Is the NBA draft lottery rigged?
No, I don’t think so.
Look, I get it: Monday’s draft lottery felt extremely bad. Dallas, perhaps the most annoying and least deserving team that could have won the lottery, won it. San Antonio, the team that seems to win every lottery, got second.
But I can tell you, as someone who was in the room where the lottery takes place, that it would be extremely difficult to rig.
I was selected to be one of the 14 media members within the lottery room itself. It was actually a fascinating process to be a part of.
Let me set the scene for you. First, the security getting into the room is extremely strict. Getting to the doors, we’re asked to put any electronic devices of any sort into a labeled envelope, which I would receive back at the end of the lottery: phones, of course, went inside, but also watches, earbuds, recorders, anything like that.
The lottery takes place in a big room at the McCormick Place convention center, which looks like every other convention center in America. The team representatives are dressed to the nines. Utah Jazz general manager Justin Zanik wears a blue suit and socks with the team’s throwback logo on them.
Incredibly generic elevator music plays for about 15 minutes while everyone waits for proceedings to begin. There are snacks in the back — cookies, sandwiches (turkey and chicken pesto), salads (pasta and standard), potato chips, Pepsi, Starry, Gatorade, apple and cranberry juices, and coffee, for the exceptionally curious. The team representatives sit closest, with the media watching from the side.
The 14 pingpong balls are kept in a briefcase about 10 feet away from the observers. The briefcase is opened, and each of the balls is displayed to the camera and to the audience. They’re then emptied into an air hopper, made by the Smartplay Company, one by one. (The Smartplay Company designs machines for lotteries around the world, including the California Lottery.) Accounting firm Ernst & Young watches the process, too.
When you select four numbered balls out of 14, a total of 1,001 combinations exist. 1,000 of them are assigned to give the probabilities set out in the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement. The Jazz, who had a 14% chance of winning the lottery, therefore get 140 combinations.
(Andy Larsen | The Salt Lake Tribune) 126 of the 140 combinations the Jazz held going into Monday’s lottery.
Those combinations are in order, so you essentially have a rooting guide: The Jazz would need a No. 1 ball to come up, plus some help to win the lottery
On Monday, no No. 1 ball was drawn in 16 selections.
As soon as the lottery ends, envelopes identifying the winners for the reverse process on stage are sent away, and then those in the lottery room are stuck there until the NBA’s TV show ends. That meant Zanik and the other disappointed lottery observers had about an hour to stew in disappointment.
I think it’s fair to say that “annoyance” might have been the second-highest emotional reaction to the lottery in the room, second only to “shock.” That a team with a 1.8% chance won the lottery is surprising enough, let alone it being the Dallas Mavericks, the team that traded Luka Doncic.
So could you rig the lottery?
In 2019, writer Mike Vorkunov explored the idea. Magicians he spoke to insisted rigging the pingpong ball hopper was possible — for example, by blowing a specific ball up from the bottom of the hopper to the top of it at just the opportune moment. Others have suggested electromagnets within the balls could be triggered to ensure the outcome.
The biggest problem: You’d have to fool both cameras and dozens of witnesses. Those witnesses are incentivized to catch any shenanigans. By definition, at least 10 of the 14 team representatives are leaving the lottery upset
Take Zanik, who was certainly one of those unhappy campers. That No. 1 ball not coming up could have raised eyebrows, and the NBA allowed observers access to the balls after the lottery. It didn’t seem Zanik, nor anybody else, had any qualms with what happened from a fairness perspective.
Zanik didn’t, certainly.
“It’s definitely not rigged,“ he said.
Meanwhile, the 14 media members involved would make their careers explode by breaking the news that the lottery was rigged. None who have ever witnessed the lottery made serious inquisitions about the topic.
The thousands of people watching the video the NBA posts online, both with access to computer forensics and the extreme manual inspection that only sporting and religious fervor can provoke. Again, no one has really found anything out of the ordinary in the last 40 years.
And by the way: Why would the NBA choose to pull one over on the Jazz? If it’s because of the team’s small market status — well, small market San Antonio might be the NBA lottery’s most successful ever participant, with lucky multi-time winners Cleveland and Orlando following up from tiny cities. If it’s because of red-state politics, as one X user suggested to me, guess what: The states of all four winners of the lottery this year voted for Donald Trump, too.
If you think the league favored these four teams because of this, that or the other … well, you can do that with literally every team in the lottery. In particular, a conspiracy theory that the league gave the No.1 pick to Dallas to incentivize the Doncic trade doesn’t make any sense, because at the time the trade was made, the Mavericks looked to be headed to the playoffs behind Anthony Davis, and therefore out of lottery contention. Could the NBA have rigged Davis’ injury, too?
If you were to craft a best-case scenario for the league from this draft, it involves Cooper Flagg to Chicago, to revitalize the Bulls — or at least Dylan Harper there. It involves bringing a star to Washington right as they build a new arena, or to New York to bring the Brooklyn Nets to relevance. Monday’s outcome was a good outcome for the NBA, but not a great one.
Despite this, in a poll I ran yesterday of my mostly Jazz fan followers, 76% felt the lottery was rigged.
In general, I feel this is lazy thinking. More and more, people seem to attribute outcomes they don’t like in the world to conspiracy — whether it be sports, politics, or even the weather. It’s good to keep your eyes open in the world around you, sure … but giving over to a conspiratorial mindset really distracts from the factors that actually do change our world.
So yes, the Jazz have rotten luck. I don’t think they’re part of a rotten league.
