The OFFICIAL "Was the 2025 NBA draft rigged?"

[Zerostatic]

The NBA draft is obviously not rigged. Here are a few reasons why...

1. There are too many people involved. The NBA, team execs, lawyers, media and the auditors that oversee the process. Keeping them all quiet would be impossible.
2. If someone knew the lottery was fixed, there would be massive incentives for them to expose it. Fame, financial, moral incentives to just name a few. For the NBA draft lottery there would have to be so many people in on it that could resist these incentives and I do not have faith in people to be that dedicated and selfless.
3. Media and investigation pressure. Any journalist who broke a conspiracy of this scale would get the Pulitzer Prize in Sports journalism. There are people that have connections all around the league and people involved in the league. They would have exposed it if there was something there.
4. Complexity. Some of the scenarios some of you are painting involves communication and coordination with multiple teams, execs and the firm that actually handles the drawing. To do this every year and have it all go right and stay hidden is unrealistic.
5. Team owners are too selfish too allow a player that could ultimately make their team worth millions more go somewhere else, especially when they spent a year tanking to get that player.


I could keep going, but the bottom line Is that the draft is not rigged and games are not scripted. Some of you really need to learn some critical thinking skills.

[SNPA]

The NBA draft is obviously not rigged. Here are a few reasons why...

1. There are too many people involved. The NBA, team execs, lawyers, media and the auditors that oversee the process. Keeping them all quiet would be impossible. How do you know how many people would be needed? Do you know the mechanism by which it’s done?
2. If someone knew the lottery was fixed, there would be massive incentives for them to expose it. Fame, financial, moral incentives to just name a few. Uhh…Donaghy? Did he get any of that? No, the opposite, he got ostracized.For the NBA draft lottery there would have to be so many people in on it that could resist these incentives and I do not have faith in people to be that dedicated and selfless.
3. Media and investigation pressure. Any journalist who broke a conspiracy of this scale would get the Pulitzer Prize in Sports journalism. Again, exactly backwards. The league can shut down sports journalist anytime they want. And they have. Sports journalism is about access and credibility, Silver can crush both in a few if sidebar comments if you piss him off enough. These guys aren’t throwing their careers away for one story. There are people that have connections all around the league and people involved in the league. They would have exposed it if there was something there.
4. Complexity. Some of the scenarios some of you are painting involves communication and coordination with multiple teams, execs and the firm that actually handles the drawing. To do this every year and have it all go right and stay hidden is unrealistic. Maybe it’s simple? With officiating we know the mechanism and it is purely based on CYA, there’s never a smoking gun. It’s all stuffed into business/officiating jargon and company men get the instructions, but no one ever directly tells them to cheat.
5. Team owners are too selfish too allow a player that could ultimately make their team worth millions more go somewhere else, especially when they spent a year tanking to get that…Owners care about franchise valuations. As long as those continue to go up at astronomical rates…they good. Silver/Stern would never give any one of them enough to prove anything.


I could keep going, but the bottom line Is that the draft is not rigged and games are not scripted. Some of you really need to learn some critical thinking skills.

[Los_29]

People need to stop believing in conspiracy theories.

[FarBeyondDriven]

The NBA draft is obviously not rigged. Here are a few reasons why...

1. There are too many people involved. The NBA, team execs, lawyers, media and the auditors that oversee the process. Keeping them all quiet would be impossible.

there are 30 NBA teams with 30 owners who employ the commissioner to be their voice as it pertains to running the league. That's not a lot. It's an exclusive club. We don't know the contract between the league and auditors. It could literally say they all agree that this is rigged and you aren't auditing anything but we'll pay you to make it seem like we are for all we know. Since nobody is going to complain there's no risk.

2. If someone knew the lottery was fixed, there would be massive incentives for them to expose it. Fame, financial, moral incentives to just name a few. For the NBA draft lottery there would have to be so many people in on it that could resist these incentives and I do not have faith in people to be that dedicated and selfless.

again, there's far less people than you think that know and if the owners are on board and their conditions of ownership are predicated on going along to get along there's no risk of leaks.

3. Media and investigation pressure. Any journalist who broke a conspiracy of this scale would get the Pulitzer Prize in Sports journalism. There are people that have connections all around the league and people involved in the league. They would have exposed it if there was something there.

if you haven't figured out over the past 8 years that the media is corrupt and easily bought then I don't know what to tell you.

4. Complexity. Some of the scenarios some of you are painting involves communication and coordination with multiple teams, execs and the firm that actually handles the drawing. To do this every year and have it all go right and stay hidden is unrealistic.

if you owning a team means you have an understanding that business is conducted for the betterment of the league and by doing so the values of your franchises is going to rise dramatically there is no reason for any communication. It's understood that the large markets need stars and certain storylines sell the league and dictate its success so no reason to have to have this explained twice. Just because they do and have rigged the lottery does not mean it's necessary every single draft. There are many ways they can control the outcome. Corruption always finds a way

5. Team owners are too selfish too allow a player that could ultimately make their team worth millions more go somewhere else, especially when they spent a year tanking to get that player.

Wyc Grousbeck bought the Celtics in 2002 for $320 million. He just sold them this year for $6.1 Billion. Do you think he cares or questioned why draft lotteries were rigged?

I could keep going, but the bottom line Is that the draft is not rigged and games are not scripted. Some of you really need to learn some critical thinking skills.

It's remarkable to me that with everything we've learned about the corruption in this country, the government, the corporations, the politicians, etc, that anyone in 2025 still believes in fairy tales and that the world is just and there's nothing shady going on. This despite almost every "conspiracy theory" seemingly just a matter of time from being proven true. If the NBA draft lottery affected more people and had as much scrutiny on it it would join the club but it doesn't. People don't care and the people paid to pry are paid more by the people they'd be investigating.

[The Servant]

Four out of five fans think the NBA does NOT have integrity.

This is on you vampire bat Silver. It was too obvious. We accepted the Nascarification of jerseys so you could take more money. Now we have to see backroom deals and rigging and swallow that too? CMON SILVER.

[The Servant]

The NBA draft is obviously not rigged. Here are a few reasons why...

1. There are too many people involved. The NBA, team execs, lawyers, media and the auditors that oversee the process. Keeping them all quiet would be impossible.
2. If someone knew the lottery was fixed, there would be massive incentives for them to expose it. Fame, financial, moral incentives to just name a few. For the NBA draft lottery there would have to be so many people in on it that could resist these incentives and I do not have faith in people to be that dedicated and selfless.
3. Media and investigation pressure. Any journalist who broke a conspiracy of this scale would get the Pulitzer Prize in Sports journalism. There are people that have connections all around the league and people involved in the league. They would have exposed it if there was something there.
4. Complexity. Some of the scenarios some of you are painting involves communication and coordination with multiple teams, execs and the firm that actually handles the drawing. To do this every year and have it all go right and stay hidden is unrealistic.
5. Team owners are too selfish too allow a player that could ultimately make their team worth millions more go somewhere else, especially when they spent a year tanking to get that player.


I could keep going, but the bottom line Is that the draft is not rigged and games are not scripted. Some of you really need to learn some critical thinking skills.

Did you see Boeing kill off their whistle blowers? Have you seen companies dump toxic waste into the environment? Have we seen widespread fraud in the corporate world?

Yet the NBA, a company worth 90 billion dollars with TV deals that reach 75 BILLION would be above pulling a string here or there in their league. You believe in a 1 out of 100 chance more than human greed.

[The Consiglieri]

I was looking into this a bit last night and was amazed.

Over the past 17 drafts, a team with 3% chance or LESS has won the lotto 5 times. That is 29.4% of the past 17 drafts.

08- 1.7%
11- 2.8%
14- 1.7%
24- 3%
25- 1.8%

Maybe even crazier than that.. from 99-14.. a span of 16 drafts the top 2-3 teams with ~42% chance or more of getting the #1 pick only wont the lotto 2 times (12.5%) And one of those was 03 sending Lebron to the Cavs.

I don't know how anyone looks at those numbers and thinks this thing is legit.

Add in that virtually all the most shocking results fed right into what the league would prioritize in the given moment.

#1: One part of me, an aspect of the logical/rational side of myself believes conspiracies are too complicated, and too difficult to keep quiet, to justify, especially at this level which involves billions of dollars of value in player talent moving in one direction or the other.

#2 The other part of my logical/rational brain says: the math doesn't make any sense. In isolation, yes, weird results happen, but how often are you likely to get these many 1 in 100 to 1 in 50 caliber results, or in this case 1 in 1000? It's approaching double digit times in just 40 years if it hasn't hit there already, and remember, we are combing the rarity of math results alongside the rarity of the math results also serving league interests (just since 2010 alone: Lebron and Cleveland, New Orleans and the ownership and Davis departure issues, the Mavericks catastrophe and LA) and the fact that moving players where it best serves league story lines and league interests is well worth the head ache of conspiracists catching them (on the other hand, would they really let Chicago, and NJ go straight into the toilet?).


So I always bounce both ways:
#1 seems like too much to rig this and hide it effectively.

#2 the math doesn't make sense w/miracles happening exactly when they need to, where they need to most desperately to kill off bad news cycles.

#3 Having a lottery, a closed lottery at that, rather than a straight up draft, seems a level of rigging to begin with. Their "anti-tanking" process has repeatedly assisted playoff teams that had an issue (usually injury related) which caused them to go full tank mode the second half of the season, and then be richly rewarded for it (the latest iterations being San Antonio, Philly and of course an idiotic trade w/last years finalist mavs). Keeping a flawed lottery system that doesn't help bad teams, and opens the door to competitive attractive, eye catching contenders rather than eye sores that nobody likes like the Wiz, Charlotte, and Utah.

They could solve this by simply going back to worst picks first, but they don't. Why?

Nothing they've done has stopped tanking, and by any reasonable estimate, tanking is worse now, than ever, though i don't care, and think tanking is not just fine, but flat out essential in this league in particular.

As long as they keep this system, it will perpetuate questions of rigging, it's an easy solve, but they don't take the door to rational, worst picks first, drafting, so, why should anyone believe it's on the up and up? Because they say so? We already know they rigged a final just a few decades ago.....

Regardless, I don't really care if its rigged or not, I care that it exists. It should not exist, period. It doesn't accomplish either of its goals and should be tossed:

1. It doesn't prevent tanking.
2. It rewards teams that are fine, and punishes teams in the greatest need of assistance.

[MrGoat]

People need to stop believing in conspiracy theories.

Conspiracies happen, you shouldn't write them all off. Some of them are ridiculous (*cough Joe Rogan *cough) of course but not all of them, the only person dumber than the person who believes in every conspiracy theory is the person who believes there are no conspiracies.

Believing the NBA draft is all on the up and up at this point is like believing that Epstein actually killed himself and that it was just a coincidence that the cameras happened to go out right around the time windows it happened.

[levon]

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/ey-negligently-missed-huge-fraud-collapsed-hospital-operator-3-bln-uk-trial-2025-05-19/

[Big nick]

No way it’s not rigged, just to many coincidences you don’t trade Luka for ad without knowing you were getting the 1st pick NO WAY. When money is involved things happen.

[The Servant]

People need to stop believing in conspiracy theories.

Posting this again for all the anti conspiracy people who understand any kind of math:

"I was looking into this a bit last night and was amazed.

Over the past 17 drafts, a team with 3% chance or LESS has won the lotto 5 times. That is 29.4% of the past 17 drafts.

08- 1.7%
11- 2.8%
14- 1.7%
24- 3%
25- 1.8%

Maybe even crazier than that.. from 99-14.. a span of 16 drafts the top 2-3 teams with ~42% chance or more of getting the #1 pick only wont the lotto 2 times (12.5%) And one of those was 03 sending Lebron to the Cavs.

I don't know how anyone looks at those numbers and thinks this thing is legit."

[Jamaaliver]

Read on Twitter