Monday brought the 2025 NBA Draft Lottery. With a familiar miniscule chance and the new Pope in our corner, there was hope that the Bulls would make the jump to the top; Cooper Flagg would be paired with Matas and the Bulls would be bringing #7 home soon. It wasn’t meant to be. We found out early on, when the #12 pick was revealed, that the Bulls would NOT repeat the miracle that brought us Derrick Rose. Instead, the Mavericks were the team that won the draft lottery, completing the Dallas deal that was made earlier on this year. What, you think this was legit?
I talk about this from time to time, the whole conspiracy thing. I don’t want to believe it. I love sports; I want to believe they are as pure as the driven snow, but… I’m not completely blind to this either. Sports is a huge money making enterprise, and when there’s a lot of money in play, there is always that chance for BS, for corruption, which opens the door for the conspiracy theories. For example, was the draft lottery when the Bulls hit on the miracle, and ended up drafting up the home town kid fixed? I’d hate to think that. What about more recently when the Blackhawks scored the first pick to bring Connor Bedard to the big market? People thought it. And now, the Mavericks make quite possibly one of the stupidest trades of all time, trading one of the biggest stars of the game to the Lakers, one of the marquee franchises and oh yeah, largest markets in the NBA, with team fixer himself LBJ on the roster, and then… months later, they hit on the 1.7% chance to draft Cooper Flagg…??? Things that make you go hmmm…
I don’t care, in this case. There’s the talk about the Bulls losing the coin flip to Dallas, and if we had won that, WE would have got the #1 pick… those two events aren’t directly connected, and if you believe in the conspiracy theory that looks pretty clear, then it would have never happened. The NBA is pretty bold with it though… doing that, not caring about the backlash, because they’re bigger than that… people bitch, cry foul, but the show goes on, and on, and on… this merry go round never stops; sound familiar? The big bad NFL is untouchable and can pretty much script whatever the hell they want, reviewing a call that shows clearly one thing and the opposite is called… What are we going to do about it? And now, that gambling is bigger than ever… you don’t think there are influences making sure certain results go down in certain situations? Let me sell you my 2010 Altima for 10K; don’t worry about the lights on the dashboard.
It isn’t WWE, but sports is entertainment; are you not entertained? Sure, I want things to be fair, always on the up and up, but I don’t think we’re ever going to see that again. That ship has sailed and now, there are many factors that come into play in how the seasons develop, and not all of them are on the field/court/ice.
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