Pablo Torre has added fresh fuel to one of the NBA’s oldest and most corrosive conspiracy theories: that the draft lottery can be “steered” when the league wants a certain outcome.
On a recent podcast appearance, Torre said he spoke with two NBA owners the day after the 2025 NBA Draft Lottery, when Dallas shocked the league by winning the No. 1 pick with 1.8% odds, and that both owners told him the result was “obviously fixed.” Torre framed the point carefully: he said it’s not only fans online who believe the lottery looks manipulated, but that he has heard the suspicion privately from inside ownership circles as well, specifically tying that distrust to the idea that commissioner Adam Silver’s “hand” could influence the proceedings.
The backdrop matters because the Mavericks’ lottery win was, objectively, a stunner. Dallas landed the top pick at 1.8%, one of the longest shots to win No. 1 since the lottery’s modern era began in 1985.
That’s where Torre’s comments hit their nerve: credibility. The NBA has long emphasized that the lottery drawing is conducted under strict procedures and is observed by independent auditors, and league-facing explainers describe a standardized ping-pong-ball process intended to make outcomes random and verifiable. Torre isn’t presenting proof of wrongdoing in the excerpts circulating; he’s describing what he says two owners believed after seeing Dallas win, and using that as a window into how skepticism about the league’s integrity exists even at the top of the sport’s power structure.
The uncomfortable truth for the NBA is that perception can be nearly as damaging as reality. Even if the lottery is run exactly as written, a result as improbable as Dallas at 1.8% can still read, to some, like the league’s thumb on the scale, especially when it produces a clean headline and a clean reset for a major franchise. Torre’s account, if nothing else, illustrates how quickly a single night can harden doubts into conviction, and how those doubts can travel, from message boards, to podcasts, to alleged conversations with the people who literally own the league.
