First of all, the draft lottery was NOT fixed.
NBA commissioner David Stern would be committing a felony if he rigged the lottery, and the guy does not want to be using soap on a rope for 15-to-20 years. OK?
So lay off the conspiracy theories. Your time would be better spent perusing our first Mock Draft, now that the order is known.
Is Stern’s idea of limiting the Olympics to players 23 and younger a good one?
Hell no!
It is idiocy in its finest form, and a few other choice words that I uttered in this video with CineSport’s Noah Coslov.
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I live in Australia and whilst the word championships are held in high regard, winning an Olympic medal is the pinical in Australian sport. The Australian Women’s basketball team won the word championships in 2006 however a number of players have said the Olympics is by far more prestigious. Basketball is different to soccer, most countries would rather Olympic gold then word championship/ ‘world cup’ gold.the public here would rather Olympic gold. I’m suppried, from afar it appears as if USA basketballers would rather get paid millions of dollars then represent their country, whilst other counties basketballers value this more as they get paid far, far less and have a much smaller chance of winning gold.
Chris, you missed an essential point of Stern’s idea. Only the Olympics would be under-23. The (now called) World Cup of basketball will still be open to all ages and be the premier basketball tournament. I’m kind of surprised you missed that.
This is exactly what soccer does and it works really well because the Olympics don’t take focus away from the grand prize: the World Cup.
The only “problem” is that USA takes the Olympics more seriously and the biggest stars would rather play in that. But to the rest of the world the World Cup is the more prestigious tournament.
Stern wants to make it so that the best players only have to play in the World Cup which is a great idea. NBA teams wouldn’t have to lose their best players to two summer tournaments in four years (plus qualifying tournaments for each). Players don’t have to play year-round, teams have less injury risk, and one tournament is the undisputed grand prize. Win-win for all, except the USA players who only want to play in the Olympics and don’t care about the World Cup, but they’ll get over it.
(I posted this comment on another of your articles about this)
It’s not rigged but all the complaining would likely go away if they just showed the ping pong balls being drawn. Hell, they can do it for the evening state lottery, why not for the NBA draft? Just put it out there, draw balls, maybe show which teams are eliminated due to their combination being unachievable while the process is going on, and there you go. It’d be more interesting than opening envelopes, going to a needless commercial break, and then opening another three envelopes.