The Fix: Is the NBA Rigged?
This is just my personal opinion, but I can’t watch the NBA anymore and take it as a game where any team can win.
I have two words: Tim Donaghy!
You can’t tell me he’s the only ref fixing games/ point shaving, especially after being a ball boy and watching suspect calls courtside! As I am laying here half-ass sleep, watching SportsCenter, Stuart Scott says that Hornets won the first pick in the draft.
First thing that came to mind was the YouTube video of the Commissioner and the Knicks suspicious envelope.
Next, I started thinking about the NBA owning the Hornets and stopping a trade for Chris Paul to the Lakers when Commissioner Stern said he wanted a better deal that would make them competitive in the future (whateva). Few weeks later Paul is traded to the Clippers, NBA sold the Hornets and within months the Hornets get a potential franchise player with the first pick in the NBA draft (fishy)!
Coincidence or was that part of the signing deal when the investors bought the Hornets from the NBA this year?
You know i’ve got love for ya CJ but the NBA isn’t fixed. Tim Donaghy was an isolated issue, plus if the refs/nba were fixing games- everyone would be headed to jail for a long time. And all it takes is one fired employee to speak up – it’s way too big for that to happen… As far as the NBA draft is concerned, it’s a lottery – not a certainty. The Bobcats finished with the worse record percentage wise in NBA history, but they still only had a 25% chance to win the lottery. Which means there was a 75% chance another team would win. Plus the Hornets were already slotted at the #4 pick, so it’s not like they jumped up too far. The bobcats are the 8th straight team with the worst record in the nba to not get the top pick, because again, it’s a lottery.
As far as the Hornets trade with the Lakers is concerned ( and i’m a Lakers fan) – that was a conflict of interested and messed up on stern’s part. But stern is a lawyer, he doesn’t fix things behind the scenes- he does it to your face legally like the hornets/lakers trade- and the moving of the supersonics to OKC..
The lottery isn’t broadcast because it’s a number combination thing that takes forever and would make for horribly long television. However each year different outsiders are granted access to it and there are also many other people in the room at the time including.. Here is one story on that from the 2002 draft : http://sports.espn.go.com/nbadraft/story?id=1384345
Stern has done a lot of wrong things in his tenure as NBA commish (cp3 trade, seattle – okc , handling of the lock out) but he does all his stuff in the public- and there is absolutely no way all the refs could be Donaghy or that you can fix the lottery. Sorry, but there will be conspiracy theorists for everything, just like the people who think Jay-Z and Kanye are part of some “Illuminati”
I respectfully disagree
The emphasis in my mind in the NBA has ALWAYS been the markets- you WANT basketball in NYC to be good, you WANT basketball in Boston, LA, Philly, Chicago to be good. the 2002 draft – article linked above. with Yao going to houston should be proof enough that the draft isn’t fixed, not to mention there are people in that room when it drafts.
Also Duncan to the spurs in 97 when philly and boston were both in the lottery (boston had 2 picks!) Lebron to his hometown cleveland in 2003- great story but the bulls, knicks, and clippers all would have been better NBA Business
I understand how you can raise and eyebrow because of Stern’s public dealings – i really can. But that’s where it stops. To fix a league would involve hundreds of people, all facing serious jail time. Donaghy went to jail and had a chance to be a whistleblower which would have included avoiding jailtime & becoming the biggest name in the history of sports if he said ” wait a minute there’s major stuff going on here”. Someone, say for example an angry seattle employee (you know seattle who had their team who is now a great nba team stolen from them) would have let the cat out of the bag already. I don’t think people understand the level of bigness here on the amount of people it would take to fix a league. But there are some people who think Jay-z and Kanye’s success comes being members of some secret Illuminati , and there are people who think Tupac and Elvis are alive- these people will always exist.
But it simply goes to basic math and business sense – if the NBA fixed the lottery- it would almost always be in favor of the bigger markets. And well the math shows you its only a lottery, key word there. & if you only have a 25% chance at a draft pick, you have a 75% chance of losing, terrible odds. I think the big story here is where Anthony Davis is gonna go in 2016- because we know free agents don’t stay in New Orleans anyways!
I think it’s a fix too. Big business.
Big business favors big markets – not markets like new orleans- and ive already given 3 examples of small markets winning the draft. Once again where is the dead body? – you cant tell me that somone (donaghy who served major federal jail time or an angry ex employee) wouldn’t have came out by now and said this is whats going on. Simple business sense tells you to fix something on the level you speak involves hundreds of people- so where is the dead body? Ok so lets for example just try to forget about the major point there that the number of people involved it would take for this to be true, lets just even set that aside
And though this is no knock on any of you who say it’s fixed, but, if the nba were fixed- the KNICKS would have been good by now and have had some major luck recently instead of all bad luck – i mean anyone with any business sense or sense of whats good for the league would realize this- the New York Knicks the past 10 years are proof of no nba fixing going on lol. The reason to fix the league is big business – the Knicks are the biggest market in america and where the home office of the NBA is – and they are proof the NBA isn’t fixed!
Think NBA is as ‘fixed’ as any other league in that ir consciously or unconsciously helps the big teams, bot necessarily market wise but tradition wise (officials helped gb sooo much on their undefeated streak last year). Hornets winning lottery is absurd though. How has that team fallen/exemplified Every conflict of interest a league owned team could have? They need to fix that situation SOOON.