NBA Draft lottery conspiracy would not be such a bad thing for The Brooklyn Nets
“We are a subpar team.”
Yes, Deron Williams, you are. Please don’t leave though. Pretty please?!
The Nets may actually be the best long term option for Williams, who will opt-out and test free agency in July. Most pundits and sports writers have already stamped his ticket to Dallas for him, they conveniently still had those stamps handy from when they had stamped Dwight Howard’s ticket to Los Angeles too. Williams is a Dallas native, but aside from that what sense does Dallas make for him long term? Don’t say “Dirk” because I clearly said “long term” and Dirk is going to be 34 years old and there’s not many assets on that roster after him. The Nets on the other hand, are in a very interesting position right now. It’s like they’re balancing atop a wobbling fence and are about to fall headfirst into one of two possible realities. Years of disappointment or years of potential glory. The fate of the team arguably rests in the hands of two men. Yes, Deron Williams is one of them. The other? Well it depends on your stance on conspiracy theories, but the other is David Stern. The Commish.
How is the fate of the Brooklyn Nets in the hands of David Stern you ask? Well I’ll tell you. The NBA Draft Lottery. Oh yes, I am dusting off this well known NBA conspiracy yet again, but not to cast suspicion over the league. No, I am actually begging for this conspiracy to be true, and more importantly, for it to prove true once again this June. Yeah, I have no shame. Don’t judge me. Being from Jersey, I feel justified in acting like a mob wife. I’ll be the first to cry foul when I suspect some sort of terrible injustice going on beneath the surface, but if that injustice is providing me a fancy lifestyle then i’m fine with looking the other way.
Now, I’m not sure I honestly believe in these NBA draft lottery conspiracies, but there is no shortage of prior occurrences that certainly add fuel to the conspiracy theorists fire. A fire that has been burning ever since the very first Draft lottery took place. I’m sure we all recall the Patrick Ewing draft fiasco. Word had spread that the Houston Rockets had tanked their season in hopes of drafting Ewing, unfortunately for them it did not work out that way. If you care for a refresher of the Lottery conspiracy’s origin you can easily find the said event on Youtube. If that requires too much effort then allow me to quickly jog your memory. David Stern. Bent envelope. NBA’s biggest market won with said envelope. Now do you remember? Good.
There are far more examples of the lottery results not raising any eyebrows than there are the juicy variety, but the few that stirred suspicion are pretty hard to ignore if you have an open mind about things like this. It seems as if things always work out a little too well for the NBA landscape come draft season, even if the odds are not in their favor. Teams like The Minnesota Timberwolves have the biggest reason to feel hostility towards the lottery. They have been in the lottery 16 out of their 23 years of existence and have never once even sniffed the top overall pick. If that strikes you as being just a little too peculiar, you’re not alone. In fact, even the Timberwolves President of Basketball Operations, David Kahn, wholeheartedly agrees with you. So much so, in fact, that he publicly insinuated that the NBA does indeed fix the draft lotteries when the opportunity for a good story comes along. He said this after his franchise lost out (Once again.) to The Cavaliers in the lottery. I’m sure the fact that this was the year following the infamous exit of Lebron James from Cleveland was purely (Another) coincidence. Wink wink. Perhaps Kahn was still scratching his head over how The Chicago Bulls, with merely a 1.70% chance of winning, earned the Top pick and the chance to draft the franchise player they have been missing since Jordan. It all seems a little too convenient doesn’t it? We must unite and rise up against the NBA front office and right these wrongs! Are you with me?! I sincerely hope not because we will not be doing any of those things on my watch! I hope my sarcasm translated through my keyboard this time!
I agree that the few points I previously made are definitely food for thought in terms of the NBA’s possible influence over the results of this process, but chances are that these things were merely just coincidence or luck of the draw. We can’t accuse anyone of such unethical behavior unless we come across a lot more evidence than that. Concrete evidence too. I don’t speak for everyone, but personally, I would walk away from this whole, whacky, conspiracy if The Nets somehow managed to win The Unibrow Sweepstakes and draft Anthony Davis first overall. I know it’s wishful thinking and no one can realistically do anything to assist that most favorable outcome (Hey! Mr. Commisioner, if you’re out there reading this, I hope you are grasping my subtext here!) for New Jersey/Brooklyn. Let’s be honest here though, The Nets winning this lottery is the absolute best possible outcome for not only the Nets organization, but the entirie league and professional basketball in general. I can sense some of you laughing right now and I want you to hear me out at least. Let me paint you a little picture here.
As I touched upon earlier, this whole situation is about to take a sharp turn onto a one-way road towards either end of the extreme pro basketball spectrum. Let’s look at the most dreaded of all scenarios first. The one that many Nets fans will do anything they can to convince themselves that it will never happen. Well guess what, Nets Nation? Not only is it entirely possible, but it has become a far greater threat in recent weeks. The DOOMSDAY scenario. We all know what happened this season with Dwight Coward right? Well Deron Williams definitely remembers too. Now we have to hope there are other positives within our organization that he views as reasons towards re-signing here and leading this team into Brooklyn. The trade with Portland to acquire Gerald Wallace was a bit of a head scratcher to me. If we somehow got lucky enough to keep our pick this season (Which would make it a top 3 pick, of course.) then Billy King looks brilliant and The Nets are in excellent shape, but if they don’t fall somewhere in the top 3 lottery positions (A far likelier outcome…) then we can officially start sounding the alarm, folks.
If you are The Nets, the #1 pick in this year’s draft would likely equal more than just the highly coveted power forward, Anthony Davis. It could actually serve as the definitive blow in the fight to keep Deron Williams in a Nets jersey and the face of Brooklyn basketball for many years to come. Williams was recently asked about Davis, the Kentucky freshman and overwhelming favorite to be the first prospect taken off the draft board in june, he had nothing but praise for the young phenom. Deron has already had the privilege of seeing Anthony Davis up close and personal at a camp he co-ran with Amare Stoudemire last summer. It should come as no surprise that D-Will was impressed by what he saw from Davis.
“So I got a chance to see him a lot. He’s pretty good,” Williams said, adding he could very easily adapt to having the young Wildcats star in the fold next season. “I guess so, yeah. I’m sure I could. If we get the No. 1 pick.”
Oh I’m sure he could adapt to having a game changer like that in the lineup. If Anthony were to wax his now infamous unibrow off right after they called his name on draft night, it still would not be fully grown in after Dirk Nowitzki predictably collides with the oncoming wall at the end of his prime. You see what I’m getting at here?
If this pick goes to Portland, the Nets will be the laughing stock of the entire league. Losing a top 3 selection is a hard enough pill to swallow, losing a top 3 pick as well as the player that you traded it for has got to be the worst blow ever.
Conspiracies are usually about something you hope isn’t actually true, but in this case it is quite the opposite. For me and other Nets fans at least. Do you believe the NBA Draft Lottery is rigged or is it all legit?