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The Clippers, on the other hand, went 5-10 in their last fifteen games after beating the Rockets, which allowed them to gain ground and pass Houston in the standings. The Rockets had won twenty-nine games, the Clippers thirty, and the race for the worst record in the Western Conference came down to the final day of the season. On April 14, the Clippers defeated the Utah Jazz 146-128. The Rockets laid down and lost to the Kansas City Kings, 108-96, guaranteeing their place in the coin toss—in which they “won” the right to draft Olajuwon. With Hakeem in the fold, the Rockets were contenders for the next fifteen years, including back-to-back NBA Championships in 1994 and 1995.

Suspicious of the Rockets’ less-than-stellar stretch and acutely aware of the much coveted Ewing, the NBA instituted a lottery system the very next year (1985) in which all seven teams that failed to make the playoffs would have an equal shot at getting the first pick in the draft. In 1985, the Indiana Pacers finished with the worst record in the Eastern Conference and the Golden State Warriors finished with the worst record in the Western Conference. But instead of a coin toss to determine which franchise would ultimately land the seven-foot-tall Ewing, each of the seven non-playoff teams had an equal shot at the first pick.

Prior to 1985, finishing last and winning the coin toss became the fastest way to turn a franchise around whenever a truly great player came along. Anyone who watched college basketball in the early 1980s knew that Patrick Ewing was a special player. He was Bill Russell-type special, schooled and coached by Russell’s former backup, John Thompson. Ewing was a defensive presence who could also could score. He had an outside touch with his jumper (rare for a player of his size), in addition to being a tenacious rebounder and shot-blocker, and he was exactly the kind of player Knicks brass believed could help lead the franchise back to glory.

EVIDENCE FOR CONSPIRACY

League officials had to know that their lottery wouldn’t stop teams from tanking games. And it didn’t. The 1987 Spurs finished with a record of 28-54, “won” the lottery, and were thus able to pick David Robinson, the National College Player of the Year. To secure a place in the lottery, the Spurs lost eleven of their final thirteen games. The Los Angeles Clippers were an abominable 12-70 that same year, but only managed to draw the fourth overall pick in the draft, which they used to select Ewing’s former Georgetown teammate Reggie Williams. Williams played ten seasons in the NBA, but never quite reached his potential, let alone approached the statistics and accomplishments of Robinson, who helped lead San Antonio to two Championships.

Even after the NBA tweaked its lottery to protect the teams with the lowest records, teams still tanked. In 1997, the Spurs lost fifteen of their last nineteen games (and eight of their last nine) as they geared up for a successful run at Wake Forest’s Tim Duncan.

Ten years later, in March of 2007, national sportswriters hinted at a conspiracy as teams supposedly tanked games in an attempt to boost their draft position. The Milwaukee Bucks let Andrew Bogut and Charlie Villanueva, two of their top players, sit out the last few weeks with nagging injuries. Celtics head coach Doc Rivers left all five of his starters on the bench as Boston blew an eighteen-point lead to the Charlotte Bobcats late in the season. What did the Bobcats—also fighting for additional odds in the upcoming lottery—do? They sat out two starters a few nights later for their game in New Jersey.

Jeff Van Gundy, then the head coach of the Houston Rockets, was quoted in 2007 as saying that he “never quite understood why losing is rewarded, other than for parity.” Well, Jeff, that’s the point. The point of the draft is to make sure the best players aren’t always signed by the richest and/or most competitive teams.

Van Gundy wanted to take away all the possible conflicts of interest, and give everyone an