People are paranoid about how the world works. Understandably so. There is much that is poorly explained in terms of how our institutions do and don't function, and about who gets the spoils versus who has to eat poop sandwiches every day as a matter of survival. The world is, in other words, unfair—often in structural ways, but often, too, in random ways. Unfairness is only sometimes a matter of design; it often strikes for no real reason, and our unhappiness and dissatisfaction are left largely unaccounted for.
Here's where conspiracy theories—often a form of magical thinking—step in. They offer reason and scheme where none has been proven to exist. Something about this is comforting, even if the imagined plot is bad for the person envisioning it. They may be displeased with an outcome, but at least they've got a bad guy to root against; a fire truck to bark at as it goes down the road hurting your ears. When humanity is unbearably inexplicable, it can feel nice to step back into more animal form and lose your temper over the mailman.
This paranoia-first conception—in which all that happens is the result of enemies' secret plans come to fruition—is especially sympathetic when it comes to the higher-stakes things in life: jobs, medical care, infrastructure, physical safety. But in the world of sports, the conspiracy theorists look less like truly wounded people hollering in a broken world and more like maladjusted men goofily pouring misdirected energy into a bad parlor game as they project meaning onto a randomness that they haven't grown to accept.
This is all to say that the Dallas Mavericks have won the 2025 NBA Draft Lottery and thus the privilege to select the extremely impressive Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 overall pick in June. They have earned this right when they had less than a two percent chance to do so and, just so coincidentally, after they dramatically changed the fortunes of their franchise for the worse by sending Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers. By now, you've probably already heard the theory, which was hatched and circulated months ago in advance: the Mavericks, after collaborating with the league front office to engineer a superstar trade that would benefit the all-important Lakers fanbase, are now being rewarded for their NBA-first participation.
Nearly half of all NBA Draft Lottery winners have some kind of conspiracy theory attached to them. According to those eager to believe in such machinations, the San Antonio Spurs were rewarded Victor Wembanyama because of their historic strength with the French market; the New Orleans Pelicans got Zion Williamson as a gift after trading Anthony Davis to the Lakers; Davis was drafted by New Orleans in the first place as a favor to new owners for settling an awkward franchise transition; the Cleveland Cavaliers got three No. 1 picks in four years as an atonement for LeBron James leaving, with the third one helping to bring him back; the Chicago Bulls improbably won the top pick in 2008 so they could bring Derrick Rose home to the Windy City.
We could go back further. But why? The pattern won't change. There are no outcomes that would prevent fans and media from such meaning-making. Even last year's ho-hum result, which had the Atlanta Hawks at No. 1 despite equally long odds as this year's Mavericks and 2008's Bulls, could be read as something deeper—a content-machine prelude to what would happen this year, perhaps. A laying of the groundwork. Find some guys throwing dice in an alley, and you'll hear similar ideas from the losers there, too.
Ultimately, this is all harmless. Inventing connections, consequences, and causes is an okay thing to do as a sports fan; it's certainly preferable to using the whole enterprise as just another matrix for personal bigotry, for instance. But at the end of the day, without any proof, that's all these theories are: an adult coloring book, filled in crudely. Have at it, I guess. Maybe one day, one of these theories will finally find their evidence. And then, congratulations, those wildly etched pages of the coloring book can be pinned to the walls of the Louvre.
