Between July 2016 and July 2018, former BYU guard Kyle Collinsworth signed five different contracts with the Dallas Mavericks. They and their G League affiliate, the Texas Legends, were the only two teams that Collinsworth would play for in his first two seasons as a professional player.
So proud is Collinsworth of his time as a Maverick that, to this day, long after his playing career has ended, his top post on his X account is still speaking proudly of his time with the team, which he calls a “dream”. On that same X account, however, Collinsworth also got conspiratorial.
Expressing his disbelief that the Mavericks were able to win the NBA’s Draft Lottery despite only a 2.5% chance of doing so, Collinsworth called the lottery “rigged”. Specifically, Collinsworth alluded to the idea that the Mavericks made their controversial February-time Luka Doncic trade with the L.A. Lakers safe in the knowledge that the first overall pick would be coming their way, as a form of compensation for reinforcing the future fortunes of the league’s marquee franchise .
Five-Time Maverick Not Seemingly Promoting Anything
Talk of the NBA’s Draft Lottery potentially being rigged happens every season. Even as far back as 40 years ago, Patrick Ewing was supposedly funneled to the New York Knicks in the 1985 NBA Draft via the “frozen envelope” method, creating a conspiracy theory so widely known that it now has its own Wikipedia section.
Just earlier this month, an NBA player of slightly more international renown than Kyle Collinsworth – Shaquille O’Neal – openly fanned those flames. Speaking about his own draft selection as the #1 pick all the way back in 1992, O’Neal heavily implied that former NBA Commissioner David Stern saw to it that Shaq would go to the team of his choice, which in his case was the Orlando Magic.
Shaq, however, likes to stir the pot. Collinsworth is not known for the same. Indeed, the former Mavericks guard is neither still playing basketball, nor working in any form of basketball media. He has no dog in the fight, and if he did, that dog seemingly would be one biased in favor of his “dream” NBA franchise, for whom he worked for two years.
Maybe, then, he really means it. If he does mean it, though, Collinsworth might run afoul of critical thinking.
Evidence Not Necessary When Feelings Are Involved
Hitting a lottery with a 2.5% chance of winning is the same as hitting a 39-1 shot. That is barely less likely than picking the winning roulette number. Not likely, certainly. Nor expected. And the kind of stroke of luck that leads to high-fives for everyone around you. But not mystifying. Not the kind of stuff that merits an explanation.
Because they are the highest-profile team in wider culture and an enormous revenue generator, it is certainly true that the NBA benefits when the Lakers are competitive. That does not however mean that Lakers competitiveness must be achieved, especially not at the cost of integrity, parity, and the rest of the playing field. Everyone must eat.
Funneling Luka to the Lakers in exchange for the rights to Cooper Flagg required a lot of variables to all work out perfectly. It required entrusting a lot of people intimately involved with the process to respecting a lifelong vow of silence, for one. For another, it required the Mavericks playing ball.
What it did not require was the Lakers successfully leveraging the Mavericks’ two-fold desperation to get rid of Luka and to get back Anthony Davis into being able to take almost all the extraneous pieces out of the trade package. The Mavericks would, surely, have done the deal with draft capital attached if they were being made to do the deal for the league’s wider nefarious purposes. A team will not be persuaded or forced into silence by allowing themselves to be made fools of. But the Mavericks did not get those things. Instead, as everyone except their own front office knows, Dallas got the bad end of the trade.
Occam’s razor applies. A bad deal was just a bad deal. The least-fun explanation is, sadly, the logical one.
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