All if those players you made mention of are not nor have they been GAME CHANGERS! But LeBron to Cleveland, Ewing to NY and Wemby to Spurs are. I said it numerous of times before the lottery that he was going to S.A. That franchise needed him. However, it doesn't mean the Rockets are now dead. I think they can still be better next yr.
Yes, Wembanyama and Scoot are likely to be great players, but we felt so desperate for them because the team has been put together terribly during the rebuild with little development over multiple years. That’s the fault of the front office, not the NBA Lottery. By the way, OP is right with his stats. The numbers don’t indicate it’s rigged, and if it were rigged, then we should have played to it by making our team look like it actually has potential.
Yes, Wembanyama and Scoot are likely to be great players, but we felt so desperate for them because the team has been put together terribly during the rebuild with little development over multiple years. That’s the fault of the front office, not the NBA Lottery. By the way, OP is right with his stats. The numbers don’t indicate it’s rigged, and if it were rigged, then we should have played to it by making our team look like it actually has potential.
If it was rigged what did the Spurs do to "show potential"? Was Keldon Johnson making you all giddy about their future before Wemby?
Clearly not a good argument on my part because I don’t think it’s rigged. We’re just bitter, which I do understand
While I can understand all of the butt hurt going on, I must point out that there was no "conspiracy" in play against the Rockets. In fact, what did them in was their winning a simple coin flip against SA. From today's Houston Chronicle: To add insult to the proverbial injury, the Rockets' slide to No. 4—and San Antonio's securing of the top pick—appears to have been determined by the luck of a coin flip in mid-April. With the two teams tied at 22–60 after the 2022-23 season, a coin flip was held to determine which team would slide no lower than No. 6 on draft night, while the other would potentially slide to No. 7. The Rockets won said coin flip, though per the Houston Chronicle's Jonathan Feigen, the small victory led to the Rockets ultimately losing the war for Wembanyama. For those uninitiated with the intricate details of the lottery, here's a (very) brief primer: Each of the league's worst three teams are assigned 140 different four-number combinations before the ping-pong balls are drawn at the annual lottery in Chicago. The other 11 lottery squads have their own sets of four-number combinations that could result in a lottery victory, though the number of combinations given to each team decreases in reverse order of the league standings. Both Houston and San Antonio entered the lottery with the aforementioned 140 four-number combos, but as Feigen notes, San Antonio secured the winning combination by losing the coin flip in April. "Had the Rockets lost that coin toss and been assigned the four-number combinations that went to the Spurs, they would have had the winning lottery numbers Tuesday and the chance to pick Wembanyama," Feigen wrote Tuesday morning. Feigen added the Rockets would have also held the right four-digit combination had they simply won one more game in 2022-23, marking one final gut punch to what was a dismal 2022-23 campaign. So there you have it and now I await the posts blaming Silas for their not winning that one more game which would have gotten them the No. 1 pick.
It's not that I believe the lottery is rigged, it's more that you just KNEW intuitively what was going to happen. And it did...
So what you are saying is we should have lost that last game of the season …. Geeze the rockets pulled a Texans
I mean soccer club owners are billionaires as well but it's been rigged since forever. In fact Sepp Blatter, FIFA's ex-president has admitted that they were using hot and cold balls to fix draws in UEFA competitions.
There’s nothing in your post to suggest it is rigged. The Spurs had the same odds as the Rockets. It wasn’t even that the Rockets had bad luck; it was that the Spurs had good luck. People just don’t seem to understand how odds work — basic statistics. If you want to blame the NBA, blame it for the way the system is set up, not for some imaginary “rigging.” It sucks, but it is what it is.
"Okay, everyone agrees we put Houston at #14, right?" "Hang on. Although I agree with the sentiment -- hell, we ALL do -- we can't slot them worse than #6. Rules are rules." "Well,f%&k. Okay, #6 it is. Dammit." "I vote we put them at #4." "4? For the Rockets? Are you nuts?" "Hear me out: We already know the telecast will take a commercial break after #5. Let's give the entire city of Houston a glimmer of hope by leaving them in the top 4. Then when we come back from the break, we immediately and mercilessly dash those hopes by sticking them at #4." "Dude, that's f%&king EVIL. I love it! Everyone in favor of Adam's plan raise your hand." "It's unanimous, then. Houston at #4. Moving on..."
Every time things don't go our way, we have a bunch of people insisting it was all rigged. Yet, for some strange reason, they remain obsessive fans of the NBA and the Rockets (even if, at that moment, they declare they're "done"). Almost as if in their heart of hearts, they know it's not rigged and this is just a coping mechanism to turn extreme disappointment into outrage. But hey, it's not just Rockets fans--it's every team's fans. It's a common human reaction. I also find it funny that we both have people saying that Wemby knew all along because it was fixed, as well as a thread of people pissed at Wemby's supposedly relieved/happy reaction at Houston landing at 4. Not that his reaction proves anything, it's just an amusing combination of things. Detroit got the most ****ed. I bet they have a contingent of fans saying the NBA rigged it against them and that the NBA has hated them ever since the Bad Boys gave the league image a black eye or something.
What’s odd is half of us here including me predicted wemby to the spurs ever since spurs started tanking. I’ve posted on here several times “my guess is it will go to the spurs” wemby to the spurs was inevitable imo somehow …
Getting top 4 for 3 years is actually pretty lucky. Given it's ~50% in a given year, that's about ~12.5% chance to hit it all three years.
Another way to think about this is the probability of getting equal or better pick than the Rockets actually received each year. 2021: received 2nd, probability of 2nd or 1st is 27.4% 2022: received 3rd, probability of 3rd or better is 40.1% 2023: received 4th, probability of 4th or better is 52.1%. The probability of all three happening together is the probabilities multiplied together. So in these three years, the probability of Rockets getting the picks they got OR better in any of the draft years is 5.724%. In 94.3% of cases, the Rockets would've gotten at least 1 pick that's worse than what they actually received. Of course this is ignoring the fact that not all picks of equal pick number is the same value, but it's still really clear that the Rockets have gotten more lucky than not in the last 3 years.
