The NBA Draft is Rigged

[QuiGon]

Stern was sending a message to the teams that tanked and trying to keep the Blazers and Sonics in their respective cities. The chance for Memphis and Boston to be outside of the top 3 was 0.18%... ridiculous odds.

Where's your source or your calculations for that statistic..? Because I gotta say I ran the ESPN lottery simulator a whole bunch of times and I would see both Boston and Memphis outside the top 3 about 1 in every 6 or 7 tries... certainly nowhere near 1 in every 555 tries...

 

[QuiGon]

Do people know that the ping pong balls are not selected in public? It is done in secret.

It is done with 2 media witnesses and a hired accounting firm to oversee the selection and the results.

Can some stat guy come up with the odds of all this happening? Something like 1 in a million...

Like so much of what you say, you demonstrate you don't have the first clue WTF you are talking about.

First of all, you obviously have no clue how the NBA draft lottery works.

Second of all, what you say makes no sense. If the NBA was going to rig the lottery, the last thing they are going to do is banish 2 future superstars to Portland and Seattle way out in the obscure Pacific NW. I mean, at least the Patrick Ewing to NY conspiracy theorists make sense. If the NBA wanted to rig the lottery then at least one of the 2 future stars would have ended up in a big, east coast market (Philly, Boston, Atlanta, NY) and the other would have gone to Chicago or LA.

 

[QuiGon]

Tanking? Do you mean losing deliberately in order to gain another benefit?

Do you think a team should be able to benefit from deliberately losing, like for example, if the Pats were to deliberatly lose to Miami in order to get a home game vs Jacksonville?

Is that tanking or working within the system?

Tanking is defined as deliberately losing a game to gain a future benefit. But resting starters and playing reserves is not necessarily tanking. There's a difference between those two concepts.

 

[sieglo]

The NBA is screwed anyway. Too many teams.... Who cares any more.

Can't wait to see what Fitzy has to say about this one.

 

[maverick4]

Second of all, what you say makes no sense. If the NBA was going to rig the lottery, the last thing they are going to do is banish 2 future superstars to Portland and Seattle way out in the obscure Pacific NW. I mean, at least the Patrick Ewing to NY conspiracy theorists make sense. If the NBA wanted to rig the lottery than at least one of the 2 future stars would have ended up in a big, east coast market (Philly, Boston, Atlanta, NY) and the other would have gone to Chicago or LA.

That is way too simplistic reasoning. The NBA is facing a talent dilution problem, and a bigger concern than feeding big markets is to keep small markets alive. I would say the only way Portland and Seattle could have saved their franchises and not move was to get the two most exciting rookies.

 

[PatsMyBoyz!]

The NBA is screwed anyway. Too many teams.... Who cares any more.

Can't wait to see what Fitzy has to say about this one.

LMAO Fitzy should put out a good one,no doubt about it.

The NBA is dead to me as well,except as a NE fan it would be great to see the Celts get competitive again. Actually it would just be nice to see the Eastern Conference be competitive again.

 

[QuiGon]

That is way too simplistic reasoning.

EDIT: Last time you accused me "simplistic reasoning" was when you said the US orchestrated the kidmapping of 14 British sailors by Iran. You used those exact same words, you were wrong then and you're wrong now.

The NBA is facing a talent dilution problem, and a bigger concern than feeding big markets is to keep small markets alive. I would say the only way Portland and Seattle could have saved their franchises and not move was to get the two most exciting rookies.

What makes you think the NBA wouldn't want one of those 2 teams moving..? The NBA wants a franchise in Las Vegas and Stern would be plenty happy to see one of those flagging franchises uprooting to sin City.

What you say doesn't make sense at all. The last thing the NBA wanted was to banish both future stars to the obscure Pacific Northwest.

Plus I've seen a lot of probability and calculations here that are simply wrong. No offense, but a lot of people here - yourself included - simply don't understand how the NBA conducts the draft lottery.

 

[BelichickFan]

Where's your source or your calculations for that statistic..?

It's not close to true :

http://www.nba.com/celtics/stats/inside-the-numbers/itn042307-draft-lottery-odds.html

The Grizzlies had a 36% chance of falling out of the top three, the Celtics 45% so there was about a 15% chance both would. Not a great chance but very legitmate.

 

[BelichickFan]

Of course the NBA would have preferred them in Boston and Philly. Duh. As Steven A. Smith said last night "it's a disaster for the NBA".

 

[BelichickFan]

Tanking is defined as deliberately losing a game to gain a future benefit. But resting starters and playing reserves is not necessarily tanking. There's a difference between those two concepts.

And even if the Patriots' tanked, it's different to "tank" for the perceived benefit of a better matchup through a lower seed vs. the definite advantage of moving up in the draft or improving your odds.

 

[QuiGon]

It's not close to true :

http://www.nba.com/celtics/stats/inside-the-numbers/itn042307-draft-lottery-odds.html

The Grizzlies had a 36% chance of falling out of the top three, the Celtics 45% so there was about a 15% chance both would. Not a great chance but very legitmate.

Cool webpage... plus that 15% stat you give falls perfectly in line with my trial-and-error results where I said ESPN's lottery simulator had them both outside the top-3 once every 6 or 7 tries. Funny how that works

 

[mtbykr]

BTW, don't say the draft is rigged when the two premium guys end up in Oregon. It's not suicide for the league but it ain't good when most of the country will rarely see them play.

when did seattle move to oregon? The NBA is a joke, and the lottery is worthless......bring on football season! Can't wait to see what Fitzy has to say

 

[BelichickFan]

when did seattle move to oregon?

ORegon, Washington State, it's all the same to me

 

[maverick4]

The Grizzlies had a 36% chance of falling out of the top three, the Celtics 45% so there was about a 15% chance both would. Not a great chance but very legitmate.
----

No, the odds are seriously something on the magnitude of less than 50 in a million. Consider that Memphis, Boston, and Milwaukee each got their absolute worst possible pick, that Atlanta had to be in the top 3, and the small chance that Portland would get #1 and Seattle would get #2. If I have more time maybe I'll actually try to figure it out (unless a stat expert wants to beat me to it first).

You're all correct though, it's probably just pure chance and not any result of 'rigging', but the chance that the draft happened the way it did was really small, small enough to question.

 

[QuiGon]

No, the odds are seriously something on the magnitude of less than 50 in a million.

Yeah... see, this is the sort of statement that shows you really have no clue WTF you are talking about.

The only thing worse than your faulty math is your ridiculous logic.

 

[BelichickFan]

No, the odds are seriously something on the magnitude of less than 50 in a million.

The odds of what actually happened, but the odds on any exact scenario were long.

The quote was :

"The chance for Memphis and Boston to be outside of the top 3 was 0.18%... ridiculous odds."

Which is simply not true.

Memphis had a 36% chance to be out of the top three. Had the Celtics been exactly 50-50 then the chance of both being out would be 18%. As the Celtics were around 45%, drop that a little to the 15% range and you'll be close. This 50 in a million talk is just wrong.

 

[Real World]

Tanking? Do you mean losing deliberately in order to gain another benefit?

Do you think a team should be able to benefit from deliberately losing, like for example, if the Pats were to deliberatly lose to Miami in order to get a home game vs Jacksonville?

Is that tanking or working within the system?

I am not a huge fan of the NBA, but this latest lottery, with the secret drawings and rather unlikely result, makes me feel better about the chances of boxing being free of corruption when compared to the NBA.

God help us if the NFL ever gets the idea that a lottery system would be a good idea.

Don't go there! You're making sense and criticizing the Patriots at the same time! Sacreledge!

 

[Real World]

So one fifth of 1%. That is not even counting the chance for Milwaukee to get its worst possible pick, and for Seattle/Portland to get the top two spots, plus the small chance that Atlanta would actually get to keep its draft pick by being in the top 3.

Yes, I am bitter and disappointed, but I also think this draft was really convenient for the NBA (help out the lowest two fan attendances, and punish the 3 teams that supposedly tanked).

The lottery is wrigged. Anyone remember the folded envelope in 1985? "And the NY Knicks select, Patrick.....

David Stern hates the Celtics. When Reggie Lewis DIED (RIP), he denied them any cap relief for his contract. He made a dead man's money stay on the Celtics cap. Stern is a loooooooooser.

(I'm venting and thus being illogical, but it helps me feel better )

 

[ctpatsfan77]

No, the odds are seriously something on the magnitude of less than 50 in a million. Consider that Memphis, Boston, and Milwaukee each got their absolute worst possible pick, that Atlanta had to be in the top 3, and the small chance that Portland would get #1 and Seattle would get #2. If I have more time maybe I'll actually try to figure it out (unless a stat expert wants to beat me to it first).

As I stated before, you're talking about two separate issues.

The odds of this exact result were about 50 in a million.
The odds of the top 3 falling to 4-5-6 are much higher, on the order of 5 percent. [There is a 39.5% chance that the #1 seed goes to a non-top 3 team, and slightly worse chances--if that happens--of the same happening to the #2 and #3 seeds.]

 

[Real World]

The NBA is screwed anyway. Too many teams.... Who cares any more.

Can't wait to see what Fitzy has to say about this one.

The NBA is disgusting, but I still love the Celtics. The league is a bunch of hooligan, thug criminals, who play school yard ball to rap music. The most ******ed thing in the NBA is when they play music while the teams are playing the fricken game. That's just ridiculous. It's all about cash, and nothing about the sport. The players stink, all they can do is run and jump. Almost none of them have any remote sense of fundamentals. They play 1 on 1 basketball, or just shoot 3's. Scoring has increased some the last couple of years, but 80-75 games are still too common. In the 80's, almost everygame was over 100 points. The league is gross.