Question for the "Draft Lottery is Rigged" Crowd

[og15]

It's funny because just looking at your post, I can tell your politics. What about if I told you that Walmart had the opportunity to manipulate prices so it would help their bottom line in the same way that the NBA would benefit from manipulating NBA drafts? How would you respond? Would you have unquestioning faith in the fairness of their pricing? Of course not

Yeah, you're right, I live in reality - that's my politics feel free to refute any of the criticism of conspiratal points I made in my post.

Not sure how a Walmart example of price manipulation would even work as a 1:1 comparison but I'd like to see it fleshed out. The NBA is making bank from TV deals and sports betting on top of so many other things that you can legitimately say that them helping out any team would help their bottom line by either getting more out of floundering teams/markets and reviving them versus keeping a team like Dallas relevant.

I mean, I could refute every one, but it would derail the thread. I'll just say that the only reason the flat earth theory is even a conspiracy theory today is because someone thought the earth was spherical and decided to challenge the official narrative of the time. Blindly following an official narrative doesn't make you wise and the rest of the world idiots it makes you no different than the flat earthers of the pre-17th century.

Returning to the NBA draft. The NBA has a strong financial incentive to manipulate NBA drafts in order to help struggling NBA teams or big markets. What you're really asking is for the other board members to blindly trust the NBA to act contrary to their own self-interest for the sake of justice, fairness, or whatever. I'm afraid I don't have the same kind of faith in billion-dollar corporations as you do. The NBA had the choice to create a system where they were totally excluded from the process and it was run by a third party, but they chose not to. They had a choice to create a system that wouldn't be easy to manipulate like the lottery but chose not to do so.

As long as the opportunity and profit motive exists there is going to be an open question of whether the NBA is rigging drafts.

The draft lottery involves every team, including teams with owners who are billionaires regardless of the NBA's success of lack thereof and have these teams as a fun side project, outside organizations with worth greater than the NBA who aren't sticking their reputation out to help the NBA rig a lottery for some chump change in comparison to their own company, and media members.

The rigging is far more difficult than some people seem to think, and no, the NBA is not convincing all the owners to jump on board with any of this stuff, it's not possible, and they would also have to find a way to silence former owners, which again, not possible.

They could theoretically rig it, of course, but the explanation of "oh all the owners are in on it and doing what's best for the league" is not it. Why would an owner ask his GM to tank all season, suck, lose money when he already knows his team isn't winning the lottery? Or maybe he doesn't yet, when he's now informed, "hey, it's not going to be you". Why would multiple teams be tanking and losing all that revenue if they are all in on it, "for the good of the league", what's the point for your pocket and you as an owner. There are many more reasons why it's just not the argument that holds water.

[maxpower8888]

But that's the thing: I don't keep losing $5 every time we hang out. I've hung out with him 40 times and only found $5 missing once or twice, and each time I have perfectly reasonable explanations for where the money went that don't involve him stealing from me.

Once or twice? How about five or six times? And how about if the first 20 to 25 times you guys hung out, no monet went missing, but you've started noticing your money missing in the last 15 to 20 times hanging out? And it just happened to go missing on those days he could use a bit of extra cash?

A team with ~1% lottery odds has won the first pick six times NBA history?

Also, why do the lottery conspiracy posters have so many spelling and grammar errors in their posts? Coincidence?

Doesn't have to be ~1%, it can be 4-5%. If you have a random number generator spit out a number between 1 and 100, and do this 20 times, what is the likelihood of getting a result of 5 or less, five or six times? And that's just dealing with generic numbers, without even taking into account how some of those results would be the most favorable for you.

And I don't know about any grammatical errors, but the typos are from writing from my phone, I'm not a fan of the touchscreen keyboards. You should probably learn to recognize the difference between words being misspelled and a random letter replacing one that should be there.

[shotsquatch]

If the league was rigging the draft, I expect they'd do it in such a way as to avoid triggering a social media firestorm of rigging accusations.

Sloppy work Adam Silver! Nobody would have blinked an eye if you had settled for giving the Mavs the third pick!

They agreed to this months ago when the Luka trade was made. They knew they’d catch hell, maybe not quite this much, but they’d already made the deal. However, they also knew tons of people would believe whatever they were told and defend them , which is exactly how it’s playing out.

Go read about how the lottery works, and then come back and explain how it could be rigged.

[Forbes]

Let a random fan pick everything by hand. Oh and retire Scott Foster. Any game he refs is controlled.

[og15]

Once or twice? How about five or six times? And how about if the first 20 to 25 times you guys hung out, no monet went missing, but you've started noticing your money missing in the last 15 to 20 times hanging out? And it just happened to go missing on those days he could use a bit of extra cash?

A team with ~1% lottery odds has won the first pick six times NBA history?

Also, why do the lottery conspiracy posters have so many spelling and grammar errors in their posts? Coincidence?

Doesn't have to be ~1%, it can be 4-5%. If you have a random number generator spit out a number between 1 and 100, and do this 20 times, what is the likelihood of getting a result of 5 or less, five or six times? And that's just dealing with generic numbers, without even taking into account how some of those results would be the most favorable for you.

And I don't know about any grammatical errors, but the typos are from writing from my phone, I'm not a fan of the touchscreen keyboards. You should probably learn to recognize the difference between words being misspelled and a random letter replacing one that should be there.

https://www.tankathon.com/

Do 20 sims here and see what you get

I'll do it:

1) Uta, bkn, Noh, Cha
2) phi, Uta, chi, Sa
3) Uta, phi, SA, bkn
4) cha, was, sa, bkn
5) was, phi, cha,uta
6) uta, cha, was, no
7) cha, uta, no, bkn
8) phi, uta, por, no
9) sa, no, bkn, cha
10) was, no, chi, tor
11) uta, bkn, phi, tor
12) was, cha, sac, uta
13) was, uta, phx, cha
14) was, no, bkn, sa
15) sa, no, phi, por
16) phi, cha, tor, no
17) phx, no, sa, bkn
18) por, no, tor, phi
19) was, bkn, uta, sa
20) dal, uta, was, no

Multiple times the simulator had 4 teams moving up lol, it's random, that's how lotteries work. You can always get a result that is odd, again, do people understand probability and odds?

[mademan]

If the league was rigging the draft, I expect they'd do it in such a way as to avoid triggering a social media firestorm of rigging accusations.

Sloppy work Adam Silver! Nobody would have blinked an eye if you had settled for giving the Mavs the third pick!

They agreed to this months ago when the Luka trade was made. They knew they’d catch hell, maybe not quite this much, but they’d already made the deal. However, they also knew tons of people would believe whatever they were told and defend them , which is exactly how it’s playing out.

Go read about how the lottery works, and then come back and explain how it could be rigged.

They gotta first answer how they 'agreed' to Kyrie blowing his knee out or AD getting re-injured right away.

[Upperclass]

Let a random fan pick everything by hand. Oh and retire Scott Foster. Any game he refs is controlled.

This is his last year in the league.. which is why right now he doesnt gaf

[Effigy]

They agreed to this months ago when the Luka trade was made. They knew they’d catch hell, maybe not quite this much, but they’d already made the deal. However, they also knew tons of people would believe whatever they were told and defend them , which is exactly how it’s playing out.

Go read about how the lottery works, and then come back and explain how it could be rigged.

They gotta first answer how they 'agreed' to Kyrie blowing his knee out or AD getting re-injured right away.

They would have just sat Kyrie or come up with a fake injury like they did last time. And AD gets hurt every year, come on now. That’s just one of he 100 reasons why that trade taken at face value makes no sense.

The Mavs traded one of the three most valuable players in the league for an old broken down player who was never as good as Luka, they spoke to no other teams, and didn’t take all the Lakers firsts or Reaves or Kinect. An agreement to get Flagg is the first part of it hat even starts to make sense. And it’s not the first time the league has done it. This is why the league can keep getting away with this, because it can count on people like you to think ‘oh there’s no way that could happen’.

[Michael Lucky]

This doesn't answer anything I said though lol. So you're saying that any trade/result can be called rigging if it makes sense?

If you have logical reason for explaining something that would happen in a vacuum in 1 of only 10 million scenarios, then it is common sense in following that reasoning. Again, this is the first time I've ever believed that the lottery is rigged but I can no longer ignore the obvious results that would lead any logical person to believe that it is. Again you never get 87% of people to believe something is rigged without clear and logical evidence that points to it. After all conspiracy theorists are again and again ignored for good reason by the majority. Point is i feel like I can no longer ignore it if the results keep slapping me in the face.

1 in 10 million scenarios? I just pressed the Tankathon sim button ONCE and guess who got the first pick? The Mavs . Then Charlotte.

Next time, Raptors moved up 6 and got 1st, Kings moved up 11 and got 2nd, 3rd spin was more "normal", 4th spin, Nets got first, Rockets moved up 7, Spurs moved up 6..

It takes just one drawing to get a wonky result. These aren't aggregates. People are getting what they wanted by flattening the odds of tanking because people hated bad teams being bad. 14% odds versus 2% odds isn't some crazy amount.

Hell, Utah had a 48% chance to get the 5th spot, barely less than their 1-4 spots combined.

And here i thought i was being clear in terms of percentages when it came to multiple results as a whole. But let's take it as an individual outcome as a whole excluding the recurrent scenarios with the same results "CP3, Lebron, and AD = First pick the very next draft...." Even by itself it is mad suspicious. You add the others, and it's clearly a rigged outcome. Mind you, i'm glad for Mavs fans, they didn't deserve what took place. It doesn't change the fact that the NBA is clearly rigged here. Guess David Kahn was right after all...

[Wayne Wu]

Is it fair to say you believe the NBA fixes lotteries and trades?

If they can get away with it yes

Then if that is true the games aren't legitimate because the people who control the teams, the owners, are intentionally manipulating outcomes to ensure certain teams win.

The title has no meaning.

Yea, then maybe just maybe, there could still be conspiracy, not probable I would say, that the NBA ask LeBron to play bad in that series, to mitigate the bad image of the Decision and the Heatles. And let the game being felt competitive.

That's why LeBron played so bad, can not even score against the short J. J. Barea.

That's how I feel LeBron is being manipulated by the commissioner. Haha... The Mavs championship is not pure, it was manipulated.

[Sixers in 4]

At this point it's on the NBA to prove themselves as legitimate not on anyone else to prove otherwise