NBA Thread

[Brass Cannon]

3 minutes ago, WayneFleekHoosier said:

Agreed.  Was it the Ewing draft that started the BS?  

Yep. Then Duncan. Why we couldn’t get the same treatment idk? 

[Demo]

6 minutes ago, Pagoda said:

They don’t show the ping pong balls live for a reason.  Fixed!

The NBA lottery is the 1 thing in sports I’m completely confident is rigged. Not every year, but whenever the League office sees value in a specific outcome. I’m been telling people for months that  since the Zubac trade made it top 4 protected the Pacers’ pick would land 5th, if it was top 3 they would have landed 4th, because Silver wanted to make it as publicly clear as he could while maintaining deniability that if he considered what you were doing tanking you weren’t gonna get paid off. Whenever he’s asked about it, and he’s too smart to do it though I’d give anything if he did, I’d love to hear Pritchard reply, “Yeah, 5th. That’s as subtle as a kick in the teeth, huh.”

[Pagoda]

30 minutes ago, WayneFleekHoosier said:

Agreed.  Was it the Ewing draft that started the BS?  

Yea the alleged chilled envelope was the first draft conspiracy theory I can think of.  There is a chance it was true…

[Brass Cannon]

20 minutes ago, Demo said:

The NBA lottery is the 1 thing in sports I’m completely confident is rigged. Not every year, but whenever the League office sees value in a specific outcome. I’m been telling people for months that  since the Zubac trade made it top 4 protected the Pacers’ pick would land 5th, if it was top 3 they would have landed 4th, because Silver wanted to make it as publicly clear as he could while maintaining deniability that if he considered what you were doing tanking you weren’t gonna get paid off. Whenever he’s asked about it, and he’s too smart to do it though I’d give anything if he did, I’d love to hear Pritchard reply, “Yeah, 5th. That’s as subtle as a kick in the teeth, huh.”

Somebody I think ran the math and basically the results of the draft being not rigged are incredibly unlikely.  I haven’t seen the data but it was something mind blowingly impossible 

[TheWatShot]

27 minutes ago, Demo said:

The NBA lottery is the 1 thing in sports I’m completely confident is rigged.

This, and minor league baseball. 

[TheWatShot]

I'm not well-versed in how odds are calculated, but when I saw the Pacers' chances of keeping the pick were only 52%, I knew it was gone. That's basically a coin flip. 

[str8baller]

1 hour ago, Brass Cannon said:

Yep. Then Duncan. Why we couldn’t get the same treatment idk? 

The Spurs have picked first for Wemby, Duncan, and David Robinson. At least 2/3 were egregious tank jobs. Yet the league punished the Pacers for not even fully tanking this year, in reality what was just accepting being bad in an obvious down year.  
 

NBA is a shitshow run by r*****s. 

[Brass Cannon]

1 hour ago, TheWatShot said:

I'm not well-versed in how odds are calculated, but when I saw the Pacers' chances of keeping the pick were only 52%, I knew it was gone. That's basically a coin flip. 

It’s stupid that one of the worst teams has a coin flip on having a top 4 pick in the first place. Odds designed to help them rig the draft 

[Hoosierfan2017]

1 hour ago, Demo said:

The NBA lottery is the 1 thing in sports I’m completely confident is rigged. Not every year, but whenever the League office sees value in a specific outcome. I’m been telling people for months that  since the Zubac trade made it top 4 protected the Pacers’ pick would land 5th, if it was top 3 they would have landed 4th, because Silver wanted to make it as publicly clear as he could while maintaining deniability that if he considered what you were doing tanking you weren’t gonna get paid off. Whenever he’s asked about it, and he’s too smart to do it though I’d give anything if he did, I’d love to hear Pritchard reply, “Yeah, 5th. That’s as subtle as a kick in the teeth, huh.”

NO getting Zion after trading AD, and then Dallas getting Flagg after trading Luka. And countless other examples. The rigging is beyond obvious. 

And Adam Silver is just a terrible commissioner. Teams “tank” because the draft is the only way small market teams can really build a contender. Order the draft based on record like the NFL and be done with it. No one whines about tanking in the NFL. But Adam Silver treats it like a plague that must be completely eradicated. 

[BtownStrength]

1 hour ago, Hoosierfan2017 said:

NO getting Zion after trading AD, and then Dallas getting Flagg after trading Luka. And countless other examples. The rigging is beyond obvious. 

And Adam Silver is just a terrible commissioner. Teams “tank” because the draft is the only way small market teams can really build a contender. Order the draft based on record like the NFL and be done with it. No one whines about tanking in the NFL. But Adam Silver treats it like a plague that must be completely eradicated. 

It cannot be overstated that Adam Silver is the worst commissioner in sports. I used to love the NBA, but he is driving thia product so far into the ground. Tanking is not the issue he thinks it is, and its my speculation that he uses tanking as a guise to hide the real problems of gambling, egregious officiating, and the Aspiration scandal (which he has yet to address, as his buddy Ballmer can't be touched). I'm not even a Pacers fan and know you guys got robbed. 

[Brass Cannon]

1 hour ago, BtownStrength said:

It cannot be overstated that Adam Silver is the worst commissioner in sports. I used to love the NBA, but he is driving thia product so far into the ground. Tanking is not the issue he thinks it is, and its my speculation that he uses tanking as a guise to hide the real problems of gambling, egregious officiating, and the Aspiration scandal (which he has yet to address, as his buddy Ballmer can't be touched). I'm not even a Pacers fan and know you guys got robbed. 

David Stern was the worst before him as well.  It’s been decades of crap leadership 

[Stuhoo]

This year they “rigged the draft” to benefit the Wizards, Utah, and Memphis?

Gonna be hard to fit a tin foil hat on that.

[TheWatShot]

11 minutes ago, Stuhoo said:

This year they “rigged the draft” to benefit the Wizards, Utah, and Memphis?

Gonna be hard to fit a tin foil hat on that.

It's not about benefitting those teams. It's about punishing a team perceived to be cheating its way into a top 4 pick. 

 

In a given year, the bottom 4 NBA teams are epically bad. It takes years of bad drafting, misevaluations, unfortunate breaks and a ton of losing for any team to find itself there. In other words, not teams that are one year removed from a runner-up finish. The Pacers were a pretty extreme case. If the rest of their roster stayed healthy, they're probably just outside the playoffs. The league was so convinced they were tanking, they actually told them to medicate Aaron Nesmith and encourage him to play. To outsiders, I'm sure it looked suspect. 

 

The NBA doesn't want teams giving up if their best player goes down. NBA games are already a tough watch during the regular season. 

[Stuhoo]

45 minutes ago, TheWatShot said:

It's not about benefitting those teams. It's about punishing a team perceived to be cheating its way into a top 4 pick. 

 

In a given year, the bottom 4 NBA teams are epically bad. It takes years of bad drafting, misevaluations, unfortunate breaks and a ton of losing for any team to find itself there. In other words, not teams that are one year removed from a runner-up finish. The Pacers were a pretty extreme case. If the rest of their roster stayed healthy, they're probably just outside the playoffs. The league was so convinced they were tanking, they actually told them to medicate Aaron Nesmith and encourage him to play. To outsiders, I'm sure it looked suspect. 

 

The NBA doesn't want teams giving up if their best player goes down. NBA games are already a tough watch during the regular season. 

The league doesn’t want teams giving up if their best player goes down? That tracks.

Am I now hearing that the league “rigged the draft” to place the Pacers at fifth? When the odds of them getting the fifth pick were quite literally higher than for any other slot? (The next highest chance was that they’d be sixth).

 

[Aaron]

This conspiracy of rigging the draft now has to stop simply because it doesn't benefit the local team (and yes I am a Pacers fan and wearing a shirt with their logo as I type this). I do believe the frozen envelope was rigged in 1985 but today you had dozens of reporters in there including Pacers own beat reporter Dustin Dopirak who saw everything from beginning to end and wrote about it. 

For there to be a conspiracy you would have to believe Dopirak and other reporters are paid off by NBA and risking their jobs to hide a conspiracy they viewed in real time but wrote about in detail afterwards as fair and square. Think about how ridiculous this sounds. Its also equally stupid to think the lottery was rigged to benefit the Wizards, Jazz, and Grizzles who are the ultimate non-glamor franchises while dropping the Nets who are in the biggest market below the Pacers.

To criticize the process on how picks are earned is fair. To criticize Kevin Pritchard for making this trade in first place is fair and who the primary arrows should be aimed at if mad.

However, to say the Pacers didn't draw the fifth pick fair and square under this system (even if flawed) when this outcome was nearly 48%, is just so beyond stupid. The NBA has plenty of issues and its fair to not like it as a whole, but they do NOT rig the draft lottery.  

[hoopsta007]

Whether people want to believe it the NBA is absolutely rigged from the playoffs down to the draft.  Too many coincidences.  Mavs trade Luka and magically get the first pick in the next draft.  Cleveland and LeBron.  And on and on the list can go.  Combine that with suspicious officiating at best and it’s hard to see it any other way.  Best to be viewed similar to professional wrestling as “sports entertainment”

[Hoosierfan2017]

25 minutes ago, Aaron said:

This conspiracy of rigging the draft now has to stop simply because it doesn't benefit the local team (and yes I am a Pacers fan and wearing a shirt with their logo as I type this). I do believe the frozen envelope was rigged in 1985 but today you had dozens of reporters in there including Pacers own beat reporter Dustin Dopirak who saw everything from beginning to end and wrote about it. 

For there to be a conspiracy you would have to believe Dopirak and other reporters are paid off by NBA and risking their jobs to hide a conspiracy they viewed in real time but wrote about in detail afterwards as fair and square. Think about how ridiculous this sounds. Its also equally stupid to think the lottery was rigged to benefit the Wizards, Jazz, and Grizzles who are the ultimate non-glamor franchises while dropping the Nets who are in the biggest market below the Pacers.

To criticize the process on how picks are earned is fair. To criticize Kevin Pritchard for making this trade in first place is fair and who the primary arrows should be aimed at if mad.

However, to say the Pacers didn't draw the fifth pick fair and square under this system (even if flawed) when this outcome was nearly 48%, is just so beyond stupid. The NBA has plenty of issues and its fair to not like it as a whole, but they do NOT rig the draft lottery.  

The NBA doesn’t even try to hide the fact that the lottery is rigged. There has been example after example. I’m not even a Pacers fan, but with the way Silver targeted the Pacers this season, there was zero chance he was letting the organization keep its pick. 

[BtownStrength]

4 hours ago, Brass Cannon said:

David Stern was the worst before him as well.  It’s been decades of crap leadership 

I had many issues with Stern when he held the office, but at the very least, he had a hand in expansion and basketball becoming a true globally popular sport. I always thought Selig was the worst commish of that era. But I could definitely hear the argument for Stern. 

[TheWatShot]

8 hours ago, Stuhoo said:

The league doesn’t want teams giving up if their best player goes down? That tracks.

Am I now hearing that the league “rigged the draft” to place the Pacers at fifth? When the odds of them getting the fifth pick were quite literally higher than for any other slot? (The next highest chance was that they’d be sixth).

 

So a team that finishes with the second-worst record has the best chance of picking...fifth? Makes sense, I guess. 

[Stuhoo]

10 minutes ago, TheWatShot said:

So a team that finishes with the second-worst record has the best chance of picking...fifth? Makes sense, I guess. 

I’m no Puredoo mathy guy, but yes. It makes 100% sense.