You can literally go watch the lottery video and watch it happen as it happened live in front of a representative from every team in the league Don't understand why people think the NBA would be willing to throw away a multi-billion dollar industry to give the freaking Dallas Mavericks Cooper Flagg
"the draft lottery was rigged!" is just shorthand for "i don't understand probability!"
The bigger problem I have is "Dallas fans deserve." They were in the Finals LAST YEAR. Their reward for that horrible trade was that they got the trade return from Luka Doncic.
The Mavericks were in the most recent NBA Finals held. They definitely do not deserve Cooper Flagg. It would be much worse for the league if the Spurs got him, but the Spurs deserve him more than the Mavericks!
but math doesn't care who deserves things
My basic opinion is that the Ewing lottery was rigged and all the other ones aren't, but there is a strong confirmation bias where we can to say "of course (team) got (pick)!" because almost every team has a major narrative going into the event.
"Of course Philly got it in 2016! They had been tanking hard forever." "Of course New Orleans got it in 2018! They had just traded AD." "Of course the Pistons never moved up! They were tanking too hard." None of those stories fit a pattern with each other, they're just all stories we followed.
ya exactly this and the fact that most teams have a confirmation bias statement like you're saying
1000000000% and I would say that the Ewing lottery at least makes SENSE to rig it for New York, it doesn't make sense to rig it for Dallas
but this happens? The Warriors got rewarded for benching Steph/Klay. Spurs got rewarded for Robinson getting hurt. Math says that sometimes shitty things get rewarded
And sometimes the Celtics lose the lottery when they were tanking for Tim Duncan.
And that was with the better odds!
or why 29 other multi-billion dollar franchises would be fine with a massive fraud being perpetrated against them by the league, as @howardbeck.bsky.social noted on Real Ones
It's obviously rigged my guy. I think you may not be ready for our current age, you seem overly credulous.
The NBA having a history of ref betting scandals and now doing business with gambling syndicates contribute to conspiracy beliefs by the public.
This is where I'm personally of the belief that the NBA can keep its partnerships but there's no reason for the league itself to promote betting. People are going to bet, we don't need Jayson Tatum telling us to bet. Just gives the conspiracy theorist a very easy low hanging fruit as "proof"
I'm agnostic on whether the lottery is rigged, but imo you're dismissing the 2002 WCF accusations too easily. All it would have required was tipping the scales in game 6. And I find it impossible to believe Tim Donaghy was the only ref to do it. The leap from a fixed WCF to fixed lotteries is small.
When I say it’s rigged I’m not saying 30 teams are in on it. I’m saying the league office/commissioner could tip the scales, even if they are not outright fixing a specific result.
I tweeted at Mark Rober not that he will see it lol. If they have 14 balls, and it doesn't matter which order they are pulled, just that all 4 get pulled, I think that might feasibly be riggable with slight variations to the balls.
It's also at least somewhat interesting the worst tanking teams seem to have been punished lately and imagine it would be even easier to rig against rewarding them, if inclined. would love to see science explore the possibilities in either direction.
There's not a single team that has a positive % in odds for them to even stay where they're at in the playoffs. Even the worst team in the league has an 86% chance of moving backwards in the league
they're at in the odds* not playoffs
and if this came out the league would be screwed, why would the league risk this for the Dallas Mavericks for making a shitty tradE?
This is the thing. Why would you do it for the Adelson family, if you’re Adam Silver?
Back to Adelsons really fast - my conspiracy theory when the Luka trade went down was after Texas/Dallas soured on their casino bid, they worked a deal where when Vegas opens up in expansion, they will assume control of the Vegas franchise and the new team owners will take over Dallas.
It's fun to do the Ocean's 11 version of the lottery, but for all of that would even more insane than a 2% chance thing happening. 1 in 50 isn't that rare.
The odds for those three teams to be top three were a lot lower than 2%
well, yeah, if you were, like, betting on if those 3 teams would be top 3, but that's not how the lottery drawing works. Each draw is a statistically individual instance.
Yeah, you can't say the powerball is rigged simply because a person with an extremely low chance of winning did in fact win
One thing that gets dropped in these conversation(and no one here is doing this, just something i see too often) is people ignore the their 'omg, this team didn't get this pick!' statement was the mathematical likely outcome. Very few teams are mathematically likely to stay in their same spot.
People don’t know math they just know that team lost means we should have a high pick, and they still do! Utah has the fifth pick!
and wait until you find out that mathematically they had the highest chances of getting the 5th pick!!! #math
The likelihood of three teams jumping them was 53% it’s statistically MORE likely than them winning the draft.
Also the other 29 teams would have to approve that transfer and why would you let these guys just get off the hook? Part of the reason the Maloof sale was ultimately unsuccessful is that the owner didn’t want to see them get paid for their ineptitude.
In this case there wouldn't be a team changing hands just owners. There was some recent precedent in MLS when Precourt tried to move the Crew to Austin. Dallas people would be relieved they're gone and wtf do Vegas care, they welcomed the Maloofs as minority owners of the knights.
But the model in the MLS is slightly different. I don’t think the owners of 16 teams would be in favor of it so it probably would be difficult to do it. Essentially the Adelsons would have to seek the team in Dallas to the new group who would then be paying the expansion fee.
ownership of any franchise is so exclusive I think you take what you can get. rumors that the folks that just missed Boston are high up the list to buy Portland. On a surface level the cities have similarities but can't think of two wildly different markets otherwise.
Maloofs should have been blackballed from any sport after that shit.
Ya, after all the shit with Burkle, an NHL owner, I didn't think there was a chance in hell they'd ever been allowed in the NHL
And the mother fuckers won a goddamned cup. With one of my favorite players. 😡
I also think that the Maloofs laid the framework of cities absolutely NEVER working with owners to subsidize the entire arena costs. They worked in bad faith with Sacramento and were going to be used as examples of bad faith owners. That's a death sentence for these billionaires.
Yeah they were just extremely unpopular amongst the ownership groups of the other teams at the time.
They don't want to pay for this shit themselves when the norm is set that the cities subsidize it
Maybe but LeBron wants to be the owner of the team in Vegas. You think Silver is picking the Adelson’s over LeBron?
Expansion will be north of 5 billion I think. He could join them?
I don’t think LeBron wants to be part of that ownership group philosophically. But I mean it is a lot of money.
Anyways - that's just my fun answer to "why would they do that???" which I still think remains partially unanswered unless Nico is just a Laker mole.
Doesn't like half the field have a confirmation biased conspiracy theory available to them that would have achieved the same thing? Teams eligible for the #1 pick are typically eligible because they're inept.
ya, exactly, it's a two part question that never seems to be answered 1) why would the NBA risk their entire business over this 2) Why would the NBA pick the Mavericks over the half of dozen other teams that would have net them even more money if they rigged the odds that direction
Right, it would be more lucrative to have it be Chicago or Miami or Philadelphia, if you’re gonna rig it you’re not gonna rig it so the teams that have the best chance are the Mavs, Kings and Spurs.
ya exactly, you could have easily rigged it for 5+ more years of Embiid/76ers/Flagg hype in one of the biggest cities in the country.
This is where I say it wasn’t rigged for a specific outcome, but rather that scales were tipped. By having certain numbers come up first this year, you get teams like Philly (big market, East coast) Dallas (big market), Spurs (Wemby) instead of Utah, Charlotte, or the Wizards.
Why rig it? Because you don’t want the next crop of young stars wasted in markets that don’t give a shit, or on teams that are incompetent.
I would say that Charlotte and the Wizards deserve to be rigged against, can you imagine if they played in the West? Drought would be 50 years.
Anytime you can screw over Danny Ainge I’m in favor of it.
ah, so basically you only have to rig 2 of the balls to guarantee a "good" pay out for one of the bigger market teams
Same for games. I don’t think the league rigs games or series. But I think they tip the scales toward desired outcomes with who they assign to each game. Rigging specific outcomes is hard. Tipping scales a little, you might not always get the outcome you want, but it’s easier and helps the league.
“Why risk it? Why would teams be complicit?” Because money. The rising tides lifts all boats. We know damn well Vivek is ok with not being a true contender if it helps him save some money.
this is at least a more logical approach to rigging games, because you aren't talking about complete hijacks, you're talking about taking advantage of situations to nudge outcomes towards more profits. That is something I can at least see logic behind
without saying it is rigged or isn't rigged, we had a ref come out and say 2002 was fixed and pretty much nobody cares.
To be fair it was just the games he reffed that were fixed and even those were only partially fixed.
he said (and yes it is totally reasonable to also start with your narrative and work backwards to claim it) that certain refs like Dick Bavetta were fixers. There's always been 1 or 2 refs I suspect are sus. It would make sense to have them and just be like "oh bad ref" if anything ever went down.
Sure we always think that there’s refs that are biased and there is inherent unconscious bias that refs have against players and coaches and teams. That said I don’t think any ref is making sure a certain team is winning or losing they’re just trying to make sure a team wins or loses by more or less
Essentially no different than MAGA Porter Jr's brother point shaving. It's less about the winner/loser of the game, more about hitting the payouts
I am personally of the belief that there is some fire behind his smoke, but I don't take his accounts as accurate. I would be interested to hear someone else speak off record on what was actually happening
and it appeared that this was the refs themselves acting as individuals to rig games for their own benefits, so even with his comments, it's not really an NBA league wide push
Yeah the league wasn’t telling the referees to influence the games. The refs were making bets and then point shaving so those bets would pay off. At most they were only trying to influence the spreads not the actual outcomes.
which if it's a directive from anyone here it'd be Vegas, the NBA wouldn't give a shit about spread covers
in fairness, that dude is a fucking jack ass. I do think refs were betting and rigging games, but I wouldn't listen to a damn word Donahue says. He's full of shit and loves attention.
this could work in a game to game instance, but how would you rig an entire lottery system in front of everyone?
Easy example: Lowe pointed out that two high numbers coming up first essentially meant the worst teams weren’t getting the number one pick. It’s not THAT hard to rig a lotto machine if you pay off the accounting firm that provides oversight and has a long history of scandals and fraud.
The sequencing doesn’t matter here. Them coming up at all is what eliminates the bad teams. Even if it’s the last two numbers.
And anyway the balls also go back in the machine. If they’ve been tampered with and forced to come up, how do they not just come up on every pull? How do the lower numbers come up at all?
but the chances of the first two numbers being high was the exact same as the first two numbers being low? Yes, once the first two came out because they just chrono order the draft odds, it basically did everyone in. But the reverse could have happened too
the suggestion here is the NBA is weighting balls, and I just ask the quesiton, why would the NBA weight balls for the Dallas Mavericks to get Cooper Flagg, because they made maybe the worst trade in NBA history? How does this benefit the league at all say sending him to SAS?
Also weighing the balls wouldn’t help since the balls are picked from the same pool. Even if you weighed the 4 balls you’d have 24 different combinations.
People think about weighing the balls because of the old lottery scam but that was about picking a repeating number and weighing ONE ball. When you weigh FOUR balls you can’t control the outcome.
Here it is, go bore the living shit out yourselves www.nba.com/watch/video/...
I'm with you but the video doesn't help. 3 random balls come up and the guy looks off camera and someone yells "Dallas!"