OT The Ewing Theory

[SlyPokerDog]

http://www.si.com/longform/2015/1985/ewing/

 

[jlprk]

About a month before the draft, new Commissioner Stern inexplicably changes the draft order with some fake excuse. Everyone thinks, weird, but oh well, it won't make any difference. Now let's get interested in this draft, with the much-ballyhooed #1 pick Ewing, whom we've read articles about for years (Bowie had gotten similar publicity from high school on, but not the relatively unknown Olajuwon and Jordan). The draft soon comes and, shock, the eternal sad sack but biggest advertising market Knicks win the lottery!!!

It sure looked crooked.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

This is the real Ewing Theory:
http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?id=1193711

 

[jlprk]

The draft order had always been that the worst team drafted first, etc. Stern's cockamaney new order, which no one understood because we were used to simplicity, somehow moved the Knicks, who were something like 6th-worst, to the #1 pick in the draft. He confused everyone with a complex smokescreen and before we knew it, the result was mo' money for the NBA.

He would go on to embellish other weighted class systems like the salary system, the free agent system, and a more conference-based schedule. It brought in more money at the expense of equality, fairness, and a balanced league.

 

[Schilly]

Good read. A bit long winded, but a good read none the less.

 

[Schilly]

This is the real Ewing Theory:
http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?id=1193711

Lamarcus Aldridge... Anyone, anyone?

 

[BigGameDamian]

Back then teams would help other teams out in the draft. Now it's all hush hush.

 

[Rastapopoulos]

(Without clicking on the link) is this the theory that sometimes a team is better off without its "star" player? As in, the Knicks making the finals in the lockout season after Ewing went down? (I'm pretty sure Bill Simmons took credit for that theory.)

(After reading the first few paragraphs) Okay, it's not that one. Is it the "chilled envelope" theory?

 

[Schilly]

(Without clicking on the link) is this the theory that sometimes a team is better off without its "star" player? As in, the Knicks making the finals in the lockout season after Ewing went down? (I'm pretty sure Bill Simmons took credit for that theory.)

That was the link in the 2nd post.

 

[Fez Hammersticks]

TL;DR

 

[BBert]

So...what is the Ewing theory?

 

[SlyPokerDog]

So...what is the Ewing theory?

This.

 

[HailBlazers]

So...what is the Ewing theory?

NBA was in the tubes. NY was the basketball Mecca. Ewing to NY would make the NBA relevant. Stern ensured it happened (Ewing to NY).

Stan Kasten, then the GM of the Hawks, recalls attending a college tournament in Hawaii a few months before the lottery. “I was sitting with a couple of NBA guys,” says Kasten, “and I remember one high-ranking- team executive, who I will not name, was a million percent convinced of what was going to happen. ‘He’s going to the Knicks,’ he kept saying. ‘He’s going to the Knicks. It’s all arranged.’ ” Kasten pauses, chuckles. “I didn’t believe him at the time.”

Stern brushed off questions about a rigged outcome. “If people want to say that [the lottery was fixed], fine,” he said. “As long as they spell our name right. That means they’re interested in us. That’s terrific.”

 

[jlprk]

It's 30 years later. Everyone is retired and can't lose their jobs.

Why doesn't Kasten name his source?

Similarly, why doesn't the government release its JFK files, 50 years later. Must be hiding something big. Stern was in on it.

 

[BBert]

NBA was in the tubes. NY was the basketball Mecca. Ewing to NY would make the NBA relevant. Stern ensured it happened (Ewing to NY).

Thanks.

Were there ancient aliens involved?

 

[HailBlazers]

Thanks.

Were there ancient aliens involved?

Worse, accountants.

Moments later Stern took the stage. What unfolded next has since become the Zapruder film of sports, watched and rewatched on YouTube and dissected by conspiracy theorists. Stern explaining the process. A white-haired man from the accounting firm of Ernst & Whinney, Jack Wagner, tossing seven envelopes into the plastic globe one at a time, pausing for the briefest of moments—perhaps to adjust his aim?—before dumping in the fourth, which bangs off the interior of the drum, creasing the corner. The NBA’s head of security, Jack Joyce, spinning the drum five times. Stern exhaling visibly and reaching in for the first choice, the one that will determine Ewing’s fate. Stern fumbling around for a moment, grasping and turning the envelopes, then lifting out the lucky one—which just so happens to have a creased corner.

..a day later, a New York tabloid reported a curious fact: Ernst & Whinney just happened to also be the auditing firm for Gulf & Western, which just happened to own the Knicks. Asked by McManis about the possibility of a fix, Madison Square Garden president Jack Krumpe responded, “Hey, I told them how to fix it 60 days ago. You call up Ernst & Whinney and you say, ‘If we don’t get Ewing, you’re fired.’ ”

As McManis wrote at the time, “Krumpe was joking—presumably.” Meanwhile, an Indianapolis TV station used a freeze-frame to point out that the corner of the Knicks’ envelope was bent.

 

[BlazerDuckSeahawkFan94]

What I always found funny about the rigging to get Ewing in New York, is that they never won it all.