2025 draft thread: THE MAVS SELECT COOPER FLAGG

[Mavs2021]

I don't even agree that you can paint with the "favorable outcome for the NBA" brush so liberally. It's so easy to reverse-engineer conspiracy theories based on the results, but in reality, this was all voted on by all of the teams: the process, the odds, everything. If "the NBA" (meaning Silver and co) have an agenda here, it's likely just to discourage tanking, but even THAT part is just them carrying out the assignment given to them by consensus of "the league," which is actually a collection of people all in it for their team, with their own agendas. 

You don´t think Cleveland native LeBron in Cleveland, Chicago native Rose in Chicago (btw another of those 1.7% surprises) or the described events of calming down the fanbases of Cleveland, New Orleans or Dallas are favourable outcomes for the NBA? You think they wanted LeBron in Utah or Rose in Washington or that the Mavs play in an empty arena for the next five years until some nutjob kills an NBA GM? If you want to argue that these low probability outcomes were not favourable for the NBA, there is no ground for a discussion.

And, a lottery box isn't "spitting out" anything. Someone is controlling it, exactly as someone else directs them, and that second person has their back turned. There's a timing element that is, by the account of many, many people who've witnessed this, and who are all present at the drawing, "impossible" to rig. Literally everyone I've seen talk about this who has actually been present during one of these lotteries is so dismissive of the idea that it's fake that it's enough for me to set that thought aside. These are people who have major issues with the results and don't like what has happened during the past few, and what they want to discuss is the RULES, as in how the odds are determined. 

It´s impossible to bribe two human beings that operate a machine? I´m so confused. 

I think it's ironic that this topic has GAINED traction here now that we're on this winning side of it, because we're uniquely close enough to the situation to completely shoot down the faulty logic involved. The Mavs absolutely, 100% didn't behave like a team expecting a "quid pro quo" after the trade. They rushed AD back (twice) and then played Kyrie more minutes than they should have TO TRY TO MAKE THE PLAYOFFS. Then, they WON their first play-in game and tried like hell to compete in the second. So right there, we factually KNOW this wasn't "set up" at the time of the trade. 

I don´t care either way. Mavs won. Good for them. The Mavs tried to win the play-in game? I haven´t seen the game, but the boxscore sure does not look like they were every in any danger to win that game against a struggling Memphis team.

I already acknowledged the decision was made once Kyrie got hurt.

Is it possible "the NBA" decided to throw the Mavs a bone based on the trade's aftermath? The public backlash, and potential to lose traction in maybe the 5th biggest market in the country? That makes a little more sense, I guess, but again, that would require the OTHER OWNERS to be in on it. Silver is not "in charge" of anything. He works FOR THEM. Imagine how pissed Danny Ainge would be today if there was even a fraction of a chance that he had just been willfully screwed after his approach to the past couple of seasons. He probably is pissed, but about the APPROACH to determining the odds, not about "rigging." There's just no plausible way "they" could get away with it. 

That´s the flaw in your thinking. They are all in on it. They are all in the NBA to make money. If the league is doing well every owner, every GM, every coach, every player, every agent, every journalist gets paid. 

It´s like doping. Everybody does it. When somebody gets caught, he´s not outlawed publically. No everybody keeps quiet. Have you ever seen athletes outraged, when another player is caught doping? That they feel cheated out of their success, cause they are clean? No. It´s the bro code. 

Baseball tried the other way and the only thing fans really cared about was the lack of superhuman homeruns.

What many people just don't seem to want to believe, STILL, is that Nico Harrison just didn't want Luka Doncic on this team anymore. You can think he's wrong or stupid for that, absolutely, but there doesn't have to be some nefarious plot afoot to motivate what happened in February. Honestly, I highly doubt the Lakers will even experience the kind of success everyone assumes they will as a result. I see the trade and the lottery as two, separate things. Neither is good GMing, as the trade was executed poorly and the lottery was miraculous, dumb luck backed into by accidental failure. BUT, once you wrap your head around the idea that Luka might actually have deserved to be given up on rather than paid that damn SUPER MAX, then the rest is pretty easy to see clearly. He lost the negotiation part of it, FOR SURE, but "they" didn't FORCE him to trade Luka or promise this pick or anything silly like that.

I never claimed the trade was rigged, but did you just come full circle, cause it´s easy to say now that Luka is not worth the supermax that you have Cooper Flagg. 

Silver´s mission is complete. He calmed the Mavs fanbase down that put a blackeye on the whole NBA. You think a GM needing 24/7 bodyguard protection, a half empty arena in the 5th biggest NBA market and rioting fans is a good look for the NBA? And you think it would have gotten any better next season? With Nico still in charge, with Kyrie out and the moment the inevitable AD injury happens it all flares up again. The whole situation was still explosive, until the new fire extinguisher arrived.

I´ll now go and copyright that nickname for Flagg: The fire extinguisher.