The TWolves, Pacers, and Jazz would make me have to shut up with my conspiracy belief for a year
REALLY hard to believe in a conspiracy if you understand how the lotto works.
I know this has been debated many times over the years, but the league makes these owners pretty [dang] rich, so the idea that they would shut their pie holes to toe the company line doesn't seem that far fetched.
Money talks bull**** hit walks, the greatest PR disaster the NBA would have faced would be their number one guy (Lebron) tarnishing their image, amazing how the Cavs win the lottery 3 out of 4 years.
The league is bigger than 3 or 4 owners being butthurt that they didn't win the lottery in those years.
Guess what they receive a little Christmas bonus in the mail down the road to smooth things over, happens all the time.
Again... if you understand how the draft lottery works, it's REALLY hard to believe in a conspiracy theory.
As for the idea that they are all willing participants, it's hard to buy that when you realize that the value of these individual businesses are tied heavily to the star power on the team.
There are reps from each team present during the lotto... as well as 5 members of the media. So they'd have to consistently buy off the media as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKI-fToATpQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg-zwcX1sU8
I am fully aware of how the lottery works. I have seen the behind the scenes footage before.
I stated that the owners are fully compensated for going along with the program.
Who chose the 5 media reps, was it the league?
The Bucks sold recently for 550 mil, the Hawks 750 mil, what star power do those franchises have , little or none.
Their values have gone up ten fold over the last decade, just by being part of the show.
Let's get Dan Gilbert's son to be a pawn and have a feel good story about those picks, what a lucky little kid. 
The league and there spin doctors are laughing all the way to the bank.
Have heard that theory before... that the league is basically the WWE and everyone is in on it. The league fixes the lottery. The refs fix the games. The champions are decided.
Fine. If you're the type of person who believes that, just be thankful that the league put Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen on our team in 2008 and fixed the playoffs so we could face off against the Lakers and win a championship. Hopefully at some point the league will decide to give Boston another push. If you subscribe to that tinhattery, might as well just accept and embrace that the NBA is full-blown fraudulent sports entertainment and enjoy it. I don't understand how anyone can take that kind of stance and then act like their favorite franchise is the victim of some grand conspiracy. If everyone is in on it, then everyone is in on it.
The Boston Celtics are top 5 in national popularity. There is incentive for the team to be good. There is incentive for the media to write about them. It's illogical for the Celtics to be intentionally slighted.
There are certainly people that believe everything that you just wrote, you will find the majority of them are involved in sports gambling so it is a little bit more than just flat out conspiracy. However, there is a sliding scale of what fans can believe happens in the NBA. The most extreme is what you have laid out about, that the whole thing is a fraud and on par with the WWE.
Then you have different levels
1) The NBA favors stars and will call the game differently for them than they do other players. I think the common fan believes this, and I personally do. However, beyond this star treatment, everything else in the league is done to be as fair and equal as possible and make sure the best teams win.
2) The NBA favors stars, and specific teams and narratives. The NBA will provide guidance to refs in specific games, specifically in the playoffs, to call the game a certain way. An example of this would be if the Bucks were playing the Heat the ECF last year through some crazy twist of fate, as part of their pregame notes the NBA they would say to the refs, our films indicate you missed 6 times that Lebron James was fouled and 4 times that Wade was fouled. You also incorrectly awarded 3 foul shots to Dudley. There were also two times you missed Zaza pachulia getting fouled and he should have received two foul shots on the second occasion.
I think the second level is a less common belief, but this is what Donnagy claims happened in the infamous game 6 between the Lakers and Kings about 10-15 years ago. The NBA, and Refs, have also acknowledged that giving Refs specific things to look for in a given game is something that happened (although i have never found much detail on this said publicly). I am not sure if I believe this, I am inclined to say no. However, I do think there was a time period post Jordan when the NBA was struggling that this would been a tempting thing for the league to attempt to orchestrate at a time the league was losing popularity and was having trouble marketing stars.
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