You're not an idiot if you think the NBA is rigged. You could be a doctor or a lawyer with a Ph.D. Though, if you truly believe in your heart of hearts there's some hierarchy based out of the league's offices in Secaucus, N.J., masterminding some high-handed scheme to fix games, you're certainly being idiotic.
In the aftermath of Draymond Green's suspension after striking a man, in this case LeBron James, in the nuts for the umpteenth time the Cavs' road win against the Warriors in to stave off elimination in the NBA Finals, the conspiracy theorists are out thick. They're claiming the outcome was predetermined. It's a common refrain that sounds increasingly ridiculous as its repeated ad nauseam.
Allow us to indulge you, here's a handful of reasons why you're out of your rabid mind in this regard.
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1. Too many folks would have to be in on the fix.
The NBA is an international league, filled with players of various races and religions. Initiating and indoctrinating enough of them all into an organized crime ring would be far too risky a proposition for an end game that is murky at best.
The NBA has been ranked as the
most diverse male sports league in America. Now, that's not to say the league definitely doesn't have its issues concerning this matters, especially at the
front-office level. However, its sufficient enough evidence to say it'd be hard to get Stephen Curry and Kyrie Irving and LeBron James and Andre Iguodala and Tristan Thompson and Andrew Bogut and Anderson Varejao and Kevin Love to all come to the mutual agreement and throw a game.
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2. No hustle could last this long.
If you're of the persuasion the NBA has been fixing games for years, you're giving the league's front office, team owners, elite players and officials far too much credit.
How can you run an airtight hustle for decades on end? As soon as one person didn't get exactly what they wanted out of the deal, the jig would be up and the whole operation would be exposed. We would have long read a
tell-all book from someone far more credible than a rogue dirty ref such as Tim Donaghy, who only coached 20 playoff games his entire career.
Criminal empires often fall when they get too big, and the NBA does business in more than 200 countries. Even it if it had the government on its side, some hot-shot investigator or gate-keeping journalist would have uncovered the corruption years ago.
The NBA and those with a stake in its success couldn't possibly fool this many people for all this time.
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3. There's too much to gain and not enough to lose for the key players
None of you NBA truthers ever identify a clear-cut motive for all the parties involved.
A caper of this magnitude, would likely land the perpetrators in prison, making it that much more difficult to pursue their passion—getting paper. It'd forever stain their character and do irreparable damage to their reputations.
So, you have to ask yourself why?
Why would a ban of mostly billionaires (owners) and millionaires (players) risk their freedom to predetermine the outcome of a game? How does it ultimately benefit Warriors majority owners Joe Lacob, who has a net worth of $325 million, and Peter Guber ($400 million) to take an order from the NBA and convince his company to take a backseat to a firm headed by Cavs owned by Dan Gilbert, who, by the way, is worth $3.9 billion?
If the best answer, you've got is the prospect of two more nationally-televised, one at home for each, is your answer, you clearly don't understand enough about how money works. You've got to do better.
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4. History doesn't support your theory.
The beset opinions are those founded on facts.
The NBA is big business. So, it'd make the best business sense for the league's big markets to thrive. Yet, the Spurs have one five championships in the last two decades under coach Greg Popovich. San Antonio is routinely rated among the NBA's smallest media markets by population.
The Lakers, Bulls, and Knicks who've been trashed, for the past 20 years have all failed to reach the playoffs this season. If the NBA has no-problem sacrificing its long term credibility for the sake of maximizing its profits, wouldn't it behoove it to do whatever's necessary for its big-market teams to thrive year after year?
LeBron James and Kyrie Irving made history Monday night, becoming the first teammates to go for 40 or more points in a Finals game. It's a make or miss league and beat the best shooting team in the history of the game at their own game for one night. There's no way to choreograph that.
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5. You're not that smart.
If the average, or even the avid, fan snuff out the high-level collusion and conspiracy, it's likely not going on.
Point shaving is one thing, but even, that at the NBA level and where everyone is well-compensated is a bit far fetched. That's why it's more likely to occur at the college level (
Remember Varez Ward?) where players don't receive a red dime of the billions in revenue they generate.
The players, who would have to be the pawns in this scheme, have agents who must be registered with a union, which also has its own legal representation, designed to pursue their best interests often times in conflict with that of the league's owners and brass.
There's no honor among thieves. Trust me you won't see criminals, knowingly and willingly, signing a legally-binding collective bargaining agreement that any Tom, Dick or Harry can easily
view online. If these guys were really up to no good, they'd be dumb to leave this kind of paper trail. That would be the equivalent of Shamrock taking notes at the New Day Co-Op meeting in
"The Wire."
That's a terrible way to run a racket.
Stop tripping and enjoy Game 6 Thursday night.