The NBA Draft Lottery was held one week ago today. While there have been many interesting developments on the court as the playoffs have been whittled down to four teams, fans are still abuzz from what went down with those ping pong balls. Once again, the conspiracy theorists have taken control of the conversation, as the Dallas Mavericks overcame 1.8% odds to jump the rest of the league and now have the opportunity to draft star Duke freshman Cooper Flagg.
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Winning this high stakes game of chance was seen by many fans and pundits as the NBA’s way of repaying the Mavericks for trading Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers back in February, giving the Lakers a franchise star to build around in light of the end of the LeBron James era.
It’s not the first time that the lottery has appeared to reward a team for helping the league’s most famous franchise, as the Pelicans also won the lottery back in 2019 after sending Anthony Davis to L.A, eventually drafting Zion Williamson. However, it is still true that teams that trade superstars are usually not very good the following year anyway.
Some NBA analysts have pointed out the absurdity of believing that the lottery is rigged, but others have leaned into it. Shaquille O’Neal belongs to the latter group, and he added fuel to the fire by telling a story about former NBA commissioner David Stern on a recent appearance on The Ashley Nevel Show.
“In 1992, the draft was in June or something,” Shaq recalled. “I meet Mr. Stern in March, and he says to me, ‘Hey, can’t wait for you to come into the NBA.’ Then he pulls me to the side. ‘You wanna play where it’s cold or where it’s hot?’ He asked me that. And I was like, ‘Hot,’ and he smiled and I smiled, and then a couple days later… Orlando, Florida was number one.”
Getting to begin his career in sunny Florida seems like a nice coincidence for the Shaq after what he told Stern. Shaq ended up being drafted by the Orlando Magic and winning Rookie of the Year on his way to becoming one of the most dominant big men in basketball history.
Shaq’s story is adding to the NBA Draft Lottery conspiracy fire
Every NBA fan has heard of the frozen envelope theory that gave the New York Knicks the right to draft Patrick Ewing. Even LeBron himself put on a metaphorical tinfoil hat during his recent appearance on The Pat McAfee Show when he implied that all of these lottery results couldn’t be a coincidence.
Shaq has been dropping conspiracy breadcrumbs for a while now, which is probably driving NBA Commissioner Adam Silver insane. Just last week, O’Neal told a story on his own podcast about how Phil Jackson seemed to know the Lakers would be playing the Pacers in the NBA Finals even though it was still only the first round of the playoffs.
When he found out that the Magic had won the lottery when he was the presumptive top pick, Shaq said, “I didn’t think anything about it, but you hear a lot of these conspiracy theories… ‘OK, Dallas gets rid of one of the best players but oh, we’re getting a new one, ding ding ding ding ding.’ I don’t want to call it a conspiracy theory, but very interesting how it all played out.”
Regardless of whether it was rigged or not, fans of the Mavericks likely don’t care. They’re just happy to have a new franchise player on the way after losing one as beloved as Luka. General manager Nico Harrison was vilified for trading the Slovenian superstar away, and will continue to be a hated figure in Dallas for years, but he likely does not care.
The Mavericks got lucky, and now they have their guy going forward in Cooper Flagg.
