A Good Year for the Outlaw

The very loud and very obnoxious Stephen A. Smith just admitted on national TV his East Coast bias.

He is incredulous that the NBA lottery results mean that the top picks are going to Portland and Seattle, and thus that’s probably where Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, the obvious 1 and 2 picks, will be going. Smith is upset not because one of his favorite teams didn’t get these guys, he’s upset that the NBA didn’t rig the lottery to get those two guys to “more marketable East Coast teams”. He actually said he wished the lottery was rigged! For marketing purposes. To paraphrase, he’s saying “Damn fairness, we’ve got to get these guys where the league can make the most money off them.”

The NBA has been accused of rigging past lotteries…Patrick Ewing to the Knicks and Shaq O’Neal AND Penny Hardaway to the Orlando (Disney) Magic in two straight years when the Magic were already among the BEST of the teams that missed the playoffs…were the most glaring examples of that possibility…and this year, the two teams that, statistically, had the best chance to win the lottery where Memphis and Boston. Smith apparently thinks that for the “health” of the league, they should have assured Boston one of those spots, and therefore a stud player to “market”.

Sickening. So Boston and Memphis lost out and moved down. So what. That’s why they call it a ”lottery”. Interestingly, as soon as this year’s lottery results were announced, no less than NBA commissioner David Stern said “we need to look at the fairness of the lottery.” Hmm. Maybe he wanted a stud in Boston, and somebody screwed up and didn’t rig it right?

NOW he wants fairness? Where was he in the past few years when teams like Minnesota, Dallas, Denver, Vancouver, and the Clippers “earned” the first pick on the basis of being the worst team, but didn’t get the top pick because of the lottery? 

For the record, when those five teams west of the Mississippi lost the top pick, the winners were Orlando (twice), Philadelphia, Chicago, and New Jersey. Hmmm. Five big markets. Four Eastern time zones and the biggest “market” between L.A. and New York, also east of the Mississippi. Nah, it’s never been rigged before, right?