May 30th the day the NBA died. (actual text transcript) May 30th 11:32 am “Me: Tonight we find out if the NBA is rigged or not. Brother: Why is that? Me: Either one of two scenarios will play out. One, the Russian billionaire pays off stern to get a top 3 pick in order to land Howard. Two, the NBA owned Hornets get Davis as part of the sales pitch to the new owners. “ I honestly didn’t believe that it would come true. Not that I believed stern was an upright and honest commissioner, but I felt that it was too obvious for even him to attempt…and too many people expected it. May 30th is the day that the NBA died because we were all made aware that it is rigged…that is a show just like WWE. Many have suspected it for a while, and sure there is plenty of examples before this; The kings playoff series, Bulls getting no 1 pick and selecting Rose, Cavs loosing James and getting the no 1 pick and the no 4 pick. But this time is different. This time it was stern saying yah…I do what I want and there is nothing you can do about it. Adrian Wojnarowski said even NBA executives saw this coming: "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." "I bet I could get my owner to tank if I knew the chance of getting the No. 1 pick was 100 percent," an NBA team president said in an email. (http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nba--n...-rigged-talk-over-draft-lottery-20120531.html) These are no longer the rants of over passionate fans crying out from their meager fan forums, but from the very people that are on the inside of this business. Seeking out media attention in order to try and get someone to notice…someone to do something about it. To add insult to injury we were then forced to witness one of the most blatant referee game fixes since the 2002 kings/lakers game 6. “Danny Ainge stood in the hallway recreating a clear-path foul call for the NBA's vice president of referee operations, Joe Borgia. Ainge slid his feet, and tried to show how the Celtics defender had reached around to the Miami Heat star, how they were far too close to the rim for that call. "How?" Ainge asked him. They did some kind of a dance here late Wednesday night, Borgia and Ainge, the NBA official delivering his explanation, and Ainge, the ultimate contrarian, challenging the premises. And hey, how could Paul Pierce foul out again? How could the Heat get to the free-throw line 47 times?” "Rondo had gone up-and-under the rim, flipped the ball off the backboard only to have the sweeping arm of Dwyane Wade come crashing down on his face. He crumpled to the ground with the score 105-105 and a minute left in overtime, and within moments, Udonis Haslem dunked the ball, and the Heat never lost the lead again." "It was obvious," Rondo said. “ (http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nba--c...iating.html;_ylt=AsuUum85rTfkBfKCLhZXu.W8vLYF) How can one player (who was playing terrible by normal standards) get 24 foul calls to the other team who was playing great and extremely hard and only get 29…AS A TEAM!? Not to mention have one of their own star players foul out… Trust me I am no Celtics fan…in fact until the Heat were formed (through obvious collusion) they were my most hated team. But after watching games 1 and 2…it is blatantly obvious who the NBA wanted to win those games. Yes…I know there are several threads covering this topic…but I didn’t create this thread to just rant or rave or generate discussion or get a rise out of people. I created it for a purpose. We live in a day of unparalleled technology and knowledge. We have greater media coverage now than we have ever before. Is there not something we can do to save the sport we love? Is there no one that will stand up for the integrity of the game? Some sort of outcry...rally our Clutchfans with other fan forums to try and gain a large basis to combat the lack of integrity and blatant corruption in the NBA? Make videos, tell local and national media our concerns. I am just sick of this…and something must be done. I believe if Stern gets away this…it will only get worse and true completive basketball will have truly died…and all we will be left with is NBE…National Basketball Entertainment…
The lottery was an absolute joke. That the Bensons were in attendance and sitting front and center was just laughable.
they're not the owners. not yet. how many other owners were there? the cleveland guy was there and his kid sits as the representative. sorry...this was too much for me. i'm not a conspiracy theorist generally about this stuff. but the hornets winning the lottery felt like a negotiated part of the purchase from the league to me. on top of all the other suspicions from years past, this just put it over the top for me, personally. EDIT: I just saw you were being sarcastic...oops.
Having the lottery behind closed doors is a pretty stupid PR move. But that's par for the course for David Stern.
It definitely reeks of conspiracy. I find it hard to believe that Stern can outright hand-select who he wants to pick where (since, as Feigan says, each team has a rep in the room)...but who actually goes through and makes sure that the right number of balls for each team are in the machine? Who's to say Stern doesn't overload it with the teams that he'd prefer to win. The Hornets are a struggling franchise that might have been headed on a long-term path to fold from the league before the Benson's bought them. You can't tell me that Stern isn't a rat that wouldn't do desperate things to save the business, at the very least. We already know he put business over fairness once with the vetoed trade. EDIT: Just realized that the Hornets were the 4th worst record...for some reason I thought they were much further down than that. So it's a little more plausible that they get the first pick but still reeks.
Those are some interesting quotes from execs, but it seems like they are only suspicious as well, not that they know something concrete. I'm mostly skeptical of draft-rigging theories because I know that the owners mostly wouldn't stand for it; they wouldn't willingly accept a system rigged against them most of the time. But, this season could be an exception. All the owners have a vested interest in selling the Hornets and it is quite possible that at an owners' meeting everyone agreed to throwing in the #1 to get their portion of the Hornets' costs off their books sooner rather than later. Some teams like the Bobcats and Cavs maybe didn't like it, but they'd be outvoted by a wide margin. And, it'd be a one-time thing, supposedly. That's how it could have happened. But, it would have to be owners-only, top-secret stuff. And then you need the complicity of the Big-4 auditing firm that handles the draft and convince them to compromise all their principles (granted, Enron showed us it could be done) and keep quiet into perpetuity about it too. And then many teams (not the Rockets this year, I read) have observers at the draft. Either the auditing firm would have to rig it in a way that it appears to observers that it was legit, or else the observers have to know it was a fraud, a fraud that hurts their own franchise's competitiveness, and can be trusted to never breathe a word about it to anyone. Even one of those guys making an anonymous quote for Woj that is more than mere suspicion, something like, "I was at the draft and they said the owners agreed to give New Orleans #1," and the NBA is suddenly in a huge scandal. So, all in all, I see how this draft could be especially susceptible to corruption. And the appearance of impropriety was manifest since the day that the NBA bought out Shinn, and doubled when Stern said he could act like an owner in approving trades, and then trebled again when they won the lottery. I'm just having a hard time seeing how the corruption could be perpetrated. Of course, the rest of the NBA just bent over and took it when Stern said he could approve the Hornets' trades with hardly a complaint, so maybe I shouldn't be so incredulous.
If the lottery is rigged, I don't think all 30 of the owners are involved. First off, because more often than not, it would hurt them. They own teams because they are smart businessmen. Secondly, anyone who wants to put money into a basketball team is almost always doing it because they are competitive and love the sport, not to make money. If anything, Stern finds a way to rig it by himself and some close cohorts.
I don't get this. The lottery process involves pulling a four-digit combination from 14 numbered ping-pong balls determine the lottery winner. Prior to the draft, the NBA assigns 1000 possible combinations to the lottery teams with the # of combinations decreasing for each team as their record improves. The process is then repeated to determine the second and third pick. The teams send representatives to watch his entire process. It's not like Stern is just pulling out balls with the Hornets logo on them. The representatives get to see that the proper 14 balls are in the machine and the number combinations assigned to the teams are made available to them beforehand as well. Are ANY of the team reps saying this did not happen?
