8 NBA Draft Lottery conspiracies they don’t want you to believe

The world is flat. We never landed on the moon. Avril Lavigne died in 2003 and was replaced with a clone. The NBA Draft Lottery is rigged. These are a few of the incontrovertible truths about our world, and yet people still keep trying to deny them.

Every year the league consults with the grim specters of the Illuminati to decide whether or not they should rig the draft. Like any competent agency, they don’t play their hand every year — only when it matters. Considering SB Nation is the only sports site not run by the lizard people, we feel uniquely positioned to wake up the world and shine a light on these draft atrocities.

Research is still being conducted by a private group of concerned basketball fans so we can present iron clad proof of impropriety to the United Nations, but for now here’s what we’ve discovered.

No. 1 — David Stern rigs the 1985 lottery.

The year is 1985. The first time the NBA decided to hold a draft lottery to determine the No. 1-overall pick. The Felt Forum in New York City is buzzing, the league just secured a new broadcast agreement for the draft with the TBS Superstation, and the Knicks are sitting with the third-worst record in the league.

Everyone knows the Knicks are supposed to get a high pick, but the pressure is still on. The Warriors and Pacers both had worse records, but represent much smaller markets compared to New York. Stern knows the Knicks have to land the No. 1 pick, not only to prove the concept of the NBA Draft lottery and the unpredictability that anything can happen, but ensure that Georgetown standout Patrick Ewing can anchor the Knicks in the NBA’s premier market for the next decade.

In 1985, there was no weighted lottery. Each of the seven worst teams in the NBA was given an equal chance to land the No. 1-overall pick, giving each team just a 14.29 percent chance of being able to pick Ewing. Rather than using a standard lottery ball system as it eventually would, the league put large cards into a tumbler, spun it around and Stern would select one to be the top pick.

It’s here where the NBA’s two-prong plan springs into action. Two separate attempts to rig the lottery, one desired result. Over the years, people have argued for each theory, but it’s our belief that both were done simultaneously to hedge Stern’s bet.

First of all, the Knicks’ envelope was refrigerated, making it cool to the touch. This attempted to make the card stand out amongst the rest, making it easier to select. However, this plan was risky. Under stage lights and with the possibility of time delay, there was a chance the envelope would heat up, rendering the process meaningless.

So, Stern had the help of a secondary source: Jack Wagner, a partner at accounting firm Ernst & Whinney. He placed the envelopes in the drum, and curiously happened to bang one of them on the lip of the vessel — denting the Knicks’ envelope.

Wagner is the real key to all this, because he was the league’s fail safe. If Stern couldn’t select the cold envelope, he’d instead look for a creased corner, knowing this was the Knicks logo.

Need more proof? Ersnt & Whinney were the accounting firm for Gulf and Western Industries. Guess who was a predominant owner of the Knicks in 1985? Gulf and Western Industries, who held a 81 percent stake in The Madison Square Garden Company.

No. 2 — Stern makes up for trading Chris Paul in 2012.

George Shinn is one of the most notorious owners in NBA history. Once the king of the Queen City, Shinn brought the NBA to Charlotte in 1987 after buying the rights to start a franchise, leading to the creation of the Charlotte Hornets. Just over a decade later, he was in the middle of a public trial for kidnapping and sexual assault, which led to the public finding out about Shinn’s extra marital affairs.

Withdrawing from the public, Shinn decided to move the Hornets from Charlotte to New Orleans, a decision some believed was caused by public scrutiny in Charlotte. Despite the Hornets still pulling some of the best attendance figures in the NBA, Shinn found a new home for his team.

Things were decent for the New Orleans Hornets for the better part of a decade. The team had a few playoff berths, hosted an NBA All-Star Game, and, thanks to superstar Chris Paul, looked to anchor the team for its future. Then Shinn expressed his desire to sell the team. A year down the road, and a collapsed deal later, Stern announced the league would purchase the Hornets for $300 million, to ensure its financial solvency and the health of the league as a whole.

The league-owned Hornets decided to trade Paul, after the star demanded a trade out of New Orleans and put the team over a barrel. An initial deal to the Lakers was vetoed by Stern, citing that it wasn’t in the team’s best interests. Four days later, New Orleans agreed to a deal that sent Paul to the Clippers, bolstering the underperforming Los Angeles team and increasing its worth. Meanwhile the Hornets got back a two second-round picks, the Timberwolves’ unprotected first-round, Eric Gordon, Chris Kaman, and Al-Farouq Aminu. It was a potential upside deal for the future, but has aged terribly in retrospect.

By April 2012, the NBA found a buyer for the Hornets when Saints’ owner Tom Benson purchased the team for $338 million. Benson needed a make-good, a superstar to re-launch the team. It was a tough proposition. While bad, there were three teams worse than New Orleans vying for the top pick, with the Charlotte Bobcats holding the worst record in the league, which was also the worst record in NBA history at 7-59.

Everyone knew the No. 1 pick would be Kentucky’s Anthony Davis, a generational athlete with a transcendent unibrow, branding that built itself and would immediately bring star power to whichever team drafted him.

Then, with just a 13.7 percent chance to get the top pick the Hornets somehow wound up with the No. 1 pick, and the ability to draft Davis. The Bobcats got the No. 2 pick. One final twist of the knife for the city that lost its franchise to New Orleans were now robbed of its franchise player.

It’s unclear how Stern pulled off the 2012 heist, but the circumstances are too suspicious and fortuitous to be ignored.

No. 3 — Dikembe Mutombo knows best.

While not a direct conspiracy theory itself, Dikembe Mutombo’s actions prior to the 2016 NBA Draft lottery is stunning proof of the conspiracy the league had been operating in for decades.

The Philadelphia 76ers had the best chance of landing the No. 1 pick on lottery night, but by this point, we’d seen time and time again that “luck” means nothing when it comes to landing the pick. Sure, the Sixers had a 25 percent chance of getting the first pick — but this came after several years of the Cavaliers somehow jumping the worst teams in the league (more on that later).

So, suffice it to say, there was no guarantee the 76ers would pick No. 1 — and yet one guy knew.

Look at that timestamp ... 4:36 p.m. on May 17. Hours before the draft lottery was set to air live on ESPN. Mutombo quickly deleted his tweet, but what happens on the internet lasts forever — and indelible mark of the league’s lottery fixing.

No. 4 — The Cavaliers’ incredible luck.

No team in the NBA has benefited more from the league’s guiding hand than the Cleveland Cavaliers. Drafting LeBron James in 2003 represented more than getting a phenom the entire league coveted, it secured the team’s superstar future for the next 20 years — assuming the Cavaliers drafted right.

In 2011, 2013, and 2014, the Cavaliers unpredictably landed the No. 1 pick in the draft. Over this time, they never had the worst record in the league. All this curiously happened after James made his first “decision” and left for the Miami Heat. Funny how this all works, isn’t it?

Perhaps it was luck, but it was the kind of luck so unpredictable that there had to be an outside hand.

The raw odds of this happening is 1,493-1, so improbable it functionally shouldn’t happen. And yet, the Cavaliers kept doing it again, and again, and again. After James left, the Cavaliers were in dire need of a new superstar, and the NBA was there to give them opportunity time, and time, and time again.

In April 2019, the Cavaliers had a 50-50 coin flip against the Suns to determine which team would officially receive the ping-pong combinations for the second-worst record in the NBA. They won, naturally. In a season after James left, this time for Los Angeles.

No. 5 — Ball is lifeline for the Lakers.

At this point, nobody is going to confuse Lonzo Ball with some grand prize worth rigging the lottery over. But this isn’t the story of the UCLA point guard going to Los Angeles — not really. The key players in this conspiracy were then-coach Luke Walton and executive Magic Johnson, both of whom predicted their top-three pick with stunning, Dikembe-esque accuracy.

In a classic case of saying the quiet part loud, Walton appeared on CBS Sports’ We Need to Talk and outlined, straight faced, how the Lakers were going to get their top draft pick to build for the future.

“Magic’s already ensured me that we’re going to get our top three pick this year so I’m excited about that.”

This conversation happened on May 5, 2017. The NBA Draft lottery was held on May 16 — and, just like Johnson promised, the Lakers ended up getting the No. 2 pick in the draft and went on to select Ball.

Yes, the Lakers had a good shot of getting one of the top three picks — but it was far from certain. They entered the lottery with a 46.9 percent chance of picking top three, but that’s not even odds-on, let alone enough for Johnson to “ensure” his coach that the Lakers would get a top-three pick.

Unless he already knew the outcome.

No. 6 — Orlando’s magic.

The year is 1993. The Orlando Magic have just come off as electric a season as anyone could have imagined.

How can a 41-41 year be electric? Shaquille O’Neal. A 20-year-old phenom, O’Neal cruised to rookie of the year honors by posting 23.4 points, 13.9 rebounds, and 3.5 blocks a game, in a season regarded as one of the best rookie years in NBA history.

It took the Magic from cellar-dwellers to barely missing the playoffs thanks to a tiebreaker with the Indiana Pacers. The NBA knew they had a mega star on their hands in O’Neal, and needed to make sure this appointment player could be on as many TV sets as possible the following year.

Enter the 1993 draft lottery. The Magic come to the table with just a 1.52 percent chance of landing the top pick thanks to their 11th-place finish. It’s an awkward year for the Magic to draft. It’s a year of big men, with Michigan’s Chris Webber viewed as the grand prize — but it’s unclear how he could play alongside O’Neal. The Magic need backcourt help, and the Golden State Warriors are in dire need of a big man to pair with Tim Hardaway and Chris Mullin, both of whom missed time with injuries in 1992-93.

The Magic win the lottery (of course) and trade Webber to the Warriors on draft night for Penny Hardaway, and THREE future first-round picks. O’Neal and Hardaway went on to form one of the most exciting tandems of the 1990s, both making multiple NBA All Star Games, and leading the Magic to the playoffs for three straight years, including the NBA Finals in 1994-95.

It all happened because of the NBA and draft lottery night,

No. 7 — The Chicago Bulls land their hometown star in 2008.

The Chicago Bulls weren’t down on their luck by any stretch by the time the 2008 NBA Draft lottery rolled around, but this also presented a unique opportunity for the NBA. The Bulls had languished with two playoff exits and clearly missed one superstar piece to get over the hump. Derrick Rose gave the NBA the opportunity to intervene and solidify the future of a once-proud franchise.

Rose, a Chicago native, had slotted himself as a top pick, along with Michael Beasley and O.J. Mayo. However, as the draft drew near, many believed Rose was going No. 1. The Bulls were in need of an upgrade at point guard from Kirk Hinrich, and this was the chance to kill two birds with one stone from the NBA’s perspective.

Chicago had just a 1.7 percent chance of landing the top pick. It was enough, with the league’s help of course.

No. 8 — No Zion for the Big Apple.

I’ve got to give credit to the NBA for the 2019 Draft Lottery. This might have been one of the league’s finest efforts. They manufactured so much drama by having the Pelicans, Grizzlies and Lakers jump into the Top 4, while still keeping the carrot on the string for Knicks fans.

Think about it: If No. 1 goes to the Knicks then everyone goes about their day. It was expected, Knicks fans are happy and the NBA keeps spinning. Now, there’s any number of possible scenarios — and they all benefit the NBA.

If the Pelicans trade Anthony Davis to the Knicks then New York gets its star and the big market dream for the NBA is achieved.

If the Pelicans build a superteam around Davis and Zion then the NBA gets one of its biggest local markets to have a can’t-miss team.

The best part? All this allows the NBA to have plausible deniability that it’s all about feeding big markets. Either the Knicks get better through trade, or the No. 3 TV market in the country gets better. Brilliant.