquee franchises/players. If the NBA can orchestrate a draft lottery heist that directs specific players to specific teams in plain view before stakeholders who would riot if such a theft were exposed, surely that same league could have given LeBron and Luka the assist they needed to get by 6th seeded Minnesota in the first round, or could have given Jalen Brunson and co. the assist they needed to squeak by a comparably-talented 50-win team in the Pacers in order to bring the Finals back to Madison Square Garden for the first time in over 25 years. Yet here we are, with OKC and IND in a Finals bracket, absent a single big market or legendary arena or all the glitz and glamor that would accompany big celebrities sitting courtside.

From my vantage, the NBA has done extremely well to establish greater parity. While I detest specific elements of the league's modern style of play and would prefer sweeping corrections to the rulebook, it's hard to deny the spread of wealth around the league. It will be the sixth season in a row (edit: seventh, actually!) with a new champion, and a victory for small market success stories. It's what fans of the game have clamored for, a more balanced NBA where effective management matters more than the city in which your franchise plays. Large markets will always possess advantages over small markets, and luck will always play its role in how a season ultimately shakes out, but the 2025 Finals are a testament to the league getting a few things right.

I'm mostly just curious what kind of pretzels conspiracy theorists tie themselves into when the narrative tilts away from their pet grievances.

 

[Tetsujin]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1930298590829674867

This will certainly not add any fuel to the fire

 

[dude12]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1930298590829674867

This will certainly not add any fuel to the fire

Rigged

 

[hrdboild]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1930298590829674867

This will certainly not add any fuel to the fire

Sure the Mavs were "trying to win" when they traded a 26 year old superstar averaging prime LeBron numbers for a guy who's always injured (who played 1 game with Dallas as I remember before getting injured and shut down for most of the second half). Also when they plummeted from a top 5 playoff seed to the the last play-in slot. It was as good of a tank job as any team in the league.

 

[Padrino]

Sure the Mavs were "trying to win" when they traded a 26 year old superstar averaging prime LeBron numbers for a guy who's always injured (who played 1 game with Dallas as I remember before getting injured and shut down for most of the second half). Also when they plummeted from a top 5 playoff seed to the the last play-in slot. It was as good of a tank job as any team in the league.

Eh, I'd hardly call earning the 10th seed a "tank job" of any kind. Kings fans themselves spent the final weeks of the season kvetching over how depressing it is to be a team neither making the playoffs as a top-6 seed nor pursuing a high value lottery pick by falling out of the play-in altogether. The 9th/10th seed is no man's land, and it's about the worst place you can be if you're healthy. The Mavs, of course, were not healthy, so even if they hadn't won the lottery, their 25-26 outlook was never going to be hopeless with Irving and Davis theoretically returning to the court. The ping pong balls bounced their way, though, so their outlook is certainly much shinier than it would have been otherwise.

That said, the Luka trade was an all-timer of a terrible deal, and no matter how good Cooper Flagg is, that trade will never look like anything but awful.

 

[hrdboild]

Eh, I'd hardly call earning the 10th seed a "tank job" of any kind. Kings fans themselves spent the final weeks of the season kvetching over how depressing it is to be a team neither making the playoffs as a top-6 seed nor pursuing a high value lottery pick by falling out of the play-in altogether. The 9th/10th seed is no man's land, and it's about the worst place you can be if you're healthy. The Mavs, of course, were not healthy, so even if they hadn't won the lottery, their 25-26 outlook was never going to be hopeless with Irving and Davis theoretically returning to the court. The ping pong balls bounced their way, though, so their outlook is certainly much shinier than it would have been otherwise.

That said, the Luka trade was an all-timer of a terrible deal, and no matter how good Cooper Flagg is, that trade will never look like anything but awful.

Dallas was 25-22 before the Luka trade and finished the season by going 14-21 without him. I don't see how Adam Silver can justify saying that the Mavs were trying to win in the second half of the season under those circumstances. It's not like an AD injury is a freak occurrence. Nico Harrison famously described the Luka trade as a win-now move at the time but did anyone actually buy that? No team has ever gotten better by trading a top 5 player in the prime of their career.

I don't even buy that Adam Silver buys that. He can't even say the words without laughing at the absurdity of the idea. Rob Manfred and Roger Goodell blatantly lie to the press, why should Adam Silver be any different? The spokesperson for a wealthy and influential corporation bending the truth in his public statements is hardly the fringe conspiracy theory that you're trying to frame it as. There's a whole culture of justified dishonesty which tells these people it would be unethical not to do it. Their responsibility is to their stakeholders after all, not the truth.

Does that mean that we can take the leap from justified dishonesty to full-on lottery rigging? Maybe not for you and the vast majority of sports fans but I've seen behind the veil so to speak with all of the excellent Bay Area coverage of the Oakland A's mess for going on 20 years. There's always a spin on the story and for the 99.9% of people who aren't living within the bubble and can't actually see how much lying takes place it's probably hard to believe that anyone could get away with it. And yet they do.

 

[Padrino]

Dallas was 25-22 before the Luka trade and finished the season by going 14-21 without him. I don't see how Adam Silver can justify saying that the Mavs were trying to win in the second half of the season under those circumstances. It's not like an AD injury is a freak occurrence. Nico Harrison famously described the Luka trade as a win-now move at the time but did anyone actually buy that? No team has ever gotten better by trading a top 5 player in the prime of their career.

I don't even buy that Adam Silver buys that. He can't even say the words without laughing at the absurdity of the idea. Rob Manfred and Roger Goodell blatantly lie to the press, why should Adam Silver be any different? The spokesperson for a wealthy and influential corporation bending the truth in his public statements is hardly the fringe conspiracy theory that you're trying to frame it as. There's a whole culture of justified dishonesty which tells these people it would be unethical not to do it. Their responsibility is to their stakeholders after all, not the truth.

Does that mean that we can take the leap from justified dishonesty to full-on lottery rigging? Maybe not for you and the vast majority of sports fans but I've seen behind the veil so to speak with all of the excellent Bay Area coverage of the Oakland A's mess for going on 20 years. There's always a spin on the story and for the 99.9% of people who aren't living within the bubble and can't actually see how much lying takes place it's probably hard to believe that anyone could get away with it. And yet they do.

Or... you know, they were trying to win and were just unsuccessful at doing so? Like many organizations who believe their strategy is going to pan out? Like, say, the Sacramento Kings, who keep trying to win and keep... not winning? Dallas falling from 5th to 10th as a result of a dumbass trade and predictable injury risk is not evidence of some grand conspiracy or a tanking strategy... because who the hell's tanking for the 10th seed? Sometimes incompetence is just incompetence. Adam Silver can't do anything about that.

 

[hrdboild]

Or... you know, they were trying to win and were just unsuccessful at doing so? Like many organizations who believe their strategy is going to pan out? Like, say, the Sacramento Kings, who keep trying to win and keep... not winning? Dallas falling from 5th to 10th as a result of a dumbass trade and predictable injury risk is not evidence of some grand conspiracy or a tanking strategy... because who the hell's tanking for the 10th seed? Sometimes incompetence is just incompetence. Adam Silver can't do anything about that.

Than why be sanctimonious about it? The commish is basically saying "yes our lottery screws over teams which are legitimately bad and keeps them bad for decades while elevating other teams who have had 20 years of constant success and then catch a lucky break the first time they stumble, but maybe ya'll should stop trying to lose then?" and to illustrate this he points to a team which made maybe the dumbest trade in league history but then won the lottery with 1.8% odds as an example of what? The system working like it's supposed to?

Sometimes incompetence is just incompetence, yes. As a Sacramento Kings fan you don't need to tell me that. But also teams which make the league a lot of money have a habit of failing upwards. San Antonio was basically in our position in 2023 with one borderline All-Star and a youngish supporting cast that could maybe compete for a play-in spot for the next 5 or so years with only late lotto picks to show for their efforts. If they were a nothing franchise like ours they would still be in that position now. What they did instead was abruptly trade everyone and play nothing but G-Leaguers for a season, pinning their entire future on 14% odds of landing Wemby. And we all knew it was going to work out for them because they're the Spurs. When the Kings won 17 games in 2009 they ended up with the 4th overall pick and 13 more years of misery before they had a winning season.

 

[QWERTYLICIOUS]

And we all knew it was going to work out for them because they're the Spurs.

Actually, I didn't know.
Because what I did know at the time, and still do know now, is that is not how the draft lottery works.

 

[hrdboild]

Actually, I didn't know.
Because what I did know at the time, and still do know now, is that is not how the draft lottery works.

I didn't know, know. It seemed like an insanely reckless and borderline stupid move from an otherwise model franchise who had built a brand on never making reckless personnel decisions. But in the back of my head I did have that little voice that said "yeah but what if?" By which I think it meant: what if the rules are different for some teams? What if the league would be greatly served by sending the next international superstar to the one franchise with a built-in international fanbase in his home country and with a direct connection to his development through a former All-Star, and what if that team knew something that made this move less reckless than it otherwise appeared? I can't be the only person who thought that.

None of us knows what we think we know anyway. If you think that you know something, you're most likely wrong. If being open to the possibility that the little "what if?" voice might be right makes me crazy, then I will proudly call myself crazy. Cause in this case and many others the "what if" voice was right. And I do think that means something significant even if my best shot at quantifying that something is to make divergences into Pop Physics that nobody asked for or feebly invoking the specter of Mr. Itself-in-Itself and pleading with everyone to start asking bigger questions of your world. Being maybe? part of the last generation that reads is not where I expected to find myself in middle age so forgive me for being so combative. I've not yet accepted the idea that curiosity itself might be endangered.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

I didn't know, know. It seemed like an insanely reckless and borderline stupid move from an otherwise model franchise who had built a brand on never making reckless personnel decisions. But in the back of my head I did have that little voice that said "yeah but what if?" By which I think it meant: what if the rules are different for some teams? What if the league would be greatly served by sending the next international superstar to the one franchise with a built-in international fanbase in his home country and with a direct connection to his development through a former All-Star, and what if that team knew something that made this move less reckless than it otherwise appeared? I can't be the only person who thought that.

None of us knows what we think we know anyway. If you think that you know something, you're most likely wrong. If being open to the possibility that the little "what if?" voice might be right makes me crazy, then I will proudly call myself crazy. Cause in this case and many others the "what if" voice was right. And I do think that means something significant even if my best shot at quantifying that something is to make divergences into Pop Physics that nobody asked for or feebly invoking the specter of Mr. Itself-in-Itself and pleading with everyone to start asking bigger questions of your world. Being maybe? part of the last generation that reads is not where I expected to find myself in middle age so forgive me for being so combative. I've not yet accepted the idea that curiosity itself might be endangered.

Nobody here's asking you to drink a Socrates Spritzer, and I don't think the ability of people to think critically is generally endangered by good faith criticism.

Seems like you witnessed two events, and drew a straight line between them. That doesn't paint a particularly compelling model. It doesn't seem like you're open to the possibility that it's just a coincidence.

 

[hrdboild]

Nobody here's asking you to drink a Socrates Spritzer, and I don't think the ability of people to think critically is generally endangered by good faith criticism.

Seems like you witnessed two events, and drew a straight line between them. That doesn't paint a particularly compelling model. It doesn't seem like you're open to the possibility that it's just a coincidence.

I think the ability of people to think critically is endangered when they rely on data collation models to do their reading for them. It occurred to me that if I hadn't posted a link nobody would even know who I was talking about when I said Mr. Itself-in-Itself. And that made me wonder if in another 50 years anyone will have a single thought about who Socrates was that didn't come from an AI driven Google search or the functional equivalent. The Socratic method itself is the antithesis of machine learning and the cult of hard data (in evidence in this discussion) has already made it all but irrelevant in mainstream culture. Perhaps George Orwell's quote should be amended to say: "He who controls the dataset controls the future."

And I've said multiple times in this thread that I'm not trying to convince people that the lottery is a sham because I don't know that it is. What I'm pushing back against is the exact opposite assertion being made that there's effectively no chance the lottery could possibly be rigged. Of course I'm open to the possibility that it's just a coincidence. I would even say that coincidence is the more likely explanation. Are you open to the possibility that it might not be?

 

[Padrino]

Than why be sanctimonious about it? The commish is basically saying "yes our lottery screws over teams which are legitimately bad and keeps them bad for decades while elevating other teams who have had 20 years of constant success and then catch a lucky break the first time they stumble, but maybe ya'll should stop trying to lose then?" and to illustrate this he points to a team which made maybe the dumbest trade in league history but then won the lottery with 1.8% odds as an example of what? The system working like it's supposed to?

Sometimes incompetence is just incompetence, yes. As a Sacramento Kings fan you don't need to tell me that. But also teams which make the league a lot of money have a habit of failing upwards. San Antonio was basically in our position in 2023 with one borderline All-Star and a youngish supporting cast that could maybe compete for a play-in spot for the next 5 or so years with only late lotto picks to show for their efforts. If they were a nothing franchise like ours they would still be in that position now. What they did instead was abruptly trade everyone and play nothing but G-Leaguers for a season, pinning their entire future on 14% odds of landing Wemby. And we all knew it was going to work out for them because they're the Spurs. When the Kings won 17 games in 2009 they ended up with the 4th overall pick and 13 more years of misery before they had a winning season.

The commish is defending an imperfect system designed to serve two incompatible masters: 1. help bad teams rise up from the basement, and 2. prevent those same teams from eschewing all desire to compete as they race to the bottom. Personally, I don't like the current lottery system, and I kind of hate the play-in. But I would argue that the coupling of the current lottery odds with the advent of the play-in tournament has had the desired effect for the NBA. The vast majority of NBA franchises are still trying to compete after the All-Star Break, and the lottery-bound teams are still able to prioritize the draft to build stronger rosters, even if they don't win a top pick. I'm sure Adam Silver doesn't love that Dallas won the lottery this year, because it suggests impropriety where there very likely is none. But I do imagine that he's satisfied with the overall arc of these issues during his tenure. Dynasties are on the wane. Parity exists across the league. Small markets are able to compete in spite of their disadvantages. New champions are being crowned every post-season. Etc.

Of course, no commissioner can save the most poorly-run franchises from themselves. Which brings us to the Kings. Yes, it's easy to bemoan the fact that a small market franchise like San Antonio seems to have much better luck than a small market franchise like Sacramento. But the difference between San Antonio and Sacramento isn't that San Antonio has all the luck; it's that, when gifted a chance at a player like Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio won't **** it up. They're very likely to build a winner around Wemby. But if you give the Kings that same chance, much of their Sacramento-era history suggests that they will **** it up. First, they may not even draft the generational superstar when he lands in their laps, as was the case with Luka Doncic. Second, had Sacramento drafted Doncic, or had they been graced with the luck necessary to draft a player like Wembanyama, it is likelier than not that they would have fumbled their attempt to build a winner around such a player. When you've got an owner with a "move fast and break things" philosophy, who fires GMs and coaches every 2-3 years, who possesses no patience for the process, who tries to shortcut his way to winning in a Western Conference with no room for error... well, this is what you get. The 9th/10th seed. No Man's Land. No sustainable approach to build upon. No continued playoff success, but also little shot at drafting a prospect like Cooper Flagg with anything but extreme luck.

Let me put it this way. Had San Antonio not been in a position to draft Victor Wembanyama, I would still like their chances of building a sustainable winner more than the Kings' chances of building a sustainable winner. They're a better-run franchise, plain and simple. Their ownership lets their basketball people make basketball decisions. They don't fire their braintrust every few years. They invest in their young talent, no matter where in the draft that talent is selected. They don't try to shortcut the process. They don't move too fast. They don't break things. They build things.

 

[Insomniacal Fan]

I think the ability of people to think critically is endangered when they rely on data collation models to do their reading for them. It occurred to me that if I hadn't posted a link nobody would even know who I was talking about when I said Mr. Itself-in-Itself. And that made me wonder if in another 50 years anyone will have a single thought about who Socrates was that didn't come from an AI driven Google search or the functional equivalent. The Socratic method itself is the antithesis of machine learning and the cult of hard data (in evidence in this discussion) has already made it all but irrelevant in mainstream culture. Perhaps George Orwell's quote should be amended to say: "He who controls the dataset controls the future."

And I've said multiple times in this thread that I'm not trying to convince people that the lottery is a sham because I don't know that it is. What I'm pushing back against is the exact opposite assertion being made that there's effectively no chance the lottery could possibly be rigged. Of course I'm open to the possibility that it's just a coincidence. I would even say that coincidence is the more likely explanation. Are you open to the possibility that it might not be?

Yeah, thanks for the link, I don't understand your reference,"thing-in-itself" is more of a Kant thing; (good luck reading Kant without help). Socrates was skeptical of writing anything down, so I think we've all left him a bit in the dust by participating on this thread .

Sure, I'm open to the possibility, for me to seriously the process though, you'd need to establish a few things, which have already been discussed on the thread (a serious motive for the NBA and it's auditors, a plausible mechanism for manipulation, and a noticable effect more likely than stated probability)

The problem with AI today isn't that public data is somehow locked away, it's that plausible sounding but fallacious arguments can be mass-produced, overwhelming truth with volume, and disrupting the ability of people to collaborate to understand reality together. Suspicion untethered to evidence doesn't seem like a reliable way to navigate the world these days.