Raptors Forum | Toronto Raptors Forums & Message Boards - Smith: Raptors hoping to beat odds in NBA draft lottery

- Toronto Raptors (http://www.raptorsforum.com/f/f5/)

- - Smith: Raptors hoping to beat odds in NBA draft lottery (http://www.raptorsforum.com/f/f5/smith-raptors-hoping-beat-odds-nba-draft-lottery-23039.html)

Smith: Raptors hoping to beat odds in NBA draft lottery

More lottery articles as we await for tommarow's 8pm start...

This one from D. Smith via thestar.com

Quote:

Toronto Raptors hoping to beat odds in NBA draft lottery

NEW YORK—Bryan Colangelo and Dwane Casey will sit patiently in a television studio on Wednesday night, chatting with fellow NBA executives and hangers-on while a swirl of activity goes on in a hidden room behind the scenes.

The Raptors general manager and their coach will smile and make nice and engage in some banal chit-chat while 56 ping-pong balls rattling around four tumblers will determine their fate in the June 28 NBA draft.

It won’t be fun, they won’t know the results until the rest of the world does and what transpires will have a huge impact on their short-term future.

The Raptors go into the lottery, live at 8 p.m. (TSN) from the Times Square studios of Good Morning America, with the eighth-best chance to win the top pick.

The greatest percentage suggests that the most likely scenario is they fall back to No. 9, adding a level of high intrigue to a franchise that could use another excellent young player to add to a young core.

The Raptors’ needs are clear. Barring any trades before the draft, they need a small forward, depth at shooting guard and, perhaps, a young point guard to play behind incumbent Jose Calderon.

The top prize Wednesday night — without doubt — is Kentucky forward Anthony Davis, seen as the overwhelming top pick in the draft.

After him comes a disparate group of mainly power forwards — a position the Raptors see as one of their strengths — with a few small forwards and shooting guards likely to sneak into the top half of the 14-team lottery.

Colangelo, who will be in the audience during the lottery while Casey is on stage and a member of team’s media relations staff witnesses the drawing of the numbers in a back room, has been out scouting diligently since the regular season ended and he will ramp up the proceedings once the lottery results are known.

The likes of Kentucky’s Michael Kidd-Gilchrist or Florida’s Bradley Beal would seem to be the best fits — aside from Davis — right now but it would take a lottery win for Toronto to have a legitimate shot at either of them. Connecticut guard Jeremy Lamb or North Carolina’s Harrison Barnes might be more legitimate hopefuls, depending on Wednesday’s result.

The woeful Charlotte Bobcats, who won just seven games last season, have the greatest chance — 25 per cent — of getting the first pick, followed by Washington (19.9 per cent) and Cleveland (13.8 per cent).

Toronto has a 3.5 per cent chance to win the No. 1 selection and no team has ever moved from eighth to first since the lottery was implemented in the mid-1980s.

There are other storylines that will add some intrigue to the night’s proceedings.

The Brooklyn Nets, currently sitting sixth, need to move up to the top three to retain their pick or else it goes to Portland as part of a trade involving Gerald Wallace earlier this year.

And the Golden State Warriors, currently slotted seventh, have to stay there or move up or else they lose their pick thanks to a long-ago trade with the Utah Jazz.

Toronto Raptors hoping to beat odds in NBA draft lottery - thestar.com

So Casey is representing :clapping:

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeffb (Post 648061)

So Casey is representing :clapping:

yay? :D

Quote:

The greatest percentage suggests that the most likely scenario is they fall back to No. 9,

no, it's a 70.4% chance of staying at #8 and a 16.5% chance of dropping to #9.

No way Brooklyn doesn't move up...... I would bet my first born on it....

Mhmm :D come on 3.5%!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Superjudge (Post 648132)

No way Brooklyn doesn't move up...... I would bet my first born on it....

you must have a lot of kids..if you're betting on it not being rigged - to some extent!

Quote:

Originally Posted by 'trane (Post 648089)

no, it's a 70.4% chance of staying at #8 and a 16.5% chance of dropping to #9.

How does a journalist who focuses on the NBA not know this? Seriously.

Toronto Raptors hoping to beat odds in NBA draft lottery

No??? Really?????????

Quote:

Originally Posted by poetics (Post 648296)

you must have a lot of kids..if you're betting on it not being rigged - to some extent!

the changes of being rigged are infinitesimal, just think about it:

1. you would have to have a core group of people at the top of the league who are involved in this. Assuming it was rigged for some time, you would end up with quite a few people that have a very strong blackmailing tool at their disposal everytime they have more to lose by not using the tool.

2. you would have to get the accounting firm to cooperate with you. Again, that means more than a handful of people (the turnover rate within the accounting firm is probably high, so every few years you would have to deal with different people). You would also have to provide a VERY strong incentive to the accounting firm to risk their reputation, and you would also have to hide this incentive. We're talking at least 10s of millions of dollars (let's just say that somebody like PWC would not risk their reputation for 500k ...).

3. they would have to have a really strong reason to do it. Even if it only costs them 2-3 million dollars a year to cheat, what do they really have to gain. Would sending the #1 pick to the right team really make the NBA that much more profitable, to the point of covering the costs and compensating for the huge risks of this leaking out to the media?

It just makes no sense, the NBA would have to be really stupid to do it AND really clever to pull it off.

i think you're under the impression that people at an account firm care

i'm also under the impression that you've never heard of a non-disclosure agreement

if it's something they wanted to do, it would be very easy for them.

i'm neither a believer of it being fixed or not fixed, i'm just curious why it isn't done live.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Superjudge (Post 648302)

Toronto Raptors hoping to beat odds in NBA draft lottery

No??? Really?????????

ya gotta say i had a chuckle at the title of this article too.

It's a hell of a gameplan that colangelo and co. have: Hope of winning a lottery in which they have little chance. hahaha.

Does anyone have the odds of moving up but not getting first? Is that even possible still?

Quote:

Raptors head coach and lottery rep Dwane Casey on TSN Radio 1050 from NYC: "I've got my Kentucky horseshoe and I've got my Kentucky blue underwear on and so we're pretty ready to go...

Quote:

Raptors head coach and lottery rep Dwane Casey on TSN Radio 1050 from NYC: "I've got my Kentucky horseshoe and I've got my Kentucky blue underwear on and so we're pretty ready to go...

Just LOL, come on Casey!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Metallikid (Post 648333)

Does anyone have the odds of moving up but not getting first? Is that even possible still?

About a 4% shot at 2nd and a 4.8% shot at 3rd, roughly. Outside of that and the 3.5% shot at the top pick, the only possibilities are 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jackson Filth (Post 648315)

You do realize that fixing the lottery would be illegal, right? An NDA is meant to make it easier to sue people - it only has an use in court. It's like saying that the mafia should use NDAs to stop people from talking to the cops ... :) What's the NBA going to do if some guy goes public with this knowledge, sue them?

As far as the accounting firm, you MUST be joking. The very existence of an audit firm is tied to their reputation. They are hired for the explicit purpose to ensure the draft is not rigged. If they fail (and worse, they are part of the cover-up), they will almost certainly go bankrupt. Even if they don't lose all their clients right away, they would be sued by every team who ever was part of the lottery and didn't win ... Look up Arthur Andersen to see what a major scandal does to an audit firm. They used to be as big as PWC or Ernst and Young a decade ago.

And finally, the draft is public, there's media in the draft room to observe the process. Why would they televise it anyway, everything is done in a computer, they press a button and the results are spit out - it probably takes a milisecond. Which btw means that the programmers would have to be part of the conspiracy as well.

And again, why would they do it - what can they possibly gain from it? Not to mention that if they are doing it, how come NYK or Boston didn't win the lottery in all the years they've been in it? How come they sent lebron to Cleveland of all places, and now they send Davis to NO rather than to NJ?

I don't disagree moremilk, and I'm not into the conspiracy, but what if another Arthur Andersen was involved? Inexplicably stupid and corrupt shit is pretty epidemic these days, all the much more so amongst professions that require the best reputation.

i'm sure a non-disclosure agreement specifically drafted to cover-up fraud would hold up in court...

its fun to bitch about it though!!!