The NBA Draft Lottery Is Fixed

 

I really meant to stop in here last night, after the Draft Lottery.

Unfortunately.. the Cape Cod Times doesn't let me use the F Bomb in this forum, so I drank a bottle of wiine instead. Sudden binge drinking on a Tuesday night is rarely done for a good reason, but my conscience is clear this morning.

You see, I had my heart stomped on last night... by the random bounces of some Ping-Pong balls. Let S.I. tell you about it first- SI.com - Writers - Ian Thomsen: After Oden and Durant, draft becomes unpredictable - Tuesday May 22, 2007 11:18PM

The Celtics not only missed out on the #1 overall pick... and the #2... but also the #3.... well, you'd figure #4 would do... but NO.

The 5th overall pick in a 2 player draft... that's what we get out of 82 games of tanking, inept coaching, mongoloidian general management, and Personal Injury. I actually had to make up a word to describe Danny Ainge's management skills, because the English language doesn't contain harsh enough adjectives to express how I feel about that sandy-haired clown.

But Ainge gets to slide this morning, because today's Zamboni Rage (we're not really that hockeycentric here... we just thought that the title sounded cool) was born last night from a hopper in Secaucus, NJ.

Call me crazy, but I feel that the worst teams should get the best draft picks. The draft lottery was invented- so they say- to prevent teams from losing games on purpose to get a better draft pick. Tanking still happens. Portland wasn't trying any more or less than Boston was last year, but they got our draft pick. The year before, playoff teams (the Los Angeles Clippers) were tanking games at the end of the season to create favorable playoff matchups.

They were just doing what was best for the franchise, as were your own Boston Celtics.They just weren't penalized for it, like Boston was last night.

If the NBA can't promise that the teams will make the maximum effort, they should fine the owners. Instead, he screws their fan bases... hoping for a sort of Trickle Up effect where the fans shun the owner's team, thus fining the owners de facto style.

Remember... NBA Commish David Stern isn't employed by some basketball players/fan collective. He's employed by the owners. He's not going to do the right thing, ever... he's going to twist a national pastime to suit the whims of 32 greedy millionaires.

Portland as a franchise was floundering. Every player they had was some sort of criminal. Dogfighting, weed smoking, assaults, OUI... you name it, the Blazers had someone who did it. We got Bassy Telfair and is gun collection from the Blazers. The team sucked, and the fans- normally the NBA's most consistent sellout- were shunning the Blazers for Lumberjack Contests and Salmon Fishing Derbies. They got the #1 overall pick.

Seattle is in dire straits financially, can't get a stadium built, and is flirting with every town that has a stadium. The Sonics could be in Oklahoma, Vegas or Mexico City next year... which is good for Oklahoma or Vegas, but is bad for the NBA. They got the #2 overall pick.... the pick Boston would have had, sans the crooked lottery.

It never looks good for the league's prestige when an NBA team fails in a major city. It's also bad for them when a city gets a team by stealing it from another city... because the NBA is expoansion-minded, and expansion teams pay a GNP-sized fee for entry into the NBA. If Oklahoma gets an expansion team, they pay the NBA. If they steal the Sonics from Seattle, they save $200 million or so.

Seattle was about to fall off the NBA map into the Pacific, with a degenerate Portland squad standing next in line. Now... all that has been taken care of. Seattlewill get the stadium built, Portland will be led for the next two decades by an Aw-Shucks kid from the midwest, and the Pacific Northwest will be saved for the NBA. More importantly, it shuts out Oklahoma and Vegas... who can now only hope to gain entry into the NBA as a costly expansion team.

My sources tell me that David Stern actually had his family dog strangled right before the NBA lottery...because only a personal tragedy of that magnitude could keep him from just laughing out loud during that whole Sham of a behind-closed-doors draft lottery.

Anywho... I'm pretty angry this morning. My thoughts before writing this, and keep in mind- they're mostly irrrrrrrrrrrational:

- I hope that Kevin Durant bumps his head on the Space Needle.

- I hope that Greg Oden is hiking just outside of Portland, drops his compass, goes to pick it up... and is then suddenly taken by a Sasquatch in a manner similar to prison shower-room assaults. Keep in mind, the person I'm wishing this on would have essentially been my third child had some Ping Pong balls bounced differently.

- I curse David Stern's family to suffer a Whammy of bad luck... business failures, ugly children, botched circumcisions, costly divorces... and anything else I can think of. I hope he vacations here and reads this, too. Eff him.

- While I hold some stock in each company, I wish for McDonnell-Douglas and Microsoft to fail.

- It's been a long time since that rascally northwest region of the country has suffered a good Tsunami... maybe too long.

- If the state of Washington had any patriotism at all, they'd have long ago occupied all that Canada between them and Alaska.

- It must suck when you're travelling, meet people, get asked where you're from, answer "Washington," and get asked about the White House or something...especially where it must happen over and over again, to the point where you snarl "Washington STATE" out of context a lot.

I'd better shuffle along now, because opening wine at 8:14 AM is an option that simply isn't on the table this morning... and nothing short of witnessing a Stoning will abate the Zamboni Rage today. Onward through the fog.