Reusse: Is the NBA draft lottery fixed? You be the judge.

It would be very ageist for any of those reading this to label a jolly super-senior such as myself a conspiracy nut. Let it be stated that this scrivener is not one who believes the NBA draft lottery is always fixed.

What’s believed is that it’s only fixed when the NBA has an important franchise in need of a boost.

That included the first lottery in 1985, of course, when the New York Knicks — coming off a 24-58 season — needed to re-engage the fan base. Which allowed the Knicks to leap two lesser teams and land Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing.

And who can forget the predictability of 2003, when the Cleveland Cavaliers were able to “win” the lottery and claim LeBron James, the high school phenomenon from 40 miles south in Akron?

Troubled franchise to full arena — presto!

Still tough to figure why it was in the NBA’s best interest to reward Orlando (Shaquille O’Neal) and Charlotte (Alonzo Mourning) and leave the No. 1 worst 15-67 Timberwolves with the less impactful and pompous Christian Laettner in 1992, but that’s what happened.

We did have a lottery fix Monday night, no doubt about that.

Dallas has been a tremendous franchise for years, filling the house in a huge market. And then the Mavs traded Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers on Feb. 2.

Mavericks fans loved chubby, no-defense, great-shooting Luka. They were threatening boycotts down there.

The suspicion here is that there were big meetings in the NBA offices in New York that presumably went like this:

Boss: “We have to get that first pick to Dallas so they can draft Cooper Flagg, that wholesome young giant from Duke, and get the fans to shut up about Luka.”

Assistant: “Ah, boss, Dallas only has a 1.8 percent statistical chance to win the lottery. Yes, we have enough dummies in the country that they’re now calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America — especially down there in Texas — but no one is going to believe the Mavericks winning the lottery is on the up-and-up."

Boss: “This thing we have now, AI, we can make it look as real as the president of the U.S. making a great golf swing.”

And it was. Done.

The Mavericks will have Flagg, and perhaps he wasn’t in Durham, N.C., long enough to become the same smug, overrated Dookie as was Laettner on arrival in the NBA.

Fixed lotteries aside, there is much appreciation here for how it turned out in 2020. The lottery wasn’t held until August after that COVID-19-affected regular season. The Wolves had the third-worst record during that odd season at 19-45 but leapt over Cleveland (19-46) and Golden State (15-50) for the first choice.

As the current Wolves close in on a second consecutive trip to the Western Conference finals, one can only thank the lottery lords for Minnesota landing first and being able to take Anthony Edwards, the young guard from Georgia.

Imagine the horror if the Wolves wound up at No. 2 and did what the Warriors would do: take the very tall, much injured and complete bust James Wiseman.

The Wolves and the Warriors had made a deadline trade in February 2020, not long before the COVID-19 shutdown. The Wolves sent Andrew Wiggins and a first-round pick to Golden State for guard D’Angelo Russell.

By then, we had already heard much about the grand friendship between Russell and Karl-Anthony Towns, then the Wolves’ star. Maybe it worked socially; that cohesion was never obvious on the court in Minnesota.

It is humorous five years later to run across the quotes from Gersson Rosas, then the Wolves’ president for basketball. Excited at winning the lottery, Rosas said:

“That’s why we brought D’Angelo here. He’s one of the faces of our organization. And he’s a closer … as he showed tonight. We’re excited."

Closer? This was a reference to Russell being the Wolves’ representative at the lottery table. That’s about all he closed here, or with the Los Angeles Lakers or the Brooklyn Nets, the other teams he’s been with since getting unloaded by the Wolves in February 2023.

And Jonathan Kuminga, the powerful forward storming the basket and trying to keep the Warriors alive in this current second-round series?

He’s the player Golden State received when Rosas dumped Wiggins and then wound up as the dump-ee with Russell.

A weird world, this NBA.

Steph Curry’s injury in the second quarter of Game 1 made the Wolves’ large favorites in this series. And they can finish it in Game 5 on Wednesday night in Target Center.

We know for sure Edwards and his teammates will do this if they use Monday night’s third-quarter magnificence (Wolves, 39-17) as an example. And we know they probably will not if they’re offering up the same carelessness and arrogance as they did in the fourth quarter of Monday’s victory.

Some of those Warriors — including Kuminga — will fight it out, we also know that.