Dallas Mavericks Keep No. 10 Pick In 2023 NBA Draft Lottery

The Dallas Mavericks will have the tenth pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. With Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison sitting on stage, NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum announced that Dallas stayed put in the lottery during the televised 2023 NBA Draft Lottery primetime special on ESPN.

Heading into Tuesday night, the Mavericks held 65.9% odds of securing the No. 10 pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, which will take place on Thursday, June 22. There was an outside shot that Dallas could move into the top four of the draft, but that did not come to pass.

The Mavericks had a 3% chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick in the draft and a shot at drafting French prodigy Victor Wembanyama. The 7-foot-2 nineteen-year-old is the consensus top overall prospect in this year’s draft. That privilege will go to the San Antonio Spurs, who won the lottery.

Dallas also had 3.3%, 3.6% and 4% odds of landing the second, third or fourth pick in this year’s draft, respectively.

Dallas had a greater than 20% chance of falling outside of the top 10. Had that happened, the Mavericks’ pick would have been conveyed to the New York Knicks as the final piece of Dallas’ 2019 blockbuster trade for Kristaps Porzingis. New York will now receive Dallas’ 2024 first-round draft pick.

History hasn’t been kind to the Mavericks in the draft lottery. In 16 lottery appearances before Tuesday night, Dallas has never moved up to claim a higher pick from their pre-lottery position. Dallas also endured the trauma of falling one-or-more spots from its projected position seven times — 1986, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1994, 2018 and 2019.

To improve their odds of keeping their pick this year, the Mavericks sat their starters and most of their role players during the final two games of the regular season. The move drew the ire of NBA Twitterati and the league itself. The NBA investigated the decision to sit so many players and fined the organization $750,000 for conduct detrimental to the league. It paid off in the end.

Dallas didn’t move up in the draft lottery for the seventeenth time, but the franchise did hold onto its pick in what is considered a deep draft. Now, the Mavericks must decide how to use the tenth pick best to improve their roster.