‘Gut punch’: How Josh Giddey buzzerbeater cost Chicago Bulls NBA No. 1 pick

The NBA is still coming to terms with the shocking result of the draft lottery, and how Josh Giddey inadvertently cost his team the No. 1 pick.

Matthew Sullivan

5 min read

May 14, 2025 - 6:42PM

NBA

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Sport is a game of inches, luck, and as many fans found out yesterday, the magic that is the NBA lottery’s ping pong balls.

In a result no one saw coming, the Dallas Mavericks landed the No. 1 pick in the upcoming NBA Draft despite having just a 1.8 per cent chance of securing the top spot.

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The pick comes months after the organisation severed ties with superstar Luka Doncic in a move that sparked fierce backlash not only among the team’s own fan base but across the league.

It is the first time in franchise history that Dallas moved up in the lottery after having only an 8.5 per cent chance of making the top four.

Conspiracy theories the NBA Draft had been rigged immediately started taking off with fans furious the first overall pick was heading to Dallas despite their lowly odds at winning it.

It’s expected Dallas will take generational prospect Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 pick, repositioning the franchise on the right track after trading Doncic to the Lakers.

San Antonio got the second pick and Philadelphia secured the third pick — the odds of the lottery producing that top three in that order was just 0.0114 per cent.

Dallas landing the No. 1 pick has sparked a whole discussion about whether the NBA lottery system needs to be rejigged, or if this is the perfect example of why the lottery is designed not to incentivise blatant tanking.

But spare a thought for eagle-eyed Chicago Bulls fans, who realised that the Bulls would have landed the No. 1 pick had Josh Giddey not nailed a gamewinning three-pointer against the LA Lakers in late March.

The halfcourt buzzerbeater was the best moment of Giddey’s career so far amid a purple patch of form that is set to result in the Aussie receiving a bumper contract extension at Chicago worth around $30 million USD per season.

Josh Giddey shoots a game-winning three pointer to beat the Lakers in March. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

Chicago finished the season with a win-loss record of 39-43, the exact same record as the Dallas Mavericks.

So after the regular season, as is tradition, the two franchises had a coin toss to see who would have the 11th and 12th best odds at No. 1 overall.

Dallas won the coin flip, meaning had Chicago lost just one more game in the season and finished below Dallas, they would have got the No. 1 pick and first dibs at Cooper Flagg.

USA Today wrote: “What happened to the Bulls in the lottery is still particularly devastating. This, of course, is about as tough of a break as you can find in the league.

“Chicago would have never found themselves in this situation were it not for the buzzer-beater that Josh Giddey hit against the Lakers on March 27.”

Josh Giddey’s gamewinner game back to bite the Bulls. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

Lakers Nation host Trevor Lane said: “Oh Good Lord…the Giddy buzzer beater ended up costing the Bulls Cooper Flagg.”

Bulls insider KC Johnson described it as a “gut punch”, given Chicago ost a coin flip to the Dallas Mavericks after the conclusion of the regular season.

“This is the second bad coin flip in Bulls history,” Johnson said.

“In 1979, the Bulls lost a coin flip for the right for the first overall pick, which turned out to be Magic Johnson.

“There is a little solace in this. If the Bulls had got Magic Johnson, they would not have been in position to draft Michael Jordan in 1984.”

Courtside Buzz tweeted: “Are the Bulls cursed?”

NBA star Josh Giddey filled-in for a local basketball team in Frankston

The Bulls fell to 12th in the lottery and will pick midway through the first round.

It’s a tough pill to swallow for the Bulls, who have been in no-man’s land in the Eastern Conference for several seasons and were knocked out of the play-in tournament by the Miami Heat.

Apart from a few years with Derrick Rose in his prime in the early 2010s, the Bulls have been a fairly mediocre team in the years since Michael Jordan led Chicago to their six NBA championships in the 1990s.

I'm pretty close to the point of considering the NBA's new lottery odds a failure. It's just resulted in even more teams tanking, while also doing a worse job of accomplishing the primary goal of helping the worst teams get better.
— Nate Duncan (@NateDuncanNBA) May 12, 2025

How does the NBA Draft Lottery work?

The NBA revamped the system ahead of the 2019 Lottery with the three teams with the worst regular-season records each having a 14 per cent chance of securing the first overall pick.

After drawings are conducted for the first four picks of the NBA Draft, the other lottery teams will continue to pick in inverse order of their regular-season record.

The drawing uses 14 ping-pong balls, numbered 1 through 14. There are 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14, without regard to their order of selection. Before the lottery, 1,000 of those 1,001 combinations will be assigned to the 14 participating lottery teams.

For the drawing, all 14 balls are placed in the lottery machine. They are mixed for 20 seconds, and then the first ball is drawn. The remaining balls are mixed in the lottery machine for another 10 seconds, and then the second ball is drawn. There is another 10-second mix, and then the third ball is drawn. There is a final 10-second mix, and then the fourth ball is drawn. The team that has been assigned the combination of the four balls drawn from the machine will receive the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft.

The ping-pong balls are then placed back in the machine and the same process is repeated for the second through fourth picks.

This process is done in front of select media, NBA officials and representatives from the participating teams will be in attendance for the drawings.

Cooper Flagg is more likely than not heading to Dallas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

Who will the Mavericks draft with the top pick?

The Mavericks can now set their sights on adding the consensus first overall pick in 18-year-old Cooper Flagg.

The Duke standout has been described as the “safest No. 1 pick in ages” by Yahoo Sports’ Kevin O’Connor.

Flagg is coming off an impressive freshman season at Duke which saw him average 19.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.3 blocks per game.

“It’s his growth as a shot creator that will decide if he reaches his All-Star floor or soars to his Hall of Fame ceiling,” O’Connor said.

As was the case with now San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama, the worst teams in the NBA had all the reasons in the world to tank as hard as they could down the stretch to give themselves the best chance of drafting Flagg.

The 18-year-old has been generating hype for a number of years now, with Kevin Durant even declaring in an interview with Boardoom that Flagg can be “one of the top players in the league for 15 years”.