Game Thread NBA Draft Lottery - May 12, 2025

[jazznik]

Just put it this way: If you were in charge of a $10 billion global media product like the NBA, what would you do? How would you allow league-altering draft prospects to be handed out?

I know! Push all "generational" prospects to San Antonio, Cleveland, New Orleans and Orlando! That would certainly maximize the revenue.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

Dallas falling completely apart while fans riot and yell "Fire Nico!" on national TV is a bad look for the league. Something needed to be done. The league needs to protect its image and the value of its franchises. That's enough rationale to throw them a bone.

The Mavs could have just shut Luka down after Kyrie tore his ACL and had Luka/Cooper...

 

[NUMBERICA]

I honestly wouldnt care all that much. Flagg could go anywhere and its going to be good for the NBA. It's not rigged. It's just a stupid system.

I’m gonna say: rigged or not, it is a stupid system.

Just the appearance of it being rigged is so bad for the product.

 

[Ferguson_Mellochill]

Put it this way: You want to rig the lottery so you invite dozens of independent journalists from all possible media outlets to personally witness the lottery taking place.

And I'm willing to bet very few of you even have the faintest idea how the lottery actually works, and envision some frozen envelopes.

The system was programmed before it ran in front of the journalists and everyone else. Any system can be pre-programmed.

 

[NUMBERICA]

The Mavs could have just shut Luka down after Kyrie tore his ACL and had Luka/Cooper...

According to the conspiracy, they would then not have received Flagg.

 

[Ferguson_Mellochill]

The Mavs could have just shut Luka down after Kyrie tore his ACL and had Luka/Cooper...

The Mavs could not have foreseen how badly things would play out after the trade. I don't think they were promised Cooper before the trade. I think the league is just doing damage control after the fact.

 

[Saint Cy of JFC]

The system was programmed before it ran in front of the journalists and everyone else. Any system can be pre-programmed.

NBA owners would know about it and not stand for it.

 

[SojoDave]

I played Tankathon a 100 times and the Mavericks never got #1.

 

[The Midnight]

I vehemently disagree on the wheel, but at least it’s transparent which is more than I can say about this shady ****ing garbage.

How dice in a back room without cameras is supposed to be reassuring, I have no ****ing clue.

They need to fix this system. I’ve proposed mine a bunch but it literally solves every problem with what we saw tonight and this season.

Yeah why is there no camera in the room?

 

[Deleted member 365]

Especially considering it's pretty obvious the league will make sure someone else gets ahead when the jazz seem to have a chance at anything like this. Without late lottery or late first-round luck we won't get anywhere. That's frankly all we've ever had. Stockton and Malone both were #13 picks. Mitchell was too. Gobert was 27. Those were all cases of luck over providence. Until we get another luck over providence pick we'll be at the bottom of the barrel. The league showed today that we won't be allowed at the top. Maybe if we have a shot in a draft without such a clear-cut generational talent we'll be allowed #2 or something. But otherwise it's all the luck of how we draft. We can't afford to be the team that drafts so poorly as we have in the past if we want to be able to compete. No more picks like Trey or Kanter or DedEx. We have to hit it out of the park. But realistically it's to the league's overall advantage for anyone but the Jazz to win it all. We don't bring them more money, almost literally every other team with a deep playoff run will bring in more money for the league. I think they realized that for real after our back to back finals runs. So that's it, for the league to make the most money possible we are always going to draw the short straw.

Good post.

Or that crappy center over Bane/Mcdaniels or more recently, Cody Williams. I get it that those guys weren’t top picks but holy crap. Even on the worst team last year Williams looked terrible. Now he’s gotta make significant improvements just to avoid being out of the league once his rookie deal is up. You just can’t miss like that when you’re a team like Utah that knows its operating at a major deficit in free agency.

 

[Tanktastic]

The system was programmed before it ran in front of the journalists and everyone else. Any system can be pre-programmed.

There is no "system". There are actual, physical lottery balls - 14 of them.

Go and ask a physicist if 14 identical balls mixed for 20 seconds can be programmed to come up in a certain order.

 

[Thee Jazz Fan]

3% isnt 0 %

But it happening in consecutive years is pretty astronomical