People are extremely stupid. This is especially true in America where large swaths of people will believe anything except the truth. Smart people like you and me find it easy to make fun of people who are so obviously batshit stupid like Flat Earthers and Anti-Vaxxers, but we ignore the real danger to our society – people who think the NBA Draft Lottery is rigged.
I get it, okay? In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a Cleveland Cavaliers fan. As you may know, my favorite team is the main catalyst for lottery rigging conspiracy theories. They won the 2003 draft lottery to draft local hero LeBron James (a basketball player who is good at basketball), and they won the draft lottery three out of the four years from 2011 (the first draft the season after James left for Miami) to 2014 (the year James came back to Cleveland). That’s weird and suspicious, and it is understandable how weak minded people might think the NBA made some sort of weird deal to set up the Cavs for James’ return.
The truth almost doesn’t matter here. People who believe in theories like this don’t care that members of the press watch the lottery happen in real time or that there’s no explaining why the NBA would ever let the Wizards win a draft lottery. The point of this article isn’t to convince anyone that the draft isn’t rigged. (Although, as another article that dropped today points out, rigging the lottery is possible but difficult.) Besides, you’re one of the smart ones. You know the draft isn’t rigged. I don’t have to convince you.
No, my goal here is to help the NBA convince a good majority of the conspiracy theorists out there that the lottery isn’t rigged. And I see only one way they can do that. The NBA must rig the draft.
Counterintuitive as this may seem, the only way to create a draft outcome that is believable to crackpots is to do the very thing they incorrectly think is happening. Anyone who thinks the draft is rigged is completely psychotic. Logic eludes them so it will take a very precise outcome to change their feeble minds. Hell, the 2016 NBA Draft went chalk, and that didn’t make a dent in their draft rigging delusions.
This operation, then, becomes dependent on establishing criteria for believability most likely to persuade the dumbest of NBA fans. With any luck, the NBA can create a situation where conspiracy theorists turn into reverse conspiracy theorists and indoctrinate their fellow conspiracy theorists in reverse indoctrination. However simple such an operation might seem because, hey, these people are the stupidest people in America (well, mostly), do not underrate their inability to think critically. Where smart people like you and I might use actual logic to solve problems, we have to use conspiracy theorist logic.
It’s no small task. None of this is easy, but the NBA needs to hit or avoid the following points for this to work.
The winner of the draft lottery must be a stupid result. I really wish this weren’t so, but there’s no way around this one. The result of the top pick has to be so stupid that it borders on the kind of absurdism prevalent in our favorite magic realism novels. A team so irrelevant to the landscape of the NBA (apart from the fact that Zion Williamson is a thicc NBA gawd that will make any and every team better) that even conspiracy theorists would have a hard time coming up with a reason why the NBA would possibly rig that team to win.
Naturally, that means the results should not dramatically change the NBA. This mostly pertains to the Lakers and Knicks. Neither team can win the lottery because it would change the structure of the league too much. The Lakers would trade the pick for Anthony Davis, making them definite contenders. The Knicks would have a better chance at Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant in free agency with the top pick, whether they trade it for Davis or keep it (Williamson is sort of an ideal fit next to those two players). It may also pertain to The HEAT, who would become much bigger players in free agency with a trade chip like that. Philadelphia can potentially win, and that absolutely must not happen. Neither can Minnesota.
However, the lottery doesn’t determine only the first pick. It also determines the second and third picks, so when the NBA rigs this lottery, it has to calculate at what point a pick loses enough value that the before mentioned teams cannot use the pick to become contenders.
Clearly, the first overall pick is off limits for reasons that I already fucking explained. Keep up. For the Lakers, so are the second and third picks. The situation in Boston is volatile enough that I don’t trust the Celtics to trump any Lakers offers for Davis, which makes the second and third overall picks too valuable when packaged with the Lakers’ other young pieces. Boston could potentially move into the top three, so fuck that.
In the case of the Knicks and HEAT, they likely do not have enough other stuff for those other picks to change too much, so they can totally win them picks. Knock yourselves out, kiddos.
Related to this is big market bias. Clearly, the NBA doesn’t want to set off the theorists who specifically think the entire system is rigged for big markets. Any big market team that wins the lottery will immediately set off alarm bells. Thankfully, three of those teams are already covered (I know Miami isn’t actually a big market, but they operate like a big market because players love Miami and everyone down there is rich [other than the poor people].), but Chicago and Washington are also kind of big markets in their own right. In the NBA landscape, maybe this isn’t totally true. Neither has been free agent destinations. However, that’s applying actual logic to it. When we apply conspiracy theorist logic, those are definitely big markets and if either team wins the lottery, it only proves the NBA is definitely rigged despite the fact that earlier in this article, I said the Wizards make no sense at all as a potential rigging team.
See how difficult this is? It doesn’t matter what reality is. All that matters is how reality feels.
This leads us to the muddy subject of creating counter-suspicion. If the NBA avoids these big market teams too much, it will seem like they are rigging the NBA to try to prove they don’t rig the NBA. Since this is exactly what the NBA is trying to do, it can’t be too obvious about it. Counter-suspicion relies on misdirection. Because of this, a big market team must obtain either the second or the third pick so the other two picks in the top three don’t seem so clearly rigged, which they will be.
The NBA must also avoid makeup calls. That is to say, Anthony Davis is good as gone and the NBA can’t appear to be trying to make up for that. Or maybe he isn’t if New Orleans wins the lottery. Either way, the Davis situation is so weird that they’re not allowed in the top three. I’m sorry. The situation is too hot, and the NBA already has a weird history with New Orleans and the Chris Paul trade way back when.
One team has to make an inexplicable jump into the top three. It’ll seem way too weird if no teams with low odds make a big jump. Normal can often seem too normal, and the NBA wants to avoid that.
Lastly, the results must be kind of boring from an on the court perspective. Once people start saying shit like, “That team will be super fun.” the jig is up. Reality feels boring, so while fans of the teams who get the top three picks can be excited, all NBA fans who are not into those teams have to consider the results to be the worst possible results.
Unfortunately, this means Dallas and Atlanta absolutely must not win the top pick. Even Phoenix would be too close to fun if they drafted Williamson. Memphis is the dividing point of too fun and boring. On one hand, nobody gives a shit about fucking Memphis professional sports. That team isn’t even going to be in Memphis in five years. On the other hand, Jaren Jackson Jr. is dope, and a lot of real NBA-heads are going to be talking about how fun a Jackson/Williamson frontcourt would be. Hate to say it, but they’re out.
All of this leaves us with the following draft order (presented as it will be on draft lottery night, in reverse order):
14 – Boston
13 – Miami
12 – LA Lakers
11 – Minnesota
10 – Atlanta
9 – Boston
8 – New Orleans
7 – Washington
6 – Atlanta
5 – Chicago
4 – Phoenix
3 – Charlotte
2 – New York
1 – Cleveland
Let me explain.
Cleveland at first overall: This is the dumbest possible result specifically because the Cavaliers have won so many draft lotteries in the recent past. I can’t think of anything more absurd that also has no impact on the championship race over the foreseeable future. Sexton, Osman, Williamson, and Love are not a title team. They’re a 7 or 8 seed at best, and probably not even that for a year or two. Nobody wants to see this, and that’s exactly why the NBA must rig the lottery so it happens.
And while you, the reader, can accuse me of rigging this in my own team’s favor, the average NBA fan cannot deny there is no reason for the NBA to rig the Cavs to win. Even the makeup call excuse doesn’t work here because the Cavs won a title with LeBron, thus nothing is owed.
This is stupid, and it must be done.
New York at second overall: A big market team had to win the second overall pick, but jumping another team over New York put too many big market teams in the top four, which would create suspicion. I considered having New York get the third pick, but this is perfect as is. Listen, the Knicks are getting Irving, which means they won’t draft Ja Morant. And if they do, everyone will make fun of it. This should throw the scent off this actual conspiracy.
Charlotte at third overall: Yawn. But also here is the big jump without changing anything at all for anyone. It’s unfortunate that Boston gets Memphis’ pick because of this, but in a draft that is considered weak, it shouldn’t raise any red flags and actually helps cover the NBA’s tracks because of counter-suspicion.
Please, if anyone knows some league office executives, send them this article so they can make it happen. Only by rigging the draft can we stop conspiracies that the draft is rigged, and smart people like you and I can agree that would be nice.