You all know by now that the Pistons will be picking ninth in this year’s NBA Draft Lottery. I’m sure we’ll see a ton of projected picks and mock drafts, but honestly we really don’t know what’s going to happen until Draft Night.
Now my next rant has nothing to do with the Pistons picking ninth.
For years I’ve always said that the Draft had to be fixed…heck we know now that plenty of the games have been. Just ask Tim Donaghy or Rajon Rondo, who got CLUBBED Wednesday night in overtime against the Heat. The Heat come from behind on 47 free throw attempts to the Celtics 29 and a swallowed whistle when it counted. Heck LeBron had 27 free throw attempts himself, just two shy of the entire Celtics team.
So when the NBA Draft “Lottery” unfolded last night I could see the writing on the wall as soon as Cleveland dropped. I said to my friends sitting next to me, “they’re giving the Hornets the number one pick.”
And then it happened.
“Here potential NBA team Owners, buy the New Orleans Hornets, they just got the number one pick in the lottery and Anthony Davis will look great in Teal!”
How obvious was that?
How are we supposed to take this League seriously anymore?
It’s not just me, if you were on Twitter when this all went down you’d know.
David Stern…It’s his world and we’re all living in it.
Don’t Get Pimp Slapped by The Stern
The only thing Pistons fans can do is hope the Draft pick will add value to the team and that Dumars makes some deals to get this franchise back to where they should be.
I wonder what the Vegas odds on New Orleans getting the #1 pick would have been… they had about a 18% chance of getting it by the numbers.
Only shows that we have 0% chance on getting Davis even if we tanked the season. Davis was already locked on the Big Easy.
Exactly
Im hoping that Joe D. can make some changes this off season to help us contend again for a playoff spot. The lottery has really became a joke.
That was the deal Stern probably had set up with Benson. Buy the team and I’ll throw in the #1 pick too! The NBA is turning into the WWF!
Yeah you know Stern does not want Boston Spurs finals. I don’t know if refs were deliberately trying to affect the outcome, but I’m sure there was a conversation or some manipulating on Stern’s part that helped the Heat on a few calls.
I wonder if the Pistons would consider trading the pick. We might be able to get someone to take Ben gordon or Charlie V now if we have a pick to throw in and maybe get some up front help
They really need to get back to actually spinning the balls and picking them out of a crate on live TV. It looks shady just announcing the results after all of that supposedly happened.
They need an impact player at Center. but I kind of like Perry Jones at 9
Let’s all grow up a little here. If anybody other than Charlotte got the 1st pick, people would claim it’s fixed. Fact is, there was a 75% chance that the Bobcats don’t get it. If the Nets get it, it’s because they’re moving to Brooklyn, if the Wizards get it, they want a relevant team in the nation’s capital, if Sacramento gets it, they’re trying to keep the Maloofs in town. Just stop.
The NBAs been rigged for a long time bro, wake up.
Nat, This might just be the realest blog you ever wrote.
i agree with kevin, its not rigged n there is no conspiracies. u think just becuase they didnt show the wheel with the balls being drawn that it didnt happen? what about the other reps from each team that watches that as its happening? o i guess stern just told all the teams that we dont need u to send 2 reps this year just trust me. right? i think if that happened we would have heard about it by now. if we won then everyone else would be looking at us as a conspiracy in the making. just buffoonery.
i say we draft henson, n the o’whatshisname in the second.
naw the Hornets had a good chance to get the pick. I mean honestly the bobcats had a 1/4 chance of winnning, which means most times they would lose. Statistically the math makes sense
also i don’t think that NBA execs are rigging the Heat and Celtics series. sure there were bad calls, but people have jumped on the wagon that this is a rigged series so now everyone is looking for bad calls so they see them. if they paid attention they would see it happening in many other series randomly for years. i am not saying that there are not crooked refs, but i don’t think that there is legitimate proof. I am a science guy and i need to see proof. i need to see actual evidence not just lebron going to the line. the dude goes to the line so much already. also how come Lebron fouled out? what is the explanation of that. see some of you will make up your own conclusions, but making up your own conclusions is not actually proof it is just making it up.
the drafts are not done in a closed room with just Stern and NBA execs. The rest of the people are there. And if the drafts were rigged then every team would be able to come forward and say yes, my first draft pick for my team was given to me by a under the table deal. Naw, that is foolish. there is no evidence of deals, other than this supposed one about selling hornets, which again there is no evidence. this is where the conspiracy falls apart when A) you cannot find a pattern of evidence that shows that rigged drafts each year and B) that you cannot predict future probable rigged drafts it is a hindsight bias.
Same goes with the playoffs. If the NBA favors bigger teams going to finals then why did the Lakers lose early on last year. Why did Memphis get to the conference finals. Why is the league not rigging it so OKC wins since they are nationally much more popular than the Spurs. You are just seeing what you want to see and you buy into what ESPN and other sports media feed into you because they want to garner viewership and ratings through making a big story out of this.
While I’m not really super-convinced about the whole conspiracy thing, I think that there’s reason to believe that it MIGHT be true. You said that CHA only had 1/4 chance to get the top pick, but NOL had even less. And the thing is, as other teams’ names got announced, both CHA and NOL’s chances would go up.
While I do agree that there is no “script” in who goes to the Finals (mind you, OKC – the more nationally popular team – just won the trip today), I think that some favor is shown to teams that are more, say, television-friendly. But in the end, it all still makes for very entertaining basketball and I for one am still a Pistons fan.
dude you should just stop with your math reasoning attempts.
I’m stuck in the middle on this one. I think you bring up valid points but I find it hard to believe that the teams would allow a process to be put in place that was that easy to be rigged as other members have pointed out.
However the points you made about the fouls and the ref’s are more that truth, they are pitiful and sad. Anyone who thinks for one minute that games in the NBA are not manipulated on a regular basis they have either lost their minds or never used it.
I just don’t get why there must always be a conspiracy whenever things don’t go your team’s way (I’m talking in general, it’s not a reference to Natalie in particular)..many respected writers were inside the room where the lottery was being held and they said that, after witnessing the entire draw, they realized that this thing is impossible to rig (really, there are many articles about it. Go read them or maybe you don’t want your bubble bursted?)..in the “drawing room” there are media members, teams execs and an indipendent firm who oversee the entire draw and they said the entire thing is very transparent. So there are too many people inside that room so if the thing was rigged we would’ve already been informed about it..media members would love to come up with a scoop about the lottery being fixed since, as others pointed out, it would make their careers. And teams executives would reveal everything if they smelled that something fishy was going on since this would’ve hurt their respective teams. Not to mention the indipendent firm that would’ve sued the league for defrauding the leagues owners. So there’s no way it was rigged. Too many people oversee the entire thing and, in this days and age where we have top-notch technology, something would leak out or someone would talk. It would be too risky for the league to rig the lottery. Besides, even though the sale is not 100% completed, it’s just a formality that Tom Benson will be approved as owner of the team so it’s not like the league is going to technically own the Hornets for much longer. Plus, why should the league send Davis, by all means a franchise player, to one of the smallest markets in pro sports? How the league at-large is going to benefit from it since, even at its best, the Hornets are not going to bring in much money anyway? It doesn’t make sense and it just takes common sense to realize it. And how many times the NEW YORK Knicks have won the lottery the past 10 years, despite being part of it most of the times? ZERO. Enough said. You’d think they would’ve benefited from players like LeBron, Rose, Durant when they were available, no?
Actually, many small markets, like the Hornets this year, won it so you people can spare me the whole “big market” argument.
Besides, let’s be perfectly honest, we all know people would have screamed “the fix is in” regardless of who won..you have the Brooklyn Nets winning and it’s because they’re in NY and need to have a good start. And Anthony Davis would be enough to convince Deron Williams to stay and Dwight Howard to join the team. This would’ve ensued a rivalry with the Knicks in the nation’s biggest market. Don’t you think this would’ve benefited the league more from a business standpoint? Not to mention they’re owned by a Russian guy and we all know what people think about Russians (corruption and all)
If the Kings win it’s because they desperately need a new arena to stay.
If the Bobcats win it’s because the league wants to help his golden child, Jordan (owner of the team) and rescue pro ball in Charlotte.
If the Cavs win it’s because the league wants to help Dan Gilbert to win a title before LeBron (Irving and Davis, in the long run, would be phenomenal for the Cavs).
The Wizards win and it’s because they want to revive the DC market and convince Wall to stay, thus forming a Wall-Davis Kentucky connection.
If the Blazers win it’s because the league feels sorry over what happened to their previous #1 draft pick, Oden, so they want to give them another chance to start over.
If the Rockets win it’s because the league feels sorry from the squashed CP3 deal (Houston would’ve received Pau Gasol)
And on and on and on.
Stop making Stern a scapegoat for everything that doesn’t go your way.
So people who got messed up results because of Donaghy shouldn’t complain. Got it.
And the non-call on Rondo doesn’t mean the fix was in LOL..anyone who really knows basketball knows that this game is impossible to officiate and many times refs are going to miss calls. What do you expect? The court is so small and those athletes are unbelievable and the speed is off the charts, there’s lot of contact so this makes the game impossible to officiate..there are many subjective calls/ 50-50 calls that can go either way so you will always have people upset over certain calls. There’s nothing to do about that. Refs are humans and miss calls just players miss shots. Plus, you wrote this post after game 2 but I hope you noticed the Celtics got many calls going their way (calls that should’ve gone Miami’s way) during the rest of the series so it’s not like the refs were out to destroy the Celtics, who by the way were the largest market left in the playoffs (Boston is a much bigger market than Miami in case you aren’t aware of).
And even in this case, you could say that, in order to rig a game, too many people would have to be involved (refs, execs etc) so how do you even believe nobody would talk and nothing would leak out with all the technology there is today (e-mail exchanges, phone calls between refs and execs etc. anyone)? This is insane. And would the league be so stupid to do that, which would lead them to go out of business? LMAO
People are not even able to keep a secret when just 2-3 people are involved, let alone if tens of people were involved. Go officiate yourself a game like Heat/Celtics, where there was contact on just about any play, and then I’d LOVE to see how you’d fare. You gotta love how people who have never officiated a basketball game in their life, not even little kids (at least I did and it’s REALLY tough), pretend to accuse refs of being crooked for missing calls in real time in an admittedly impossible game to officiate. I’d love to see those conspiracy theorists officiating those games. It would be damn fun.
PS: If you want to talk about REAL fixing scandals, look no further than Europe where you have many scandals in soccer..in Italy both refs and players (see? there’s no way things like this wouldn’t leak out) have been caught throwing games (refs a few years ago and players this year) in the top Italian soccer league (Serie A), and there are many investigations on world cup games, champions league games and other domestic leagues, too. So this clearly proves that, if there is something fishy going on, those things ALWAYS leak out. So it could be worse, believe me. If you saw what happens with soccer in Europe, I guarantee you that you wouldn’t find NBA refs that bad anymore and you’d realize how other fans have it worse than you.
Man, I’m on a roll but I need to get it all out.
Anyone’s good at criticizing refs after watching slow-motion replays from 100,000 different angles But slow-motion replays are one thing, taking a decision in REAL time in a SPLIT of a second (refs don’t have the benefit of slow-motion) is a whole other one, not to mention that many times when you see something on tv it doesn’t mean refs saw the very same thing on the court since their angle is completely different from the tv one..basketball is a game of angles…
whatever..Stern ain’t ruining anything. There would be the same cries no matter who was in charge (case in point: every single sports league in the world has the same complaints with fans feeling that the powers that be are manipulating things or hating their team). And we can expand this thing to politics as well. No matter who the president, governor, mayor is, people always feel whoever is in charge is doing a crappy job. Sounds familiar?
I’m pretty doubtful about a lottery conspiracy, but there’s a reason why so many people expected it to favor the NBA’s “Flip This Team” franchise.
Truth is, the NBA is a carny league. Always has been. Back in the 1940s it was formed to fill arenas when the hockey team wasn’t in town. It was never about basketball first, but about the ticket office and hyping attractions in big-market venues. Only the NBA could come up with the idea of “territorial draft picks” in the 1950s, or conceding that there’s a different set of rules for stars. So let Stern take the accusations; the league office has earned its reputation. And if the team they stole from Seattle keeps up its record-setting offense en route to a title, we know one thing for sure: Stern won’t tinker with the rules in the offseason to keep THEM from another title.
Soooo, it’s just coincidence that the league owned team recently sold gets the number one spot after they stuck their noses in an ruined a perfectly good trade, and Davis gets to go home where he’ll garner the most marketability, quite similar to Lebron now that I think about it…..
The same story happened back when DRose was drafted. Obama was just elected president on ’08 and because he is from Chi-town Stern gave the #1 pick to Chicago. DRose being from Chicago was happy, Obama was happy, and Stern was happy as a result. Last year Cleveland got 1 & 4 because they had just lost LeCrybaby James. Each year has its own reason, and its been getting worse as of late.
So are you saying it has been manipulated or that it’s easy to construct a corruption story for every scenario?
I would lean towards the NBA not being fixed. There’s waaayy too many people that would have to be involved and keep everything under wraps. For this thing to be fixed since the 80’s or whenever is just ridiculous. How could something be fixed for over 30 years and there be no proof? It’s all just speculation. And even though Joe wasted the pick on Darko…. what reason would the league have had to gift the Pistons the 2nd pick in the 04 draft? Seriously! People can come up with any story they want for any team in any situation.
If the NBA was fixed why didn’t the finals just go to 7 games? Why did the team that everyone loves to hate just win the title? The league is better off with Miami losing so everyone keeps watching just to watch them lose. Is Lebron James a cyborg that David Stern programed to play sub par up until game 6 of the Boston series? Hate the guy if you want, but the dude played amazing basketball from that point on. And then Mike Miller must have been programed last night too to hit 7 3-pointers after Wade got in foul trouble because they never call fouls on stars right? Come on people!
I heard the t’ wolves are looking for a SG. Do you think there’s a trade where we can get the 18th pick and send BG to them ?