If I remember correctly, they bumped up the chances for the worst teams and severely decreased them for the better ones right after Orlando won the lottery a season after drafting Shaq.

There really is nothing all that wrong with the system as it is now...With the exception of Golden State's scenario, tanking is just a risky as winning out in the NBA. The NFL is actually considering a lottery system now, because of the whole "Suck For Luck" thing.

New Orleans won the lottery. Wow. They had the same odds(because of two picks) of winning it that Charlotte had.
And Charlotte had only a 25% chance of winning it. It's actually more surprising, statistically, that they are picking any higher than #4.
And like the article Enya posted, what team winning would NOT have had conspiracy theorists abounding? Milwaukee?

I don't believe the lottery is rigged. With that said, the Big Four accounting firms was once the Big Five. Unfortunately, it's not unthinkable.

NBA Doesn't Even Try To Hide It Anymore
 

New Orleans #1 pick.

I'm just happy they didn't get the #1 pick with the Timberwolves pick.

lol...it's really no surprise.

This was done so teams wouldn't tank it. I'd rather watch teams tank it than have this every year.

It's not like it stops tanking anyway. I honestly don't think the lottery is rigged, however.

Why wouldn't they rig the lottery? They rig the games.

Right.

The Knicks/Ewing one sure seemed to be.

I like the truth in this thread.

NBA = WWE

Everyone knows that.

Why would Ernst & Young be involved in some major cover-up? And even if they were, you are suggesting that only that toss of the envelope could've caused the corner to be bent....not the other envelopes that all were violently thrown around a spinning ball as they were mixed up? Not to mention that, yes, that particular envelope landed awkwardly in the ball, but Stern was fixing a lottery and just *hoping* that particular envelope would land at an awkward enough angle to get the corner to bend before the other envelopes got spun around in the ball and then *hoping* none of the other envelopes would get bent corners from spinning around in a ball before they got picked?

And let's say Stern has been rigging NBA drafts all these years. How has he gotten all the former NBA folks and all the Ernst & Young folks to never leak said information? You don't think in almost 20 years someone would've come out with the info?

i agree with you, i don't think it's rigged. but you can't ignore the results and say that with definite certainty.

have they ever held the actual drawing live?

i remember watching the powerball drawing on cbs at 9:59 on saturday nights when i was a kid. i think they should have each gm/player/rep with a briefcase with your team's number of ping pong balls in it. starting with least number of balls and ending with the most, you walk up, dump the contents of your case into the big hopper then fire it up for five minutes as they move about. i understand, that would take away some of the drama because obviously the first ball would be the #1 pick, so you're not working your way from 14 to 1.

I would argue against Charlotte "tanking"...they wouldn't have won twice as many games if you'd let them play 6 on 5 during the season. Ironically, they "lost" again with the #1 pick..

They could reverse it so the best team had 14 balls and the worst team had 1 and then draw in reverse order.

that would work, but in that scenario the worst team only has a 14x better chance than the 14th worst team. in the current lottery, it's 50x better. i like you're thinking though. it would be more of a true lottery than the way it is now. the shits of this scenario though is that charlotte, the worst team in nba history, would have a chance at picking 14th. in real life they'd do no worse than 4th.

They could keep similar rules to how it is now. It could be tweaked however.

yup, there's gotta be a better way than how it is now.