THE FIX IS IN?
If you suspect the Rockets' draft order was fixed, you're not alone
May 19, 2023, 11:17 am
The Rockets fell all the way to four in the NBA Draft Lottery. Composite Getty Image.
It’s hard to believe anybody or anything anymore. Between fake news screamers, election deniers, baseball sign-stealers and deflated footballers, I’m still not 100-percent sure if it was Keith Hernandez or Roger McDowell who hocked a loogie on Kramer and Newman.
Some NBA fans, especially those who live anywhere except San Antonio, are thinking this week’s draft order was fixed. Headlines are saying:
“NBA fans claim draft lottery was rigged for Victor Wembanyama.”
“Was the 2023 NBA Draft Lottery rigged?”
“NBA Fans Are Complaining the NBA Draft Lottery Was Rigged”
Comments like “No Way NBA Was Letting Houston or Detroit Get Wembanyama” flew online.
Even Michigan state senator Debbie Stabenow, a duly elected official, tweeted, “Looks rigged to me.”
Conspiracy fans present their case. Wembanyama appeared to smirk and pump his fist in relief when it was announced that Houston would be drafting fourth. He didn’t appear unhappy when Detroit was slotted fifth, either. The two worst teams have zero chance of drafting the best player. Doesn’t seem fair, but them’s the rules.
Detroit, sure, I can understand Wembanyama’s avoidance behavior. But when did Houston become an NBA hellhole? You may not get a ring here, but Rockets players still get to live in Houston. This is the best place to finish worst.
Here’s something the NBA needs to fix. The draft order was determined in a secret, untelevised process witnessed by a limited number of sworn-to-secrecy team representatives and assorted media folks. You know the public’s trust of media these days. Saturday Night Live’s pathological liar character Tommy Flanagan had more credibility than today’s front page. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Rumors of NBA draft shenanigans have persisted ever since the league went to a lottery system in 1985 and the New York Knicks mysteriously, though predictably, got the No. 1 pick and took Patrick Ewing. Nobody was shocked in 2003 when Cleveland won the top pick and landed LeBron James.
I know it a long, dull and complicated mathematical process, but the NBA could put all the suspicion to rest simply by televising the actual smoky backroom draft. It can’t be any more boring that watching ESPN analysts Richard Jefferson and Kendrick Perkins say the same thing over and over 10 times a day on SportsCenter and NBA Today.
And while they’re at it, maybe tell the nerd accountant who brings the team logos onstage not to flash the bottom card, which clearly showed that San Antonio was getting the No. 1 pick. Yes, that happened Tuesday night. Showing the hole card can get your thumbs broken in Vegas. At least in the movies.
If you watch the ESPN draft special you saw grown mostly middle-aged men salivating over Wembanyana like it was feeding time at the zoo.
Greatest young prospect in NBA history!
Greatest prospect in the history of sports in America!
Sounds a bit much. Yes, video highlights of Wembanyama look amazing. He’s only 19 and playing in the minor leagues. Will he escape unbroken against NBA adults? LeBron was a full-grown man when he was 19 his rookie season in the NBA. Wembanyama looks like what he is, a skinny teenager.
Don’t tell me, professional NBA executives and scouts say he can’t miss, and they do this for a job. They’re experts. They live for this. They stake their careers on evaluating talent.
I get it, but let’s look it up:
Here is the All-NBA first team for 2023:
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Joel Embid (MVP)
Luka Dončić
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
Jayson Tatum
Here is the All-NBA second team for 2023:
Jimmy Butler
Stephen Curry
Donovan Mitchell
Nikola Jokic
Jaylen Brown.
What do the 10 best players in the NBA have in common? Not one was the No. 1 draft pick. You know what else? None were taken with the second pick, either.
Only one player on the All-NBA third team was the No. 1 draft pick – LeBron James and that was 20 long years ago.
Here’s another list of players to consider: Dwight Howard, Andrew Bogut, Andrea Bargnani, Blake Griffin, Greg Oden, John Wall, Anthony Bennett, Andrew Wiggins, Ben Simmons, Markelle Fultz, and Deandre Ayton. You know what they have in common? They all were overall No. 1 draft picks in recent years. You see any Hall of Famers there?
So don’t get too upset over the Rockets drafting No. 4.
They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”