2025 draft thread: THE MAVS SELECT COOPER FLAGG

[KillerLeft]

The probability of those exact four lotteries having these very favourable outcome for the NBA and the specific traumatized teams was 0.0000514%.

You think that that is more likely than the NBA being capable of building a lottery box that can spit out 1 specific ball out of 14 balls. 

I mean....

I don't even agree that you can paint with the "favorable outcome for the NBA" brush so liberally. It's so easy to reverse-engineer conspiracy theories based on the results, but in reality, this was all voted on by all of the teams: the process, the odds, everything. If "the NBA" (meaning Silver and co) have an agenda here, it's likely just to discourage tanking, but even THAT part is just them carrying out the assignment given to them by consensus of "the league," which is actually a collection of people all in it for their team, with their own agendas. 

And, a lottery box isn't "spitting out" anything. Someone is controlling it, exactly as someone else directs them, and that second person has their back turned. There's a timing element that is, by the account of many, many people who've witnessed this, and who are all present at the drawing, "impossible" to rig. Literally everyone I've seen talk about this who has actually been present during one of these lotteries is so dismissive of the idea that it's fake that it's enough for me to set that thought aside. These are people who have major issues with the results and don't like what has happened during the past few, and what they want to discuss is the RULES, as in how the odds are determined. 

I think it's ironic that this topic has GAINED traction here now that we're on this winning side of it, because we're uniquely close enough to the situation to completely shoot down the faulty logic involved. The Mavs absolutely, 100% didn't behave like a team expecting a "quid pro quo" after the trade. They rushed AD back (twice) and then played Kyrie more minutes than they should have TO TRY TO MAKE THE PLAYOFFS. Then, they WON their first play-in game and tried like hell to compete in the second. So right there, we factually KNOW this wasn't "set up" at the time of the trade. 

Is it possible "the NBA" decided to throw the Mavs a bone based on the trade's aftermath? The public backlash, and potential to lose traction in maybe the 5th biggest market in the country? That makes a little more sense, I guess, but again, that would require the OTHER OWNERS to be in on it. Silver is not "in charge" of anything. He works FOR THEM. Imagine how pissed Danny Ainge would be today if there was even a fraction of a chance that he had just been willfully screwed after his approach to the past couple of seasons. He probably is pissed, but about the APPROACH to determining the odds, not about "rigging." There's just no plausible way "they" could get away with it. 

What many people just don't seem to want to believe, STILL, is that Nico Harrison just didn't want Luka Doncic on this team anymore. You can think he's wrong or stupid for that, absolutely, but there doesn't have to be some nefarious plot afoot to motivate what happened in February. Honestly, I highly doubt the Lakers will even experience the kind of success everyone assumes they will as a result. I see the trade and the lottery as two, separate things. Neither is good GMing, as the trade was executed poorly and the lottery was miraculous, dumb luck backed into by accidental failure. BUT, once you wrap your head around the idea that Luka might actually have deserved to be given up on rather than paid that damn SUPER MAX, then the rest is pretty easy to see clearly. He lost the negotiation part of it, FOR SURE, but "they" didn't FORCE him to trade Luka or promise this pick or anything silly like that.