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[Saba Sports News] It didn’t take long for fans to let Adam Silver hear it at the 2025 NBA Draft.
The NBA commissioner was heckled almost instantly as he stepped on stage at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Wednesday night to open the first round. As Silver emerged from backstage, ESPN’s broadcast caught a fan in the crowd loudly shouting, “Dallas was rigged!”
The comment referred to the Dallas Mavericks unexpectedly landing the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s draft, despite having just a 1.8% chance of winning the lottery—only the 12th-best odds among all teams. The timing raised suspicion, as Dallas had traded away superstar Luka Doncic to the L.A. Lakers in February and soon after ended up with a new franchise cornerstone in Cooper Flagg.
Many fans found the sequence of events too convenient, fueling conspiracy theories about the lottery being fixed.
Of course, heckling the commissioner during the draft is a time-honored NBA tradition. Silver’s predecessor, the late David Stern, was routinely booed by fans at the event—and often played along with it.