A Conversation With An NBA Draft Lottery Conspiracy Nut

There's no possible way the Sixers screw up the #1 overall pick, right? Right?

Sportsthodoxy: So you're saying the NBA Draft Lottery is rigged?

Conspiracy Nut: Absolutely. That's how Philadelphia got the first pick.

S: But if it really was rigged, wouldn't it have been rigged in favor of LA?

CN: That's the beauty of it. LA got the second pick for the second year in a row, and there's no way that's coincidence. Also, Philadelphia's being run by the Colangelos, who do what the league tells them to do. So they'll take Brandon Ingram with the first pick claiming "fit" and then the Lakers will get Ben Simmons, who's the one real potential superstar in this draft, and the league wants a superstar in LA to replace Kobe, who just retired. It's perfect.

S: I thought the draft was rigged because Philadelphia got the first pick?

CN: Absolutely. That's the team's reward for firing Sam Hinkie as GM and installing the Colangelos, who are league favorites. They even hired the guy who was #2 in the league offices. Don't think that's a coincidence.

S: But how can it be rigged for LA and Philadelphia?

CN: We're talking about Philadelphia, right? The team with TV ratings so low Galavant re-runs looked down on them and laughed? They had to give that team something to get fans interested again, and the #1 pick is marketable. New beginnings and all that. Besides, this is the first draft in years when they can't mess it up by drafting another center.

S: Well, they kept drafting centers because they kept drafting at #3 and centers were the best players available...

CN: Why do you think they were always drafting third even when they were that bad? It was the league punishing Sam Hinkie for tanking. 

S: So they punished him by making it easier for the Sixers to tank?

CN: Not the point. Speaking of centers, you want more proof the draft was rigged, there's Dikembe Mutombo. Dude tweets out the Sixers have won the lottery four hours before it happens. If it's not rigged, explain that.

S: So of all the people the NBA is going to let know the draft is rigged, the guy who played a couple of seasons at center for the Sixers fifteen years ago is at the top of the list?

CN: Hey, he tweeted it, not me. 

S: But the NBA had reporters in the room when they pulled the numbers and the accounting firm of Ernst & Young oversees the whole thing.

CN: You mean like they oversaw the economy in 2007? Or bond ratings? Yeah, real secure there. I'm telling you, it was rigged. Besides, the way the lottery works now, with the number combinations and stuff, it's way too confusing. They did that so ordinary fans couldn't follow it and they could say the results were whatever they wanted, you see?

S: They switched to this model after the old model with ping pong balls with team logos was accused of being rigged in favor of the Knicks in 1985.

CN: See? It's been rigged all along!

A Declaration of Sixers-Hood

WHEREAS:

The plan known as "The Process" by which the Philadelphia 76ers basketball club is attempting to rebuild itself is contingent on acquiring and developing as much cheap young talent as possible while not worrying about wins in the short term

AND

Due to the vagaries of injuries, draft position, the greed and short-sightedness of various NBA General Managers, the 76ers have focused on drafting "the best available player" in order to stockpile as much raw talent as possible.

Whose Lede Is It Anyway?

The Philadelphia 76ers won a game Tuesday night.

It was the first game they'd won this year.

Bad Year For Philly

This is how it was supposed to go this year for Philadelphia sports fans.

The Phillies were going to be terrible, but we knew that, and at least they'd finally embraced the notion of the rebuild. Sure, old favorites were going to get shipped off, but we'd see fresh talent brought in, and there would be some glimmerings of hope for the future.

Confession: I Am Fascinated By The 76ers

I swear, I don't know how I got on this court with professional basketball players!

The Philadelphia 76ers are awful. As they currently stand, they are a horribly constructed basketball team with an overabundance of tall men who will not play basketball for them this season, a veritable armada of D-League guys soaking up second half minutes, and nobody on the roster who can distribute the ball without tripping over it. They won 18 games last year. This year, with former top pick and potential franchise player Joel Embiid getting knocked out for another year by a broken foot and the very real possibility of JaKarr Sampson making the roster, they may be worse. 

5 Reasons Philadelphia Doesn't Hate The Sixers

The national basketball media remains fascinated with the Philadelphia Experiment being carried out by GM Sam Hinkie. Largely, they're against it - in their minds, it is nobler to strive endlessly for mediocrity (with the implied "and then get out of the way for the glamour teams" that goes with it) than attempt radical reconstruction in an attempt to improve themselves. But interestingly enough, the fans in Philadelphia have largely ignored the doom-and-gloom narrative around the team, which may in fact be some kind of first. Here's five reasons that's the case:

Nixer the Sixer

There's nothing funnier in sports right now (with the possible exception of the Atlanta Braves' stadium shenanigans) than the tsunami of outraged think pieces about how bad the Philadelphia 76ers are.

And yes, they're bad. Legendarily bad. Historically awful, if you want to be honest. The youngest team in league history, they're the result of a clearly defined strategy to tear the roster down to the foundations and rebuild by being awful and getting several years of high draft picks. So far, they've done two out of three: they've been awful and they've gotten high draft picks. The rebuild, they're still working on - this year is still firmly in the "Be awful" pile.

Feeling a Draft

Going into yesterday's draft the Sixers had 7 picks, including the #3 and #10 selections in the first round. They'd been deliberately terrible this past season, to the point where one of their 2 first-round picks in the last draft spent the entire year out with an injury he'd suffered /before/ the draft, in order to get a high pick in this year's loaded offering so they could get good this year. And with all that in place, they picked:

• Injured guy with high ceiling who's going to be out all year
• Croatian guy with high ceiling who's going to be playing in Turkey for the next N years, where 1 < n < 3
• Crazy athletic guy from Clemson who can't shoot
• Crazy athletic guy from Syracuse who can't shoot
• Two Serbian dudes (one of whom has crazy athleticism) who - stop me if you've heard this - can't shoot.
• And a wing player from Tennessee who can't shoot.

Now, I love Sixers GM Sam Hinkie. I think he has giant swinging cojones of brass so mighty they have orbiting moons. He is going full-on Houston Astros here, tearing a mediocre franchise down to the concrete slab in order to build something with long-term potential. 

So I can applaud picking Joel Embiid at #3. If he's healthy - and that's the big if - he's probably the best player in the draft, and potentially a superstar. Alternately, he's Sam Bowie, but if the alternative is permanent mediocrity, might as well swing for the fences (and annoy the hell out of the pundits while you're at it). 

But man, this is a big leap of faith - for the fans,for ownership, and for the few building blocks like Michael Carter-Williams and Nerlens Noel who are already in place. To keep all of those parties on board and committed through another year of trainwreck while waiting for the cavalry to arrive en masse, it's going to be work.

And maybe next year they'll draft immediate help, and Embiid will be healthy and ready to contribute, and Saric will get out of his contract in Turkey, and Dangubic and Micic will show up, too. Maybe some of those non-shooters will learn how to shoot. It's a nice dream to hang onto, and at this point, that's all drafts are - dreams.

Things We Know, NBA Draft Edition

Here is what we know about the NBA draft:

1. The Cleveland Cavaliers are definitely taking Jabari Parker first overall, because they want to lure LeBron James back to Cleveland and they whiffed on last year's #1, so they're going for the "sure thing".

Great Moments In Sports Talk Radio: 76ers Division

Overheard on ESPN radio yesterday: a debate over whether the Philadelphia 76ers, as currently constituted, could beat any of the Final Four teams in this year's NCAA tournament. And this was an actual debate.

O-and-Seventy-Six-er

I suppose I should wait to write this until after the 76ers have tied the record for longest losing streak in NBA history - and rest assured, they will. 30th in points allowed, 20th in points scored, bereft of the vast majority of experienced players they started the season with, they're simply awful.

They Booed Bynum

They booed Andrew Bynum in Philly.
This is not a surprise. It is Philadelphia, after all, and while the legend of pelting Santa with snowballs has been blown out of all proportion, the fans do like to show their displeasure with enthusiasm. And Andrew Bynum is someone the formerly apathetic Sixers fanbase is mightily displeased with.

A Tale of Two Cities of Brotherly Love

You can get a jump on Homer Bailey, but not on Father Time

In the dim and dusty corners of the baseball trade rumor market last week, there was a report that the Boston Red Sox were interested in Phillies third baseman and Iconic Texas Ranger Michael Young. However, the rumor was pretty much discounted immediately because the Phillies' GM, Ruben Amaro Jr., has said that nobody's going anywhere, that the club could still make a run, that he has to see what it looks like when the whole team is healthy, etc. etc.

Your Handy-Dandy Guide to the Trades Made At and Around the NBA Draft

The Philadelphia 76ers trade PG Jrue Holiday and a 2nd round pick to the New Orleans Pelicans for Nerlens Noel and next year's (protected) first round pick

Translation: The Sixers have decided to blow the whole thing up and start over with Noel and a couple of probable lottery picks next year. To get a good lottery pick, it helps if you don't have a lot of good players, so they ditched their best one on a them that's in a hurry to win now. When people say hopefully "build around Evan Turner and Thaddeus Young", you know you're going to have a lot of ping pong balls next year.