Fixable Lotteries, Vol. 1: 1985

1985 We start with the event that would be the originator of all the NBA conspiracy theories, 1985. It was this lottery that made it OK to believe in rigged playoff series, Jordan's first retirement being a suspension, and everything else. Without this, no one thinks that other lotteries were fixed, or that game six between L.A. and Sacramento was anything more than some bad calls by the refs. None of that gets any serious play without this happening first. Let's go back in time: Patrick Ewing is coming out of college, and is the runaway consensus number one pick. It wouldn't matter if the Lakers, winning titles with Kareem at center, had the first pick; they'd ave taken Patrick. The situation: The league, tired of teams tanking at the end of the season to get the first pick, creates the draft lottery so that no team is guaranteed the first pick simply by finishing last. The lottery teams that year include Golden State, Indiana, the Clippers, Seattle, Atlanta, Sacramento, and the New York Knicks. Each team has one envelope in a bowl, and David Stern pulls the envelopes in turn to determine who gets which pick. So everyone gets the same shot at winning it, and everyone knows that whoever wins will get Ewing while everyone else will have to choose a group that includes Wayman Tisdale, Xavier McDaniel, Benoit Benjamin, Joe Kleine, Charles Oakley, and Ewing's college rival Chris Mullin. While most of those guys went on to become productive players, there was a clear dropoff at that point from Ewing to everyone else (there was a guy drafted 13th that year would go on to become pretty good, Karl Malone, but no one knew that then). Written By Robert Bonnette