re: IF the NBA lottery was rigged....

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So, the Hornets actually won not once but twice in the first 3 draws with a 13% chance

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Do you not know how lotteries work?

Would you care to explain how the lottery was rigged?

Here you go. Here is a story of a state ping pong ball lottery being rigged, and these ping pong balls were left unattended for only 30 minutes and this was 32 years ago.

LINK

I love how you link to the Houston rockets forum and don't mention probably the greatest post I've ever read:

Ok,let's think about this.

First the basics of how the lottery is conducted

- The lottery drawing is attended by representitives from the league office, representitives of each lottery team and representatives from the accounting firm of Ernst & Young.

- The hopper contains 14 ping pong balls numbered from 1 to 14.

- For 14 ping pong balls there are 1001 possible combinations (regardless of order).

in other words 1,2,3,4 is the same as 4,3,2,1

If you want to do the math here's the calculation: 14/4 * 13/3 * 12/2 * 11/1 = 24,024/24 = 1,001

- 1000 of the possible combinations are assigned to the lottery teams in a weighted fashion. Charlotte received 250 combinations and Houston received 5 combinations.

- The one remaining combination is an "unassigned" or "dead" combination. - Now the actual drawing process

1. The balls are mixed up 2. 4 balls are drawn

3. If the combination drawn is the unassigned/dead number then the balls are placed back in the hopper,remixed and redrawn. 4. The team that holds the selected combination is awarded the #1 pick.

5. All of the balls are placed back in the hopper. Note: all combinations assigned to the winner of the first pick are now unassigned or dead numbers.

6. Balls are remixed and 4 balls are drawn.

7. If the combination drawn is an unassigned/dead number then the balls are placed back in the hopper,remixed and redrawn. This scenario occured at the 2002 Lottery. Houston's combination was drawn for the #1 pick and then another Houston combination was selected for the 2nd pick (necessatating a redraw).

8. Keep drawing until you select an assigned combination.

9. The team that holds the selected combination is assigned the 2nd pick.

10. All of the balls are placed back in the hopper. Note: All combinations assigned to the winner of the first and second pick are now unassigned or dead numbers.If Charlotte and Washington had been selected #1 and #2 then 44.9% of the combinations would have been dead combinations when selecting the 3rd pick.

11. Balls are remixed and 4 balls are drawn.

12. If the combination drawn is an unassigned/dead number then the balls are placed back in the hopper,remixed and redrawn.

13. Keep drawing until you select an assigned combination.

14. The team that holds the selected combination is assigned the 3rd pick.

So,as you can see it's not as simple or dramatic as drawing a ball and declaring who has the pick. They have to remixthe balls after each draw and there's the possibility of having to reselect due to dead numbers. That could be a very tedious process and hardly makes for compelling television. Is it really surprising that they don't show the actual drawing.

- Now the idea of a fix

The whole reason for using 14 balls that are redrawn each time is to minimize the opportunity for fixing the drawing. The same 14 balls are used for each of the 3 picks. This eliminates the opportunity for a "magic" ball that is fixed to come out first. The "frozed envelope" was a popular theory as to how the league rigged the '85 lottery for the Knicks to get Ewing (while still showing the drawing live).

So,let's assume that I can somehow alter 4 of the balls to guarentee that they are selected first. Let's say that I fill them with helium and they are selected on the first drawing. Now those balls are placed back in the hopper for the 2nd pick. So,shouldn't they come up again?

So,let's say that I can somehow manipulate the first pick and not cause the same numbers to come up continually. Whatever I'm doing has to either be able to fool representatives for all of the lottery teams and the Ernst & Young guys or they all have to be in on the fix. That doesn't sound too easy. Either those guys have to be stupid or I now have a conspiracy that involves over 20 people and I'm going to have to count on none of them talking at anytime in the future. In other words the Rockets representative is in on the fixand they are ok with it? charlotte is good with Nola getting Davis? Why?

To get to this point I've been able to somehow manipulate which balls are drawn. I've either fooled everyone in the room or every single one of them is involved in the conspiracy. If I can accomplish all of that then why in the world would the fact that it was shown on TV convince you of anything? David Copperfield and David Blaine have made a living off of using camera tricks to fool audiences. If I can fool all of the people actually in the room then a TV audience isn't going to be a problem.

To me,the idea is pretty far fetched. It's just too complicated to pull off and there's too much risk if caught. The NBA is a multi-billion dollar business and if it were found to be rigging it's lottery then the backlash would be huge. They are going to take that risk to put Anthony Davis in New Orleans? Really?

As someone pointed out,if you really believe it's fixed then it is impossible to convince you otherwise. Of course,then you should also think that every state lottery and political election is also fixed.

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You realize if that happened for the NBA draft, then the Hornets number combinations would continue to get picked over and over. They place the same balls back in the machine after every pick.

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Not to mention, Ernst and Young acts as independent auditor for the NBA Draft Lottery, and they weigh and measure the balls. Ernst & Young made almost $23 billion last year. They aren't letting the lottery get rigged, considering that the company's reputation is on the line in a very public fashion.

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I don't think it's rigged. That said, the lottery is a dumb system. No reason the picks just shouldn't go to the teams in order by worst record, without changing it at all.


Not worried about blatant tanking or just think its a teams right?

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More the first. I really don't think the players tank at all, and extremely, extremely unlikely the coaches do. I guess it's possible the front office assembles a bad team on purpose, but I'm still not a buyer in the tanking thing. The Bobcats were so, so bad. They were 13 games worse in only a 66-game season. That's clearly not a tank (they wouldn't need to be that far behind), but just a franchise that is easily the worst in the NBA. They should get the pick. But regardless, if a team were to want Anthony Davis this year so much that they'd tank, the current system still doesn't stop them from tanking, because the worst team has the best odds. So really, unless all the odds are the same for every non-playoff team, they should just give it to the worst team, IMO.

Of course, that leads into the argument of whether the picks should even be determined at all by regular season record, or whether all non-playoff teams should get equal odds, but that's an separate issue altogether.

Will the conspiracy theorists please counter macatak's post? I'm patiently waiting to see how you counter all of that to prove that it's rigged.

This was entertaining, then it got better and I figured you'd built up a couple of posts for a troll account and appreciated a 4 page troll, then you started trying to introduce Enron and EY into it and I started realizing you were serious. Wow. eta: Meant to respond to OP-tard, sorry.

If they aren't rigging it, why aren't they showing it live? Better yet, why not just do the draft like the NFL does. The worse the record the higher you pick. That would solve this all.