Mavs get No. 1 pick from same lottery seed that would have belonged to Heat. What could have been?
In an alternate universe, the Miami Heat would have the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft. But the reality is the Heat won two consecutive road play-in tournament games to become the first 10th-place team to make the NBA playoffs and lost the right to the 11th seed in the NBA draft lottery.
Instead, the Dallas Mavericks became the No. 11 lottery seed after the Heat dropped out of the lottery by making the playoffs. Then the worst-case scenario happened for the Heat.
With almost all of the same four-digit numerical combinations assigned to the Mavericks as the No. 11 seed that would have been the Heat’s lottery tickets, the Mavericks overcame long odds to win Monday night’s lottery in Chicago and get the No. 1 overall pick in the June 25 NBA Draft that will almost certainly end up with the selection of 18-year-old phenom Cooper Flagg.
The Mavericks had just a 1.8% chance of getting the top pick in the draft as the No. 11 lottery seed, with ESPN Research indicating that 10 spot jump is the biggest move by any team in lottery history. The Heat would have had a slightly better chance at the No. 1 pick if it was the No. 11 lottery seed, with a 2% chance at landing the top pick in this scenario since it finished with a worse regular season record than the Mavericks.
“I mean come on man,” Heat center Kevin Love posted on social media when the lottery winner was announced Monday, presumably his reaction to seeing Dallas come away with the No. 1 pick from what would have been Miami’s lottery seed.
While the Mavericks won the lottery, the San Antonio Spurs came away with the No. 2 overall pick, the Philadelphia 76ers ended up with the No. 3 overall pick and the Charlotte Hornets got the No. 4 overall pick in Monday’s lottery.
The rest of the draft lottery played out like this: No. 5 overall pick belongs to the Utah Jazz, No. 6 to the Washington Wizards, No. 7 to the New Orleans Pelicans, No. 8 to the Brooklyn Nets, No. 9 to the Toronto Raptors, No. 10 to the Houston Rockets, No. 11 to the Portland Trail Blazers, No. 12 to the Chicago Bulls, No. 13 to the Atlanta Hawks and No. 14 to the Spurs.
While the Heat bypassed the lottery to make the playoffs by winning two consecutive road games in the play-in tournament, the Heat’s playoff run was short-lived and painful. The Eastern Conference’s eighth-seeded Heat was swept out of the playoffs in humiliating fashion, as the East’s top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers won Game 3 by 37 points and Game 4 by 55 points in Miami for the two most lopsided playoff losses in Heat history on their way to outscoring the Heat by a total of 122 points in the four-game series for the most lopsided playoff series in NBA history.
By making the playoffs, what was the No. 11 lottery seed for the Heat became the No. 15 overall pick — the first non-lottery selection in the draft.
But the Heat lost the No. 15 overall pick because it owed a 2025 lottery-protected first-round selection to the Oklahoma City Thunder — a pick first sent out by Miami in the 2019 trade to acquire Jimmy Butler. The only way the Heat would have kept its own first-round pick this season was if it missed the playoffs and was part of the lottery.
With the Heat conveying the pick to the Thunder this year, it avoids owing a completely unprotected 2026 first-round pick to Oklahoma City. The fact that this year’s selection will go to the Thunder also preserves the lottery protections on the 2027 first-round pick it owes to the Charlotte Hornets as part of last season’s Terry Rozier trade, which would become a totally unprotected 2028 first-round selection if the pick is not conveyed to the Hornets in 2027.
The Heat is still in position to make a selection in the June draft because it will receive the Golden State Warriors’ first-round pick this year as part of the Butler trade made in February, which comes in at No. 20 overall. That’s currently the Heat’s only selection in this year’s draft.
But watching the Mavericks win Monday’s draft lottery from the same lottery seed it would have had if it missed the playoffs wasn’t optimal for a Heat organization that has been through a lot in recent months. The Heat has experienced Butler’s ugly and dramatic exit, a 10-game losing skid, being on the wrong side of the most lopsided playoff series in NBA history and now this just since the start of 2025.
A Heat contingent is in Chicago this week for the NBA Draft Combine, which began Monday and runs through Sunday. Among those in Chicago for the Heat are chief executive officer Nick Arison, president Pat Riley, vice president of basketball operations and assistant general manager Adam Simon, director of college and pro scouting Keith Askins, scouting operations coordinator Jeff Saunders, senior manager of basketball analytics and scouting Liam Doyle, and scouts Jack Fitzgerald and Bob Staak.
This story was originally published May 12, 2025 at 8:28 PM.
