Post#72 » by BrokenLeftyJumper » Wed May 21, 2008 8:01 pm
Is it possible that the lottery is rigged? Sure, anything is possible. The problem with the argument of the conspiracy theorists is that their best argument seems to be "my team got screwed, there must be a conspiracy" which is clearly just an attempt to blame someone or something for what really is just bad luck and bad management.
I don't see how the fact the lottery goes on behind closed doors is necessarily evidence of the lottery being rigged. That's a big leap of faith in my opinion. As someone already mentioned, one big reason might be b/c the first pick comes out first, therefore ruining the made for TV spectacle. And as far as the lotto being done behind closed doors, its done outside the view of the public but not the view of the owners. The owners or their representatives are all in there when the lotto is done for real, its not like Stern and some other NBA cronies conduct the lotto in a small room with no windows and comes out and tells the owners how it went down. Which leads me to my next point, why would the owners allow Stern to rig the lottery and additionally why would Stern rig the lottery and risk his job? The Owners all want their individual franchise to be successful, they would not accept getting screwed over in the lottery. And Stern has no ownership interest in the NBA as far as I know, he is paid by the owners to run the league. If the owners want to fire him tomorrow, they could. So why would he risk his job to rig the lottery?
Not to mention, why would he risk his job to help out teams like Milwaukee, Portland, Toronto, etc? This is where I think the conspiracy theorists argument falls apart completely. Look at the entire history of the lottery. Do you see any favoring of big market teams? Or can you provide any sort of other rhyme or reason as to why certain teams won the lottery in certain years? No. The history of the lottery looks pretty damn random to me, exactly the point of a lottery.