None of LarBrd33 arugments have swayed my thoughts that it could be fixed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX1kMlG8c7Y
Sure as heck looks like he went right for this one.
http://www.scoresreport.com/2007/04/19/was-the-1985-draft-lottery-really-fixed/
accompanying article.
82% believe it was fixed and 55% are adamant about it.
http://beyondthebets.com/2012/05/31/was-the-nba-draft-lottery-fixed-a-whopping-82-percent-of-fans-think-its-a-possibility/
http://www.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/22748484/29391755
interesting article.
http://www.yardbarker.com/nba/articles/msn/nba_execs_complain_about_rigged_lottery_after_league_owned_hornets_win_top_pick/10909472
“It’s such a joke that the league made the new owners be at the lottery for the show,” one high-ranking team executive told Yahoo Sports . “The league still owns the Hornets. Ask their front office if new owners can make a trade right now. They can’t. This is a joke.”
The reaction of several league executives was part disgust, part resignation on Wednesday night. So many had predicted this happening, so many suspected that somehow, someway, the Hornets would walk away with Davis. That's the worst part for the NBA; these aren't the railings from the guy sitting at the corner tavern, but the belief of those working within the machinery that something undue happened here, that they suspect it happens all the time under Stern.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/nba-lottery-rigged-2012-5#ixzz1wZzLYGSn
Some of those representatives do voice displeasure but to go against the league would be suicide and they would lose their team. How come you did not post these articles LarBrd33?
How about this one?
TThe prize of the 1985 draft was a once-in-a-lifetime center in Georgetown's Patrick Ewing. The New York Knicks won the lottery with the third-worst record in the NBA and a 14.29 percent chance of landing the top pick in the 1985 NBA draft. Rumors of a rigged lottery swirled after the results of the lottery were announced. People claimed that the league wanted this once-in-a-lifetime player to go to the league's biggest market so that the Knicks would be relevant again.
The Philadelphia 76ers were going through rough times in the early to mid 1990's and needed a player to reignite the fanbase. The Sixers got that player in the 1996 NBA draft. The team had the best odds, 33 percent chance, to land the No. 1 pick, and ended up winning the lottery and selecting Allen Iverson. Although the Sixers did have the best odds, there still is some debate as to if this lottery was legitimate.
Michael Jordan was the president of basketball operations of the Washington Wizards when they had a 15.7 percent chance at winning the NBA lottery. The Wizards won the 2001 lottery, and Michael Jordan decided to select Kwame Brown with the first-overall selection. At the time of the lottery, there were numerous rumors that Jordan was going to come out of retirement to play for the Washington Wizards.
It seems like David Stern knew that Jordan was coming back and wanted to give them the No. 1 selection to add some excitement to the Wizards. However, Brown turned out to be a huge bust and never really turned out to be the player that Jordan once thought that he could be.
In 2003, another once-in-a-lifetime prospect was available out of St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio. The Cleveland Cavaliers, whose stadium is about 40 miles from LeBron James' high school, had the best shot at winning the lottery at a 22 percent chance. The Cavs ended up winning the 2003 lottery and selected James, who was able to stay in his hometown. The reason that it could have been rigged in 2003 is that the league wanted to change the landscape of the Cavaliers franchise by giving them a hometown hero in James.
The Chicago Bulls entered the 2008 draft lottery with a 1.8 percent chance of winning the top pick in the draft. The Bulls won the 2008 lottery and selected Derrick Rose a month later.
The fact that a team won the lottery with a 1.8 percent chance of winning is suspicious enough, but the fact that it was a major market team without a superstar made critics even more skeptical of the NBA's lottery. David Stern saw how successful the NBA can be when Chicago is a dominant team and perhaps wanted Chicago to be an elite team once again.
The Wizards had a tumultuous 2009-2010 season, dealing with both the death of their longtime owner, Abe Pollin, and the suspension of Gilbert Arenas due to his storage of guns in the team's locker room. The team obviously needed a boost, and they definitely got one when they landed the top pick in the 2010 draft. The Wizards selected John Wall with the No. 1 overall pick.
Abe's widow, Irene, happened to be in attendance of the draft lottery, which was also quite a coincidence.
The Cleveland Cavaliers had two lottery selections in the 2011 NBA draft due to a trade with the Los Angeles Clippers. What is ironic is, the pick that actually had far less odds of winning the lottery, at a two percent chance, actually ended up being the No. 1 overall selection. The Cavaliers were obviously devastated by the departure of LeBron James and seemed to have no hope. That is, until Kyrie Irving, the No. 1 overall selection, came to town. A possible theory is that the league wanted the Cavaliers to become relevant again after losing LeBron.
The New Orleans Hornets entered the lottery with the fourth-best chance of landing the No. 1 overall selection. The Hornets came away with the first pick and will almost certainly choose Kentucky's Anthony Davis with the first overall pick. Not only does the NBA still technically own the team, as the sale to Tom Benson is currently pending, but Benson, his wife and their granddaughter also just happened to be attending the lottery.
This coincidence is very similar to the one in 2010 one Abe Pollin's widow just happened to be attending the lottery in which her team, the Wizards, came away with the No. 1 pick.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1204023-2012-nba-draft-8-examples-of-how-the-nba-lottery-could-be-fixed
Great stories aren't they? Almost seems like a happy ending and scripted. I for one do not believe in fairy tales.
So... it has come to this...
I understand that a lot of people have the perception that it's fixed. Perception doesn't equal reality. As mentioned earlier... I recently saw a poll on CNN where 53% said they didn't believe in Evolution. That doesn't make them any less stupid, my friend.
Your post makes it sound like the articles I was showing were some crazed propaganda. It's from a SI writer who was actually at the lotto drawing.
http://nba-point-forward.si.com/2012/05/30/nba-draft-lottery/Follow up:
http://nba-point-forward.si.com/2012/05/31/an-nba-draft-lottery-conspiracy-it-didnt-seem-that-way/As I wrote Wednesday night, the league conducts the real lottery in a closed-off room an hour before the television broadcast. Every lottery team has one representative in the room — a different person than the one who represents it on television later, so that the televised suspense is legitimate. The league also allows three or four media members to watch the process, and on Wednesday, I was one of them. I described the drawing process in detail in that post: the air-powered machine, the scrambled ping-pong balls, the precisely timed intervals between the sucking up of each ball, the Ernst & Young accountant watching it all, etc. Click on that link if you want the full blow-by-blow of how the real thing works.
For now, let’s say this: If the process is actually rigged, the league does an incredible job of hiding it. Rigging the drawing would involve somehow tinkering with the machine (or the balls) so that it is more likely to suck up a particular four-ball combination out of 1,001 possibilities. I’m honestly not sure how the NBA could do that, or how the official drawing the balls at the prescribed times could actually pull off the trick of picking the right one in each instance.
I’ll also say this: If there were a conspiracy, the people in the room didn’t seem to give much thought to it. They were genuinely nervous. Representatives from teams with conflicting lottery interests were joking with each other about the tension in the air and the uncertainty of the looming outcome. Every representative was frantically scouring his sheet of lottery ball combinations as each one came up, checking to see if his team were still in the running.
Even more revealing: After the drawing ended with the Hornets’ winning, the representatives in the room openly and loudly kidded New Orleans general manager Dell Demps about how the fix had been in. They were joking with him, mocking the ridiculousness of the idea that the league had rigged the machine. Demps asked a league official if he might open up the machine to remove the four winning balls as souvenirs — hardly something Demps would request, or something that the league would allow, if the balls had been doctored. A rival executive even shouted across the room that one of the balls was surely weighted, and that Demps should be careful to conceal it from the rest of the group.
Everyone laughed, and that’s telling. People who believe they are victims of a conspiracy — people whose franchises had just been dealt a significant blow — would not immediately back-slap each other and generally share a good laugh about the whole thing. Or at least I don’t think that they would. I know I wouldn’t. I’d be angry — perhaps not angry enough to publicly criticize the very powerful Stern, but certainly angry enough to sulk in the corner and fire off some furious emails to friends.
That said, I admit it's a lot more compelling to talk about that 1985 draft when the lotto system was drastically different. But you really believe that there is some massive conspiracy involving weighted balls and brilliant mathematical equations to assure that the first five drawings would go Hornets - Bobcats - Hornets - Bobcats - Wizards? Really...? Fascinating.
Still say if the NBA fixed the lotto, Boston was the clear-cut team to win a top 2 pick in 2007... we got stuck with #5. Worst-case scenario for us. Made no sense. But then again, maybe you believe that Stern tried to fix it for Boston, but the weighted balls failed him... so he forced Minny to trade KG to us, forced Memphis to trade Pau to the Lakers... fixed the playoffs (like our defeat of LeBron in a 5 point game during game 7), fixed the conference finals so the Lakers and Celtics rivalry would be reborn... and then fixed it so that we could win our first title in over 20 years. HmmMmmm...
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Topic: Do people really think the lottery is fixed? (Read 24535 times)