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Adam Silver addresses accusations of NBA Draft Lottery being rigged for Mavericks: 'Odds are odds'

Chandler Vesselsby: Chandler Vessels06/04/25ChandlerVessels
adam silver
Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images

NBA commissioner Adam Silver is pushing back on the notion that this past NBA Draft Lottery was rigged. The Dallas Mavericks surprisingly won the lottery to receive No. 1 overall pick despite having the 11th-best odds to do so out of 14 teams at a 1.8% chance.

This led to speculation from fans that there was something going on behind the scenes. The Mavs made headlines earlier in the season after trading superstar Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for Anthony Davis.

The trade received heavy criticism at the time with the large majority believing the Mavericks made a mistake. The team was coming off of an NBA Finals appearance the season prior with Doncic, a five-time All-Star in seven pro seasons, leading the way.

Dallas went 13-20 in the games after the trade and missed out on the playoffs, but injuries to both Davis and Kyrie Irving, among others, played a part. When news broke that the Mavericks had gotten the No. 1 pick, it re-sparked discussion about the trade from fans who felt it seemed too good to be true. But according to Silver, it was just random chance.

“We call it a lottery and I think, sometimes because it’s a lottery, people think it must have been a one-in-a-million chance that Dallas was going to win,” he said in an appearance on Breakfast Ball at Fox Sports 1. “Remember, the worst performing team had a 14% chance of winning, which means there was an 86% chance they wouldn’t get it. Dallas had roughly a 2% chance. So the losingest team had a 7x better chance.

“Two percent is two percent. It’s gonna happen. When people say, ‘therefore, the lottery is broken,’ I have a different view. I say it’s to disincentivize teams from tanking. So here you had a team that was clearly trying — whatever people think of that trade — they were trying to win. Then Kyrie got injured. Then Anthony Davis got injured. So they found themselves in the lottery. Odds are odds and that’s how it turned out.”

The lottery win was the first in franchise history for the Mavericks, who had the fourth-lowest odds of any team in NBA history who ended up winning. They are expected to take No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg, who put up 19.2 points, 7.5 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game while winning AP Player of the Year as a true Freshman at Duke.

The inevitable arrival of Flagg could put Dallas in position to be a contender again once it gets its team fully healthy. Davis should be good to go for the start of the regular season, but Irving will likely miss some time to start the year as he suffered an ACL tear in March.

The Mavs’ lottery win was definitely a shocker, but it isn’t the first time something like this has happened. The Atlanta Hawks won the 2024 lottery despite having just 3% odds and the Orlando Magic have the record for the teams with the lowest odds to win at 1.52% in 1993.

The Magic ended up using that pick to trade to Golden State for Penny Hardaway. That’s also a route the Mavericks could take this offseason with stars such as Giannis Antetokounmpo potentially up for grabs.