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Despite what a pair of suspicious NBA owners have whispered to Pablo Torre, I don't believe that the NBA rigs the draft lottery. Certainly, it makes a sort of cockeyed, intuitive sense that the league would want to reward the Dallas Mavericks with a generational prospect in Cooper Flagg, for inexplicably giving their marquee superstar to the league's marquee franchise, thus increasing its sale value; or for the league to fortify the San Antonio Spurs' status as international darlings by giving them Victor Wembanyama. But the league clearly has more to lose than gain from stacking the deck. Also, a committed cork-boarder could engineer a post-facto rationale for any lottery outcome having been rigged: The Orlando Magic got Paolo Banchero in 2022 because the league was doing Disney a favor amid tumbling stock value; the Atlanta Hawks got the first pick in 2024 as part of an outré attempt at election-rigging. However, I think the NBA should rig the lottery. On a recent episode of Zach Lowe's podcast, Lowe raised the idea of the draft order being assorted in the basketball equivalent of a papal conclave. I love this idea. The concept of the lottery, with its recently flattened odds and the tweaks sure to come after this summer, is that by partially decoupling draft order from win-loss records, the league can discourage tanking. This is always going to be an imperfect solution as long as the two are connected at all: The incentives are too powerful, especially when one player can change the fortunes of a franchise so dramatically—and can do it on a sharply below-market contract for up to five years. If the NBA were to openly rig the lottery, however, different virtues (other than proficiency at destroying one's on-court product) could be rewarded. No longer could the worst teams in the NBA ensure better draft picks by losing a ton, nor would they jump through any of the strange hoops possibly being set up for them next year, such as counting wins toward draft position after a certain date. No, a rigged system could reward abstract values such as honor, virtue, and suffering with nobility.

It is not difficult to find praise for Nellie Bowles, who writes a weekly column for The Free Press, a website owned by her wife, Bari Weiss. "If you don’t read ⁦Nellie Bowles every Friday, you are leading a sad, barren, and empty existence," says Free Press columnist Niall Ferguson. Conservative writer Caitlin Flanagan says that Bowles's columns "have the exact spirit of the 70's writers whom I adored and who were so damn funny—and also deeply in the know." Free Press columnist Joe Nocera wrote that "everything she does is funny and wise," in response to a tweet from John Podhoretz about how Bowles has "the soul of Borscht Belt comic deep within her." Bowles has recently been described by Weiss as "the lovechild of Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion" and "the funniest writer in America." A writer of such skill and observational talents will find no shortage of opportunities to fashion piercing, hilarious, and illuminating prose from the current political and cultural situation. With that in mind, let's see what Bowles has to say about the United States' war with Iran, a topic she grappled with on Friday: → Trump at war: We’re officially bombing Iran. And Iran is bombing, well, everyone they can. They’ve reportedly lobbed missiles, drones, and deck chairs at the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Turkey as well as Israel, its number-one bombing love. But it’s been a pretty dismal showing. We’re very much and clearly winning. Like, really, really easily. Here’s Trump on the war timeline: “We also projected four weeks to terminate the military leadership, and as you know, that was done in about an hour so we’re ahead of schedule there.” And here’s Trump on who should become Iran’s new leader: “Well, most of the people we had in mind are dead. . . we had some in mind from that group that is dead. And now we have another group. They may be dead also, based on reports.” And they should stop picking one among themselves: “They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodríguez] in Venezuela.” It will be done in ancestral Trump fashion, via swimsuit competition in an indoor/outdoor pavilion at a resort. In other war news, a U.S. submarine sank an enemy ship by torpedo for the first time since World War II. Welcome back to water warfare, baby! There’s unbelievable footage of a fighter pilot shot down over Kuwait, in a bright and cheery mood as locals approach her there in that dust bowl. They thank her for what she’s doing, and offer her help (thank goodness she didn’t land in Minneapolis).

Following the Iran women's national soccer team's third group-stage match of the 2026 Women's Asian Cup, five members of the team have reportedly defected and are now in protective Australian police custody. The defections come on the heels of a turbulent week for the team following the joint U.S.-Israel military offensive against Iran, which killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Feb. 28, and which has killed over 1,300 civilians in the country. Though the national team had left for Australia for the tournament prior to airstrikes, the war has been felt half a world away. In the pregame routine ahead of the team's first tournament match against South Korea on March 2, the Lionesses stood silently while the Iranian national anthem played, a longstanding gesture by Iranian athletes usually interpreted as a form of protest against the regime. The gesture was condemned by the state back at home: Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting personality Mohammad Reza Shahbazi called the team "traitors during wartime" during a broadcast and said that they must be dealt with "more severely" due to the timing of the anthem protest, just 48 hours after the death of Khamenei. https://twitter.com/abornaei/status/2029591780610503035

The Miami Dolphins are releasing Tua Tagovailoa, eating an NFL-record $99 million cap hit just to do it. It's an ignoble end to his six seasons in Miami, but it was inevitable to anyone who has watched the Tua roller coaster. Even with an offensive wunderkind like Mike McDaniel hired to bring out his best, Tagovailoa ultimately could never rise above the mediocrity of the Dolphins' infrastructure and his own limitations as a quarterback. Hell, there are still arguments he shouldn't even be playing football with the number of bad concussions he's suffered through his career. In a statement on the team's behalf, general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan said "as we move forward, we will be focused on infusing competition across the roster and establishing a strong foundation for this team as we work towards building a sustained winner." About Tagovailoa specifically, he had this to say: "I recently informed Tua and his representation that we are going to move in a new direction at the quarterback position and will be releasing him after the start of the new league year. As I shared with Tua, I have great respect for the person and player he is. On behalf of the Miami Dolphins, I expressed our gratitude for his many contributions, both on the field and in the community, during his six seasons." — Jon-Eric Sullivan

When video of FBI Director Kash Patel falling on his little ass during this year's annual FBI vs. Secret Service hockey game was exclusively provided to us, we were told by our source that Patel fell down at least two more times during the game. Defector has now received additional footage from the game, and can confirm another instance of Patel eating shit while attempting to skate. Wow, he fell right over.

On a Sunday full of get-a-load-of-this, it was going to be hard to beat this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQBt5lAolQM Oh, and there were 15 goals in that game, too. It happened in a venerable old barn, with a team that hasn't been good in almost 15 years but is suddenly brilliant pulling out an 8-7 win after leading 4-1 and trailing 7-5. It also drove the gerbils at YouTube positively bat-guano crazy, which is the newest measure of big-deal-hood.

We’ll give you the Monday crossword. Are you gonna solve it? This week’s puzzle was constructed by Daniel Hrynick and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Dan lives in Winnipeg, where he works as a laborer for Public Works. Every so often he will get a song stuck in his head that turns into a crossword idea. This time, the song was 54-Across in an SNL sketch. Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX, run every Monday. If you’re interested in submitting a puzzle to us, you can read our guidelines HERE.

DENVER — The Colorado Avalanche's home building, 26-year-old Puck Arena, is a blandly serviceable midpoint between the old-school kookiness of Calgary's Saddledome and the blinding shininess of Edmonton's Rogers Place. But it's what's on the inside that counts, and credit where it's due: Neither of the two Canadian rinks that I visited on this mountain-time hockey trip came close to the atmosphere at the Avs' shootout win over the Wild on Sunday afternoon. You might say it's easier for a weekend matinee to supply a team with a packed house, because it's an ideal time for a lot of families to go to their one hockey game a year. But the start time doesn't inherently guarantee close attention, and that was a huge part of what made this early-bird game memorable. This was a turbocharged crowd that locked in for the final regular-season matchup between two great division rivals from the moment the puck dropped. The fans welcomed back trade-deadline reacquisition Nazem Kadri, of the '22 Cup team, like he was Peter Forsberg, and they went nuts just for a backchecking dispossession he pulled off early in the game. They gassed up goaltender Scott Wedgewood with "Wedgie" chants during his first-star-worthy performance, answering a question I had about whether he went by "Wedgie" or "Woody." They made especially loud "Oh!"s on missed attempts that hit my ears like an express train whooshing through a local station. They got exasperated with the zebras who displayed an abundance of caution on faceoffs. They kept the aisles remarkably clear as the vast majority took intermission as their only cue that it was safe to do business on the concourse. And when the Avs found the back of the net, everyone—not "a lot of people," but everyone—rose to their feet, like it was some deeper evolutionary response to seeing a goal. I hesitate to call this a playoff-game feel, because there's an undercurrent of fear to the cheering when there's so much on the line. These were just thousands of people who were so excited to see the Avalanche play hockey. And why wouldn't they be? The Avs may be coming off a heartbreaking first-round loss to the Stars in last year's postseason, but they've played this year at a level that no other NHL team's been able to match. They're tops in the league at both scoring goals and preventing them. They've got the game's leading scorer in Nathan MacKinnon and the reigning Norris winner in Cale Makar. They're getting a randomly fantastic season out of the journeyman Wedgewood. The depth guys are doing their jobs. And Brock Nelson and Marty Nečas, relative newcomers to the club, are paying off at a level beyond what anyone reasonably expected. Watching live, it's instantly recognizable how fast this team is, how much chemistry they have, and how much trouble the defense has keeping up. Even on Colorado's chances that don't work out, you can often see what they were thinking and appreciate the beauty they would have achieved if they'd just crossed the goal line, like looking at a sketch from a master painter.

Jayson Tatum played his second game of the season Sunday, after having set what seems like an all-time record for the fastest recovery from a ruptured Achilles tendon. Tatum made his debut Friday at home against the Dallas Mavericks, 298 days from his last appearance, and was somewhat wobbly, but fine; Sunday, on the road against the playoff-bound Cleveland Cavaliers, Tatum looked more confident against a much tougher opponent. In both cases, he was one happy guy, grinning and high-fiving, accepting the congratulations of teammates, opponents, fans, really anyone who crossed his path. "I can't stress it enough," an obviously delighted Tatum said after Sunday's victory. "I'm just happy to be out here, playing on a team with the guys, competing, making plays, making mistakes, you know, just happy to be out here." Whatever Tatum imagined about his own recovery, back in the miserable aftermath of the injury, he certainly did not expect to be joining a Celtics team actively contending for the top seed in the Eastern Conference. Not only because Boston would be missing his own services: The Celtics dismantled their roster last summer, shipping out three of their top five players by games started and four of their top nine by total minutes, in addition to the loss of Tatum. Anyone might reasonably have expected this season to be devoted to an entirely forgivable tanking operation. Instead, Joe Mazzulla has hit upon a perfectly respectable rotation, Jaylen Brown has emerged as a frontrunner for MVP, and the Celtics are just a couple games back of the sagging Detroit Pistons in an otherwise not-super-impressive conference. Tatum isn't easing back into the relaxed home-stretch of a one-year retooling project; he's dropping into a starter's role in the early crescendo of a title hunt. There will be pressure with that, which Tatum is sure to feel once the excitement of simply playing basketball in a Celtics uniform wears off a little. In the meantime, his return is all gravy, a terrific gust of good feelings for everyone involved. For as long as he is upright, Tatum is doing more than bolstering Boston's depth: He's rewriting what it means for an in-his-prime NBA player to suffer what has long been considered one of the worst possible basketball injuries.

Paradise is a good show. I have to get that out of the way early, because I do think that it's fun and well-plotted and knotted with enough twists to sustain a strong momentum throughout its eight-episode seasons. The premise is simple enough, though doled out slowly throughout the first episode: President Cal Bradford (played with charm by James Marsden) is murdered, and Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (a sometimes-bored, sometimes-transcendent Sterling K. Brown) is trying to figure out whodunit. That by itself would be interesting enough to merit a peek, but the big reveal at the end of the premiere is that all of the events of the show are taking place in an underground bunker somewhere under Colorado. See, the world outside this bunker has been ravaged by what we first think is nuclear war but later, in the show's best episode "The Day," is revealed to be something else entirely. There are conspiracies centered around Bradford's murder and the machinations of Samantha Redmond (codename: Sinatra), and it's all pulpy fun that, in a lot of ways good and bad, reminds me of Lost. I've enjoyed my journey this past week binging the show on Hulu, but it has one glaring problem that ruins almost every episode: The music fucking sucks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2AkkbxwIMI