Just a great piece of writing today by Zach Lowe on SI.com that should quiet all the conspiracy theorists (although, of course, it will not).
Among the details reported by low were the winning ping-pong ball combination (6-4-9-7), and the fact the Cleveland Cavaliers were in the mix to win the lottery for the second straight year. But they needed a 3 to come up on the final ping-pong ball, and when “7” came up Hornets general manager Dell Demps initially thought it was a “1” and looked dejected.
Lowe also reveals that Demps kept the four winning ping-pong balls as a souvenir, and that a Hornets combination came up in drawing No. 3, and a Bobcats combination came up in drawing No. 4. So they did it a fifth time.
An excerpt: “Acting Trail Blazers GM Chad Buchanan, who was sitting behind Demps, was the first to congratulate his Hornets counterpart. Buchanan himself had just gotten the good news that Brooklyn’s first-round pick (No. 6) would be going to Portland via the Gerald Wallace trade. The Nets would have kept the pick had it landed in the top three, a one-in-four scenario. Golden State owner Joe Lacob was also in a happy mood. The Hornets-Bobcats-Wizards ordering meant that no long shot leapfrogged the Warriors and that they would finish at No. 7, right where they had to be to avoid giving their pick to Utah. Golden State had a nearly 73 percent chance of finishing in the top seven, but Lacob had to sweat it out in lockdown until the machine spit out a Wizards combination. Lacob is still smarting from accusations that Golden State tanked late in the season to increase its chances of ending up in the top seven. The Warriors lost 17 of their last 20 games, traded their leading scorer (Monta Ellis) for an injured player (Andrew Bogut), deactivated Stephen Curry and David Lee because of injuries and handed heavy minutes to untested rookies down the the stretch. Lacob points out that one of the Warriors’ three victories in that stretch was a 21-point rally against the Timberwolves on April 22 — “a win that could have cost us, big time,” Lacob told SI.com. The Warriors needed to win a coin flip with Toronto after the season to secure the No . 7 spot in the lottery odds instead of No. 8. “There was no chance we were trying to lose games on purpose,” Lacob said. “It just didn’t happen.”
I highly recommend you click through and read Zach’s entire account.