Every year, the NBA uses a lottery system to decide who gets the number one overall pick in the next year’s draft. This is a big day and could change teams’ futures. Today, I am going over whether this process is rigged or not, explaining how it takes place, and discussing if it should be changed.
Is It Rigged?
If you ask an ordinary NBA fan, you may get a yes or no. Throughout the years of this lottery, a lot of coincidences have happened that made people question it. The first and most well-known is the frozen envelope. This is a rumor from back in 1985, when the NBA used envelopes in a box, and the commissioner would put his hand in to grab one which held a team inside. The first team he grabbed gets the number one pick in the draft. The rumor is that the NBA froze the New York Knicks envelope so it would be easy to recognize, and star collegiate athlete Patrick Ewing would go to a big market. There is no proof that this is true, but people speculate it. Another case is the Bulls jumping up to get Derrick Rose, who is from their hometown. This also happened with the Cavaliers when they drafted LeBron James.
This year, though, the rumors went through the roof. It all started at the trade deadline when the Mavericks traded multi First-Team All-Pro player Luka Dončić to the Lakers. The trade was clearly a win for the Lakers, and the only foreseeable reason anyone would trade Luka is that the General Manager (the person in charge of building the roster) is incompetent. Then, fast forward to this year’s draft lottery: the Mavericks, who had a 1.8% chance to win the NBA Lottery, won it. This had the world exploding, with people speculating that the NBA forced the Mavs to trade Luka Dončić to the Lakers, their biggest market and golden child, in return for the number one overall pick. Meanwhile, the 17-65 Utah Jazz, who had one of the worst years in history, got the 5th pick, and the 18-64 Washington Wizards got the 7th pick. Across the world, people were calling the draft lottery rigged, and the NBA corrupt. But is it really?
How the Draft Lottery Works
The NBA Draft Lottery system uses 14 ping pong balls. Each ball is labeled 1 to 14, and there are 1,001 possible combinations when 4 balls are drawn. Each team is assigned certain combinations, which determine their chances or percentages. If you are the worst team, you have a 14% chance at the first pick, meaning you have 140 combinations that could get you the pick. The Mavericks had 18 combinations that would allow them to be picked. It takes a total of about 50 seconds for each combination to be drawn because the process is made as random as possible. This is done in private, with every team’s general manager in the room, since it takes hours to complete due to all the repeats. After the process is finished, they announce on air who gets the first pick and the other 13 picks. There are also other rules: the lowest pick the team with the worst record can get is 5. This has happened three straight years, where the worst team in the league got the fifth pick.
The Truth
The way the draft lottery is conducted, it can’t be rigged. The method used to select the picks makes rigging impossible. The 1985 incident is still up for debate, but there is no proof that it happened. There are too many possible combinations, and the process is truly random. However, the system does need some fixing. Too many teams with no business being near the first pick are getting it. For two years in a row now, play-in teams have received the first pick. It should be limited to the five worst teams. They also need to restructure the odds for these struggling teams. The Utah Jazz, Charlotte Hornets, and Washington Wizards are not in big sports markets, and no big-name free agent wants to go there. They are consistently in the bottom five and haven’t received the first pick in years. They will remain there unless the lottery changes.
Why Doesn’t the NBA Change It?
The NBA draft needs change, so why don’t they make any? The answer is simple: they don’t want teams tanking. Tanking is when a front office purposefully loses games to get a higher draft pick and rebuild the team for the future. This strategy won’t work because the draft lottery is designed to prevent it. The odds of the top draft pick going to the worst team are only 14%, while 86% of the time, the pick goes to another team. In fact, the actual percentage of teams that received the number one overall pick as the worst team is only 20%. The system is purposely designed to stop tanking and increase TV ratings, which doesn’t happen because the bad teams still aren’t good enough to win enough games to make the playoffs or even the play-in tournament.
Conclusion
The NBA draft lottery clearly needs changing, and the NBA wants to eliminate tanking. Fans want it to change, and the league’s bottom teams want it too. The NBA must choose between fair competition and TV ratings. Either choice will have a major impact on the league.
Works Cited:
- Staff, F. NBA. com. (n.d.). 2025 NBA Draft Lottery: Odds, history and how it works. NBA. https://www.nba.com/news/nba-draft-lottery-explainer
- https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/draft/2017/05/16/nba-draft-lottery-history-no-1-overall-pick/101752858/
