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– This was the fitting end to one of the darkest, most unseemly episodes in the history of the NBA, the perfect punctuation on the commissioner's manipulation of the sale and salvation of a lost franchise.
The New Orleans Hornets won the draft lottery and get to pick one of the most transcendent prospects in years, Kentucky's Anthony Davis. The NBA-owned New Orleans Hornets, with a 13.7 percent chance, won the lottery. For over a year, David Stern pushed hard to get maximum value for his owners on the re-sale of the Hornets, and Tom Benson gave Stern an asking price and an assurance the franchise wouldn't leave New Orleans.
"It's such a joke that the league made the new owners be at the lottery for the show," one high-ranking team executive told Yahoo! Sports. "The league still owns the Hornets. Ask their front office if new owners can make a trade right now. They can't. This is a joke."
The reaction of several league executives was part disgust, part resignation on Wednesday night. So many had predicted this happening, so many suspected that somehow, someway, the Hornets would walk away with Davis. That's the worst part for the NBA; these aren't the railings from the guy sitting at the corner tavern, but the belief of those working within the machinery that something undue happened here, that they suspect it happens all the time under Stern.
There's no proof, and there will never be proof. Yet, there's an appearance of impropriety – always an appearance – that marches arm-and-arm with Stern into the twilight of his commissionership, marches right out the door with him.
In New Orleans this season, everyone followed orders. The Hornets feared crossing Stern could cost them not only jobs with the Hornets, but futures in the NBA. They ate that trade for Chris Paul to the Lakers, and dutifully sold the commissioner's story that it was never agreed upon, never completed. The Hornets played Darryl Watkins, Jerome Dyson and Lance Thomas 41-plus minutes in the final game of the season in an 84-77 loss to Houston. They played them until the Hornets bottomed out with six points in the fourth quarter of the loss that left them at 21-45 for the season.
"I bet I could get my owner to tank if I knew the chance of getting the No. 1 pick was 100 percent," an NBA team president said in an email.
Bobcats
Massive butthurt
There's a lot of good prospects in this draft, NO would have gotten a great player regardless. The team with the highest chance of winning usually doesn't so this isn't really unexpected imo, just seems like it given the cir stances but you know people would complain no matter what because an NBA-owned team won the lottery
I'm not Mr. Conspiracy Theorist, but this looks really bad.
I don't get why people are really upset. I mean not all top picks are good, look what has happened to Greg Oden since he has come. Same thing could happen to top pick this year, ok prob not because Oden has really really bad luck, but still
Thank you for this brilliant, insightful post. This forum really missed your well thought out opinions.
I'd probably be mad to if the supposed "sterns team" won the lottery with a 12% chance when the word is that this league gets more and more fixed every day
Let the butthurt flow through you...................................
OP djohn2oo8
link?
14% is 14%.
Not that big of a stretch Hornets won.
If it was 3-5% then we could talk about conspiracy.
So 13% trumps 25% in your head? That should never happen.
Eh, if you're the conspiracy type the Magic winning the Webber lottery (1.5% chance) the year after winning the Shaq lottery smells a lot worse tbh.
thank you for your kind words
Too bad Stern wasn't fixing the lottery when the C's had a shot at Tim Duncan.
Seriously though, when is the last time that the team with the greatest odds actually got the first pick overall?
Edit: Found it, Dwight Howard in 2004, and LBJ in 2003... but other than that?
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/09000d...-draft-lottery
What a ty system.Assigning this relatively low number of chances in the lottery pool to the team with the worst record has prevented their receiving the No. 1 pick in all but two of the past 21 drafts (Cleveland's selection of LeBron James in 2003, Orlando's pick of Dwight Howard in 2004). An increase in the worst team's probability of winning to 40 or 50 percent would change that trend (while admittedly reducing the excitement of the event).
Last edited by LnGrrrR; 05-31-2012 at 01:29 PM.
I lol'd
If you have a 25% chance of winning a lottery, that means there's a 75% chance you lose. If you have the worst record 4 years in a row and rack up a 25% chance every time, on average, you win one lottery.
Anyone who thinks that fielding a ty enough team is going to guarantee them the #1 pick is really bad at math and deserves to lose.
From the same article:
So in the past 20 years, four teams with less than 5% odds won the lottery... and only 2 teams with the best odds won the lottery.You might say that sort of occurrence is a long shot, but four teams with less than a five percent chance of winning the NBA lottery have beaten the odds over the past 20 years
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