3 Reasons People Think The NBA Is as Rigged as Wrestling

An accident, right? Well, what do you know, NBA commissioner David Stern just happens to pick up an envelope with a creased corner (after feeling around in there for a little too long) ...

Couldn't the NBA afford better-looking models?

... and that envelope just happens to contain the logo of the New York Knicks, allowing them to get the first draft pick. As a result, the Knicks walk away with future Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing, and soon New Yorkers have a reason to watch basketball on TV again. Everyone wins! (Except the other teams, of course.)

Take Game 6 of the 2002 Lakers/Kings playoffs. If the Kings won, the playoffs were over (and the NBA would miss out on one more game's worth of Doritos ads). But, because the LA Lakers are a marquee franchise and the Sacramento Kings are, well, from Sacramento, one disgraced former referee claims that his buddies just let the Lakers win. It's not just that one guy's word, though -- there's video evidence showing the refs calling bullshit fouls for the Kings while ignoring stuff like Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant straight up elbowing a dude in the face:

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He then bounced the guy's head on the floor for 10 minutes before anyone said anything.

Oh, and apparently they're still doing this, by the way.

In 2011, and with a potential NBA lockout looming on the horizon (read: potential wasted millions), Stern held a closed-door meeting with players union chief Billy Hunter and many of the league's stars. Hunter claimed in the meeting that David Stern no longer had the sway David Stern thought David Stern did. This is how a pissed off Stern responded:

Stern told the room he knows where "the bodies are buried" in the NBA, witnesses recounted, because he had buried some of them himself.

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"Haha, I mean the babies. I know where the babies are bur- no, that's worse."

Guess what? The lockout didn't kill the season, and eight months later Stern managed to block a massive trade for nebulous "basketball reasons." No other sport has a leader with such a conspiracy theory-ish air about him: David Stern is the reason NBA fans are right to treat every no-call on LeBron James like it's a WikiLeaks document.

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OK, some of them may take it a little too far.