Right now, the NBA still owns the New Orleans Hornets.
The league is still in the process of selling the team to Tom Benson to keep the team in the NBA’s smallest market, but as you read this technically David Stern is the defacto owner of the Hornets.
The Hornets who just won the NBA Draft Lottery. They get franchise-changing star Anthony Davis.
That instantly sounds fishy.
And it’s not just the guy next to you at the bar and people on twitter who think the lottery is rigged, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports.
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….
“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.
They weren’t alone, 10 players tweeted about the conspiracy, compiled by IamaGM.
We humans love a good conspiracy, so there will always be a guy on the grassy knoll.
Personally, I don’t buy it. I’m not a conspiracy guy in general, and I don’t buy this. Read up from SI on how it goes down in the room — there are team execs and media in there.
Thing is, I can make the “lottery is rigged” argument for pretty much every team in the lottery this year (something Deadspin pointed out yesterday before the lottery took place). The Bobcats had the best odds, but clearly Stern wanted to help out Michael Jordan. If it was Cleveland it was more LeBron James payback. If the Nets win it’s because the league wants a big star in Brooklyn. If the Kings win it’s to keep a team in Sacramento. If the Warriors win it’s to help their new ownership move to San Francisco. And so on and so on. You were going to cry rigged no matter who won.
Also, if the NBA were making a smart business move, it wouldn’t send a big star in the making in Davis to its smallest market. To an owner who has an NFL team in the middle on of the bigger sports scandals in years. Finally, this could be a fraudulent crime and if one of the other owners is really convinced they can literally make a case of it. But as with all conspiracies, here just is never proof.
But Woj is right about this — the feeling that the lottery is rigged by the over controlling Stern is a problem. A big problem. And it’s not just fans who think it’s rigged, it’s people who dedicated their lives to the game and NBA.
That’s about the integrity of the sport. That’s real trouble.