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The NBA draft lottery is at 8 p.m. EDT tonight in New York City. At 4:36 p.m., Dikembe Mutombo tweeted his congratulations to his former team, the Philadelphia 76ers, for winning the lottery and “grabbing the #1 spot.” Mutombo apologized and clarified that he had tweeted too soon and was just getting amped for the lottery, as I assume all Sixers fans are right now.


Mutombo is a known humanitarian and he’s been awarded three honorary doctorate degrees, so the reasonable takeaway here is that he simply mistweeted and did not accidentally spill the beans about some grand NBA draft lottery conspiracy. However, being a naturally suspicious bunch, we reached out to the Sixers’ (very helpful) PR director Michael Preston and asked if Mutombo accidentally pulled the lid off a damning, vast draft lottery-rigging scandal.

Patrick 6:03 PM to: michaelpreston Hi Michael, I am a journalist with Deadspin, and I’m curious about Dikembe Mutombo’s tweet congratulating the team on winning the draft lottery. Did he accidentally break news that the team had found out they’d won? Thanks

Michael Preston 6:28 PM to: me Hi Patrick - Believe Dikembe followed up with a tweet explaining that he got ahead of himself looking forward to tonight based the probability. The actual drawing has yet to take place. I’m on-site here in NYC and anxiously awaiting the outcome tonight like everyone else (including Dikembe). Thanks!

Patrick 6:31 PM to: Michael Okay cool, so, just to be clear, you’re saying that Dikembe Mutombo does not have proprietary information regarding a grand conspiracy to rig the lottery?

Michael 6:51 PM to: me That is correct.

Well, there it is; we would prefer to think Preston isn’t telling the truth, but we’ll all find out soon enough (unless Mutombo’s tweet inadvertently leads the powers that be to change up their carefully-laid plans, in which case, who knows what could happen?).


Update (10:05 p.m.): The Sixers won, and shortly after, tweeted this now-deleted tweet. I’m not saying this is ironclad evidence or anything, but okay now that that’s out of the way, here’s the tweet.

Hmmmm. Hmmmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmmm.