FYI…..0% chance is almost the same as the 1% chance Dallas had of getting Flagg, so maybe it is actually possible .
The problem with conspiracy theories has always been the number of people involved to cover up something so big. It is extremely unlikely, more unlikely than the Mavs winning the lottery on a 1.8% chance. So I don't believe that the lottery is rigged. That said, there is some nudging here and there conscious or subconscious. I believe that officiating biases are real to some extent. I believe that superstar treatment is real to some extent. I believe that calling fouls on players by reputation is real to some extent. Also, I believe that quite a bit of player movements to certain teams are also orchestrated by the powerful agents (maybe even league officials) behind the scene. In other words, the game is not totally fair. It's just like a lot of areas in life with biases against you. The only way you can get ahead is to be so clearly better than your competition that they can't deny you with a straight face.
The concept is flawed to say the least rather than say everything is rigged...... the worst 3 records should get a chance of 75-80% at the Top 4...... It is set up to have those better records jump in randomly therefore the league should work on keeping them at a minimum. Everyone is tanking anyways.....
The night before the lottery, I ran 100 simulations. A team in the bottom half of the lottery jumped to the #1 pick 34% of the time. Some combination of 2 or more teams from the back of the lottery jumped into the top 4 together 60% of the time! The takeaway here is that just about any single order that's drawn will seem insanely unlikely after the fact, but when you lump all of the insanely unlikely outcomes together, it's more likely you'll get one of those than something close to chalk. Seriously, go to Tankathon right now and spin it 15 or 20 times. Sure you'll get some "normal" results, but I'll bet at least half of them are "crazy" with some bottom team with seemingly impossible odds jumping to 1 or 2. It's really not a rare occurance.
The whole point of changing to (more) flattened odds was because people said the previous way of doing it was "flawed" since every mediocre team seemed to be tanking to get a higher pick. If you ask me, what happened this year was pretty good (for the most part). If you want to tank, tank. Don't whine when you don't get a top-3 pick and find out you may have wasted a year or don't get rewarded for being bad yet again. I think what's getting on some people's nerves about the lottery being rigged is that it was Dallas who went up to #1 after that crazy Luka trade. If someone like Chicago had gone to #1, I don't think the outcry would've been as much. Oddly enough, Dallas won a tiebreaker coin-flip with Chicago to essentially win the #1 spot from what I can tell. Had they lost that coin-flip, it would've been Chicago's #1 pick. And when the Suns were losing 9 of their last 10 games, maybe we should've been hoping they won a few of those instead.
The same people could have said since the drop off of a 9th seed and 5th/4th seed wasn't great. The Mavs are still a stacked team, no contender but stacked, for a Play In team getting rewarded it's bizarre to say the least. This escalated rather quickly. The Hawks weren't super bad either just not competitive. The Sixers aren't a bad team, lost on the season and promptly getting rewarded after hitting on Jared McCain and trading for Grimes. The goal is still to help bad, rebuilding teams.....
I know this only came up because of Flagg but increasingly the top dawgs in the top drafts fall to strong franchises. This is precisely what a big part of the league wants, to maintain power....including gifting cornerstones to the Lakers. So it still all feel rigged, back to the original idea.
Every sporting league is “rigged” to some extent. They all exist to make money. And whenever money is involved sketchy stuff will be going on. People who think everything is a “coincidence” are just in denial. You can still enjoy the entertainment of the NBA despite knowing there’s shady stuff going on in the background to keep the league profitable.
Sure, but that it happens frequently in the last 15 years, after a team traded a superstar. Its impossible without manipulation. Lebron left Cle, Cle got the first pick, Cp = 1st, Ad = first, Luka=first. Thats 4 outta 15
This. There's a clear bias for particular teams- the Warriors and especially the Lakers. It was hilarious when the Lakers and Warriors met in the playoffs and the Warriors suddenly got no calls. The other place where the officials change the game is when there's a blowout- especially when one team has a large lead at the half. The officiating will generally favor the team that is losing after the half.. They are allowed to get away with more contact defensively and the lead often narrows. This keeps the fans watching. As to the draft, this year's events seem incredibly suspicious. The NBA isn't completely rigged but it's not entirely fair either. There's a reason the officials sign non-disclosure agreements.
The game itself is not rigged. The players are trying their best to win. I firmly believe that. Now as for the politics, agenda, referees, ratings, thats outta their hands (players), and of course that any business of that magnitude will manipulate some things. Nothing unusual there
for all the posters here who want to believe this league is just a little bit rigged or not rigged, but just biased.. we have a saying in NYC: "where there's one cockroach, there's a hundred" so more likely the whole damn thing's a cesspool of corruption
You can say the lotto is rigged, but why would owners allow that? It makes no sense. Then again, it makes no sense that they don't do the spin out in the open. Wanna prove each ball weighs the same? Throw a box of ping pong balls in a tub. Let each team pull their balls out, stamp their team name in it, and walk up and drop them in the spinner. Do it in front of everyone. You could say it's rigged because the Spurs never went down from their pre-lottery position even once, and they got #1 pick three times, when only being in the lotto ten times. Or, you could say they are lucky as hell. It's like that guy who spends thousands at casinos every year who has never won a grand jackpot on a machine, and some person wins one who rarely spent much money. Some people just get lucky. I compared the Rockets, Mavericks, Spurs, Lakers and Warriors in the lotto history since 1985. I did three different comparisons. The Mavs weren't any luckier than us in 40 years. In fact, the only really lucky team was the Spurs in every single comparison. Are they just the lucky ones? Maybe, maybe not. Lotto picks / Ending up with #1 pick Warriors 25 times #1 once Mavericks 18 times #1 once Rockets 13 times #1 twice *Spurs 10 times #1 three times Lakers 9 times #1 never Here's a different way of looking at it. Number of times teams ended up with the #1 pick and number of times they entered the pre-lotto as the #1, #2, or #3 spot: *Spurs #1 three times (Pre-lotto #3 twice) Rockets #1 twice (Pre-lotto #1 twice, #2 once) Warriors #1 once (Pre-lotto #1 twice, #2 twice, #3 once) Mavericks #1 once (Pre-lotto #1 twice, #3 three times) Lakers #1 zero times (Pre-lotto #2 once, #3 once) Here's another way of looking at it. Out of all the times teams had a lotto pick, what average percentage did each team increase or decrease on their final lotto pick position from their pre-lotto position. *Spurs +1.5 Never once dropped in pick from pre-lottery position Lakers +1 Mavericks -0.15 Rockets -0.23 Warriors -0.4 My final conclusion is that I doubt it's really rigged, but until they do it out in the open in a way to remove all doubt, then it's fair to say it's rigged. Sports and money can bring corruption. Then again, luck happens too.
It IS out in the open, among many competing and highly intelligent parties. Every team and multiple auditors are there. Every single person in that room is more invested in the outcome and has more riding on the process that any fan watching on TV. If it is rigged consistently in favor of San Antonio, then the league is incredibly moronic. And all of the billionaire owners are incredibly polite and accommodating in keeping quiet in order to preserve the ability of the league to highlight one of the smallest TV markets in the NBA, and the accounting firms are incredibly accommodating to risk their global businesses (which are 20x the size of the NBA) to help boost the Spurs. Any conspiracy theory that can’t explain why every other involved party would keep the secret for years is an exercise in mental masturbation by mediocre thinkers who simply cannot understand the mathematics of randomness. Which isn’t necessarily their fault - we are hard-wired to see patterns, even when they don’t exist. Many studies have shown people systematically underestimate the impact of random variation and large numbers. The problem is the large group of people who don’t simply aren’t smart enough to understand the math, but aren’t self-aware enough to realize it.
Yes. The whole point of making the odds flatter was to discourage tanking. It has not. Might as well move it back to no lottery at all or at least one that is heavily tilted toward record. They’ll still have a lottery, because it has become a big money show-case for the league.
Chris Paul forces his way out of New Orleans. To an LA team, of course. NO gets the #1 pick. AD forces his way to LA (of course). NO gets the #1 pick. Luka Doncic sent to the Lakers in an extremely lopsided trade. "We don't want to pay that fat f***, we want defense," says Pinocchio Dallas. Mavs leapfrog everyone with a 1.8% chance and land Cooper Flagg. Need I go back to LBJ going to the near-hometown Cavs. That's just the lottery. Don't get me started on the WCF against the Warriors where even announcers Cwebb and Reggie were hollering about the Warriors on the 3 point line, "How is that not a foul?" Yeah, I'm not saying UFOs are real. But the NBA league office does put its thumb on the scales. No doubt in what's left of my middle-aged mind.
