NBA Draft Lottery: Mavs’ Chances of Landing No. 1 Prospect Victor Wembanyama

The Dallas Mavericks have a brutal history when it comes to the NBA Draft Lottery, but that just means they might be due for a big break — perhaps as big as Victor Wembanyama.

Dalton Trigg | Apr 3, 2023

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Dallas Mavericks

When it comes to the NBA Draft Lottery, history hasn’t been kind to the Dallas Mavericks.

The Mavs have been in the lottery 16 times in 43 years of existence, and they’ve never moved up. They’ve stayed put nine times and moved down seven times — including back-to-back lotteries in 1993 and 1994 where Dallas had the best odds to land the No. 1 pick, but moved down each time.

All that misfortune just means the Mavs are bound to have a big break at some point, though, right? Perhaps this will finally be the year the ping-pong balls fall the Mavs’ way.

There are still three games remaining in the season, and with that remains a slim chance for Dallas to make the postseason. However, it’s likely that the Mavs will find themselves in the lottery for the 17th time in team history when the dust settles. It’s just a matter of what spot they’ll be in.

As things currently stand, the Mavs have the 10th-best odds in the lottery with a 3.0-percent chance of winning the No. 1 overall pick and a 13.9-percent chance of jumping into the top four. It is feasible that Dallas could catch the Utah Jazz for the ninth-best odds before the season is over, which would boost its No. 1 pick chances to 4.5 percent and top-four chances to 20.3 percent.

The Mavs are in a tough situation when it comes to re-tooling their roster. They have limited future first-round picks and young prospects that could potentially be used in trades. Their trade deadline prize, Kyrie Irving, is an unrestricted free agent, and there’s no guarantee he won’t walk for nothing like Jalen Brunson did last summer.

Winning the NBA lottery could be a franchise-altering moment for the Mavs, who would likely select the 7-foot-5 Frenchman, Victor Wembanyama, who can handle and shoot the ball like a guard while also possessing a freakish wingspan of near eight feet.

It also doesn’t hurt that Wembanyama already has a connection to the Mavs through Dirk Nowitzki’s longtime coach and mentor, Holger Geschwindner.

There are still ways the Mavs can improve their roster even if they stay in the 10th spot or potentially move to 11th or higher, having to covey the pick to the New York Knicks. But it would be a shot in the arm for the Mavs to have things go the other direction for once, wouldn’t it?

Although keeping the pick would make more sense for the Mavs, they wouldn’t be able to ignore all the potential trade possibilities winning the lottery would open up as well.

This kind of scenario can definitely be filed in the “pipe-dream” folder, but at some point in time, the Mavs are going to get lucky and move up in the lottery. With Luka Doncic’s free agency looming in the next three years, there’s no time like the present.

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Published Apr 3, 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.