A Week Before Tonight's (Fixed) 2025 NBA Draft, The Dallas Mavericks Prematurely Posted They Were Drafting Cooper Flagg, So I Asked Ice Cube If He Could Ever See Himself Rigging His "The Big Three" League's Draft

Athlon Sports - Less than two weeks remain until commissioner Adam Silver begins the draft, in which the Dallas Mavericks hold the top pick after a stunning draft lottery result. However, 12 days before they can officially select Flagg, it appears as if the Mavericks have already telegraphed their choice.

DLLS Mavericks reporter Kevin Gray posted on X a screenshot from Mavs' official website that displayed Flagg in Dallas' white home jersey – part of a premature "Welcome to Dallas" graphic that was quickly removed from the team's site.

Gray later deleted the screenshot, as well as a screen-recorded iPhone video that "proved" he had navigated to the Mavericks' draft night portal on the team website, where he encountered the Flagg graphic.

It is not uncommon for social media teams to prepare graphics well in advance for a major announcement, such as the Mavericks selecting Flagg. 

It's Wednesday, we've officially entered the miserable stretch of the year where we have only subpar, regular-season baseball to keep us entertained. And who can forget that tonight is the 2025 NBA Draft?

If you’ve been watching the NBA for long enough, you’ve probably started to wonder if the whole damn thing isn’t just one giant rigged reality show. Especially when you look at this year’s mystery trade and the fact that Dallas is sitting on the #1 pick. Coincidence? I think not.

I know everybody loves a good conspiracy theory, especially sports-related ones. And the NBA did a bang up job of providing us with a piping hot one this season. With the master of deception and deflection, David "Do You Still Beat Your Wife Jim?" Stern, passed on, we've been left with his mumbling, and stumbling successor (and albeit good guy) Adam Silver. 

And there is about a 99.9999% certainty that nobody will ever mistake Silver for his predecessor. 

David Stern was like a fucking chessmaster compared to today's four major sport commissioners. Guy had his strategy mapped out 10-11 moves ahead of everybody else. The man successfully navigated a rumored/alleged controversy that could have submarined the entire league, with its star player, and one of the biggest, most recognizable names in the world, potentially embroiled in a gambling scandal. And not only did he dodge disaster of any sort, but everybody came out on the other side 10 times better off for it. 

But before that, Stern was pulling strings so well that he'd make Mario Puzo proud. 

Let’s rewind to 1985. The NBA was in desperate need of a savior. Enter: Patrick Ewing and the New York Knicks. Somehow, the Knicks, struggling, bottom-of-the-barrel, disaster of a franchise (the more things change, the more they stay the same...), ended up winning the lottery, with the future of the entire league seemingly on their shoulders. How? Well, rumor has it that the envelope containing the Knicks’ logo was frozen. Not bent, not just a little wrinkled, frozen. As in ice cold so that Stern could tell which one it was when he was sifting through the giant envelopes. 

Genius when you really think about it.

Then we've got the 2003 version. LeBron James, a Cleveland (Akron) kid, ends up with the Cavs, the worst team in the league. He was never gonna play anywhere else, right? Of course not.

Even LeBron knew the fix was in. 

Then again in 2008. The Bulls with a 1.7% chance of landing Derrick Rose, but guess who they pulled? Yeah, the Chicago native. What a shocker.

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Then after Stern retired in 2014, Silver got to try his hand in things in 2019. Zion Williamson, the most hyped kid since LeBron, ends up in New Orleans. Convenient, right? Especially since the franchise was owned by the NBA at the time. It’s almost like they needed a face to sell the team.

The NBA is a business. Forget competitive balance and integrity. The league thrives when it can stir up storylines and draw in big TV numbers. Big-market teams like New York, Chicago, LA, they need their stars, their narratives, their soap operas. It’s not rocket science to assume the league nudges things in the direction that makes them the most money. A little bit of shadiness goes a long way.

But I digress. 

Back to this season, and the tomfoolery that went down back in February.  

Out of absolutely nowhere Dallas decided to trade away Luka Doncic, one of the biggest stars in the game, for an underwhelming haul. To who else but LeBron's Los Angeles Lakers. 

The team doesn’t even get back a guy that can carry the load. Instead, the trade has minimal fanfare, Luka’s just gone, the Mavs players, head coach, and fans are totally blindsided and shellshocked, and then a few months later, boom, Dallas is handed the #1 pick in the 2024 draft.

It wasn't just how nobody could explain how the trade made any sense, it was the fact that Mavs ownership and their GM Nico Harrison couldn't help but trip all over their own words in trying to explain it. And the fact that it was all done with close to zero transparency, which only leads people to question the motive even more. 

And who does Dallas get with that first pick? Cooper Flagg, a 16-year-old phenom who has somehow become the new white hope for American basketball. This kid’s got media hype for days. And of course, he’s the perfect little prince for the NBA. A squeaky clean, Duke-bound, future face-of-the-league type who’s just waiting for a made-for-TV narrative.

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Now, here’s where the conspiracy kicks in- Luka leaving and Dallas suddenly getting Cooper Flagg—the perfect, marketable, media-friendly star. Did the NBA set this up? They got Luka to a bigger market, and then, in return, gave Dallas a golden ticket to reboot the narrative.

This post on twitter went viral back in May, and for good reason. Sure, that story was probably posted in some reddit chatroom, and came from the mind with somebody with too much time on their hands, but tell me that timeline and sequence of events doesn't seem all too plausible to you?

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Especially when you consider this guy's WILD fact he pointed out - 

Six years now since 2011, a team trading a top tier player to the Lakers, was later "rewarded" with the #1 pick via the draft lottery. 

You also cannot forget Dallas’ situation before the trade. They were mediocre at best. The timing of this whole trade? Too perfect. Could it be that the NBA just gave Dallas a “do-over,” a new shot at the top of the heap with a shiny new toy?

For shits and giggles, I asked The Big Three founder and commissioner Ice Cube if he could ever see himself manipulating his league's draft, and intentionally influencing league storylines like he was Vince McMahon. His response was telling-

I've said it before in regards to the NFL still insisting on using the chain gang, purposely not installing cameras in every pylon, and not putting a microchip in the footballs so they can tell exactly where and when a ball crosses or doesn't cross a plane. It's a bazillion dollar industry with all the money in the world. We are living in the time of The Jetsons. Every other commercial on Sundays that airs when the moron insurance salesmen go and "take a peek under the cover" at a replay is about how "Amazon AI and statistics compiling is changing the game". And they show us some wild fact about David Montgomery running faster than a gazelle when he turned the corner upfield last week against Minnesota. 

Yet, at the same time, this same league expects us to believe that we haven't been able to improve technology or find a better method than they were using back before the invention of the forward pass?

Doug Pensinger. Getty Images.

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The same goes for the NBA. 

The league needs to maintain whatever small edge it has in how its able to manipulate things. 

Obviously they could figure out a ping-pong ball system that elimantes the balls of the team just picked and leaves the rest of them in the machine. Again, we have the ability to order a fucking vacuum on a website and have a flying robot drop it off on our doorstep in under an hour today. If not ping pong balls, there's a million other ways they could conduct this "draft", in front of cameras, on live television, that would make for awesome ratings and draw in viewers. 

Why don't they do this? 

Because they aren't able to tell us that Dallas was convinced to giftwrap a generational and franchise player and deliver him to LeBron and Jeanie Buss' doorstep, in exchange for scraps, and then miraculously lucked into Cooper Flagg a few months later. 

The whole thing has to make you laugh.