{"id":688347,"date":"2026-03-30T17:27:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T17:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/688347\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T17:27:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T17:27:15","slug":"nba-lottery-watch-the-mavericks-securing-their-spot-to-pad-the-draft-lottery-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/688347\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Lottery Watch: the Mavericks securing their spot to pad the draft lottery fall"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dallas Mavericks might be playing with lottery fire. Every few games they have a key result that risks their positioning in a bottlenecked cluster in the top ten. Last week it was a win against the Portland Trail Blazers<\/a> on a night those around them lost.<\/p>\n

We should take a moment and pause \u2014 positioning ultimately decides nothing. The story will only be fully told when the lottery order is decided in a draw on Sunday May, 10. Go back 12 months and look at teams like the Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards, and New Orleans Pelicans who all positioned themselves better than the Mavericks and ultimately they fell back three and four spots. So sweating game to game results too closely isn\u2019t productive. But in the event the Mavericks do get bumped backward in May, being nearest to the top will help pad the fall.<\/p>\n

The Mavericks went 1-2 last week, and face a shorthanded Minnesota Timberwolves squad Monday night<\/a>. No matter the opponent Dallas plays hard every night, even as the accumulate losses, and flirt with stealing some surprising wins. They find themselves currently tied for sixth in the lottery standings with the New Orleans Pelicans, 3.5 games behind the Utah Jazz \u2014 which is likely an impossible gap to make up with so few games.<\/p>\n

Where they\u2019re certainly looking is behind them, where the Memphis Grizzlies sit just one game behind the tie, after a dramatic near-loss-but-somehow-surprising-win to the Chicago Bulls. Dallas has a marginally tougher schedule over Memphis. But notably the New Orleans Pelicans, who once again have no incentive to lose (owe their pick to the Atlanta Hawks), has the fifth easiest remaining schedule. Something will eventually have to give\u2026that or we all bite our nails until May 10. Probably the latter.<\/p>\n

The Mavericks play most of their games at home this week (14-23 this season), with one game on the road to face the hobbled Milwaukee Bucks, who are currently just behind Memphis in the lottery standings. This is one of those weeks where the hustle-heavy Mavericks could grab a win or two.<\/p>\n

The Pelicans don\u2019t play until Thursday, and also have some winnable games on their slate, while Memphis ay have opportunity to move up in the standings.<\/p>\n

Each week we\u2019ll take one spin around the block at tankathon.com<\/a> and see where the chips fall. This week the Mavericks move back into the top four after losing out on last week\u2019s spin. And in a \u201cno one cares about this witchcraft but me\u201d scenario the Atlanta Hawks jump to first FOR THE SIXTH WEEK IN A ROW. They have gone 6-of-6 in this series. Demons.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s simulation really drives the point home on positioning not guaranteeing anything but it does pad the fall back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Mavericks might be playing with lottery fire. Every few games they have a key result that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":683293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,42852,6,12],"class_list":["post-688347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba-draft","tag-basketball","tag-mavericks-draft","tag-nba","tag-nba-draft"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116319305604637375","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/683293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}