BREAKING: Mavs Receive 10th Pick in Lottery; Spurs Win Wembanyama Sweepstakes

The Dallas Mavericks are hoping to move up in the NBA Draft Lottery for the first time in franchise history on Tuesday night.

Dalton Trigg | May 16, 2023

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Dallas Mavericks

At long last, NBA Draft Lottery day arrived, and the Dallas Mavericks anxiously awaited Tuesday night’s drawing results to see if they’d keep their first-round pick or not.

With a 65.9-percent chance getting the No. 10 pick, the Mavs did just that, as their logo was revealed in the No. 10 envelope. Now that Dallas stayed in the top 10, it doesn’t have to covey the pick to the New York Knicks to complete the 2019 Kristaps Porzingis trade until next year at the earliest.

Meanwhile, although the Mavs kept their pick, there was surely some cringing involved later on as they watched their division rivals, the San Antonio Spurs, get awarded the No. 1 overall pick. This likely means that Victor Wembanyama, who has been dubbed by some as being the best NBA prospect of all-time, will be in the same division against Luka Doncic for the foreseeable future.

Due to the national media outrage over the Mavs tanking their last two games of the season, many believed that Dallas didn’t deserve to keep its pick — especially people with Knicks rooting interest. However, lottery odds don’t care for people’s conspiracy theories. The ping-pong balls will fall where they fall each year, and everyone will live with the results.

The Mavs just hoped those results were favorable enough for them to move up in the draft order for the first time in franchise history, but they’ll gladly settle for not having to surrender the pick to New York. Retaining this year’s pick makes building around Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving a little bit easier than it would’ve been in that doomsday scenario.

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Published May 16, 2023

DALTON TRIGG

Dalton Trigg is the Editor-In-Chief for Dallas Basketball, as well as the Executive Editor overseeing Inside The Rockets, Inside The Spurs, All Knicks, and The Magic Insider. He is the founder and host for the Mavs Step Back Podcast, which is a proud part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Trigg graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi’s College of Business and Economic Development with a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship in 2016. After spending a few years with multiple Dallas Mavericks-related blogs, including SB Nation’s Mavs Moneyball, Trigg joined DallasBasketball.com as a staff writer in 2018 and never looked back. At the start of 2022, he was promoted to the EIC title he holds now. Through the years, Trigg has conducted a handful of high-profile one-on-one interviews to add to his resume — in both writing and podcasting. Some of his biggest interviews have been with Mavs owner Mark Cuban, Mavs GM Nico Harrison, now-retired legend Dirk Nowitzki and many other current/former players and team staffers. Many of those interviews and other articles by Trigg have been aggregated by other well-known sports media websites, such as Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report and others. You can find Trigg on all major social media channels, but his most prevalent platform is on Twitter. Whether it’s posting links to his DBcom work, live-tweeting Mavs games or merely giving his opinions on things going on with Dallas and the rest of the NBA, the daily content never stops rolling. For any inquiries, please email Dalton@MavsStepBack.com.