Dallas Mavericks CEO Rick Welts was among the speakers at WSJ's The Future of Everything Event on Wednesday, which ClutchPoints was invited to attend virtually. Welts discussed a number of topics including the shocking Luka Doncic trade from this past season.

The Mavs CEO even revealed that he thought he was being pranked when team owner Patrick Dumont called him to break the news.

“I'm wide awake in bed (On February 1 before the Doncic trade),” Welts said. “About 90 minutes before that, I got a call from Patrick Dumont… ‘Hey Rick, hey, we're gonna make a trade.'”

Welts then asked what the plan was for the trade.

“‘Okay great, what are we doing?'”

Dumont's response made Welts question if it was truly Dumont who was on the phone.

“‘We're gonna trade Luka to the Lakers,'” Welts said Dumont told him.

“I'm like, ‘who is this? Who is this really?' So yeah, I found out about an hour before you did,” Welts continued. “My first 30 days in Dallas were awesome. The next 100 not so much. It was an incredibly rough ride until a couple Mondays ago when it got a lot better.”

Rick Welts reacts to Mavericks landing 2025 NBA Draft No. 1 pick

What happened a “couple Mondays ago” to improve the situation? Well, the Mavericks won the NBA Draft lottery and earned the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft.

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“One point eight percent chance. In other words it was impossible that we could possibly get that,” Welts said Wednesday. “The whole night was interesting… I walked in to take my seat, turned around, and I was sitting from here to there to Cooper Flagg… Then the Mavericks' logo was center stage, top row, best placement.

“And about the fifth envelope as the reporters can tell by which teams do or don't come up, they announced in the room the Mavericks have moved into the top four… I said to the media relations woman from the Mavericks… ‘If our logo doesn't come out number four I think I'm going to have a heart attack.' And it didn't.”

Could the Mavericks, despite having a 1.8 percent chance, actually land the No. 1 pick?

“And It didn't come out number three,” Welts continued. “That left Spurs and Mavericks. Spurs logo comes out number two. And somehow the Dallas Mavericks have the number one pick.”

Rick Welts came out of retirement to become the Mavericks' CEO. He was joining a team that was fresh off an NBA Finals appearance. Welts probably assumed that Dallas would continue to compete at a fairly steady rate with Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving leading the way.

Instead, his time with the team has been anything but expected. Dallas traded Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers as part of a deal for Anthony Davis. Irving suffered a season-ending injury, and the Mavs missed the playoffs. Then, against all odds, the team received the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, and they will have an opportunity to select Duke star Cooper Flagg.

Welts' time with the Mavericks probably hasn't gone according to plan so far, but Dallas could compete during the 2025-26 season.