 What's the word, y'all? AffectionateSoup24 on Reddit says, what is an NBA conspiracy theory that you believe? I just saw this a little while ago and though I have not read a single comment, I'm fascinated with all the stuff that could be potentially in this thread because a conspiracy theory, especially in the sports world could keep my attention for a very, very long time. Like they're typically pretty harmless, which I enjoy. And once we start talking about conspiracy theories and other worldly things, it's not as fun for me, but in sports, 1,000%, you know what I'm saying? Like, okay, they're the famous ones who I'm sure I'm gonna see in this thread, like Michael Jordan getting suspended from the NBA and that's why he wants to go play baseball, whatever. The next one, the frozen envelope to get Patrick Ewan to New York, another big conspiracy theory. Also one that I am in favor of, specifically this season. Hey, Adam Silver, if you wanna rig the lottery, this is the year if you wanna get Vic into a big market, you know what I'm saying? Because I know a big market team that's pick is top four protected and they need all the help in the world. Let's make the bull, rig it for the bulls. That's all I'm really saying. No, but my favorite NBA conspiracy theory, I don't even know if it's considered a conspiracy theory, but something that I believe could have potentially been rigged. Adam Silver, if you're watching this, we still homies him. I don't think it's a coincidence that in a 2018, 2019 NBA season, the NBA decided, you know what? We're gonna try our very best to combat tank it. We're gonna do everything in our power. And the first thing we're gonna do is flatten the lottery odds. If you win seven games this season, you no longer get a 25% chance of getting the first overall pick. We're gonna flatten it. You get 16, the second worst thing is 16, third worst thing is 16, and so on and so forth. This is the first year they did that. And a team that won the lottery, the New Orleans Pelicans, that was a Zion year, by the way, generational talent, at least a lot of people thought so and he's been living up to that, at least when he's healthy. The team that won the lottery that year had a 6% chance. Looks like they might have been trying to set an example, don't you think? Who got the second overall picture? I'll tell John Morant. The Memphis Grizzlies, who also had like a 4% chance. They wanted to show all the other GMs around basketball. You don't have to necessarily tank to the bottom to get the first and second overall pick. And then also, I'm not gonna Google this because why would I do such a thing? Like put in more work. This is right after or during the Anthony Davis thing. And if I'm not mistaken, the Pelicans didn't have an owner at the time. So I can see another conspiracy theory that they rigged it for the Pelicans in order to get someone to buy the organization high because they knew that Z was coming to New Orleans. I mean, I could have made that last part off, but you know what I'm saying? I don't know if that is a crazy coincidence or the lottery odds. And then you get to like the Minnesota Timberwolves who won the 2022 lottery, 14% chance they were one of the worst teams of basketball. And the Detroit Pistons won in 2021, 14% chance they would have won one of the worst teams of basketball. And the same with the Orlando Magic. So the one year, the first year that's all flat in the odds is the one year that somebody jumped up dramatically. You love to see that. You can make an argument for the LeBron James when being rigged or the Derrick Rose when coming to Chicago being rigged. So you know what I'm saying? The lottery odds, the drawing of the whatever, it's no longer televised because I think people were afraid of the Patrick Ewing thing happening again. But I do believe that actual NBA writers and stuff are in the room when the actual drawing happened. So I'm just, there's conspiracy theories, they're fun, all right? Let's see what the people in the subreddit are thinking. I did Google Gail Benson and the Benson family have owned the Pelicans for, since 2012. So that, I kind of made that last part up about them not having an owner. But I think I was conflicting the Chris Paul deal that got vetoed from the Lakers because I don't think they had an owner then either way, either way, let's get to the actual subreddit. So the ones that affection soup 24 gave were the MJ gambling things and then the Patrick Ewing being rigged. That's exactly what we said. Let's see the number one most upvoted thing is a response to Michael Jordan not being suspended. Good argument, if you believe David Stern punishes number one money maker with a two year suspension, you really don't know him at all. Good point. Tim Donahue wasn't a lone wolf and refs the term of the outcome of more games than we know. Ah, dang, you know what? This is probably deeper than just conspiracy theory. It's probably the truth, let's be honest. But I, you know, I'm a dude that if you've watched this channel for half a long, it's very, very, very, very rare that I even mention officiating because I believe that officials have a really tough job that they have to make split decisions literally in the millisecond to determine whether or not that's a block that's a charge is that worth calling the foul? Did he actually travel there? They have a tough job and it's, it's, it's hard. And they also be screwing up but also understand that they're human. So I don't mention it a lot. And yeah, you probably right. There might be some a couple refs in the league right now that is low key pan a little bit on the table. But that's for somebody else to research and not necessarily me but I understand where you're coming from. This was not even really a conspiracy theory. NBA owners in the league front office conspired to remove Sam Hinky from the 76ers GM position. But this is the type of stuff I'm here for. Ryan Anderson sucked at shooting in predominantly red arenas due to his, him being colorblind. And that is something that I didn't even know. I had no idea that Ryan Anderson was colorblind and that I'm about to go see with Ryan Anderson averaged on the road in Chicago, averaged on the road and Philly, any team that had a red court. I'm about to do some research on this random, random conspiracy theory. And guess what ladies and gentlemen, I ain't even have to do my own research. This is from six years ago. I'm shot out to a box on fire for putting this together. Ryan Anderson shooting struggles at home in result of his color blindness. If you don't want to read all of this, all you need to know is that at home he shot 30 percent from the field, 33 percent from three and 70 percent from the free throw line. And that was when he played for the Houston Rockets. Remember that. But when he was on the road, his percentages jumped up about 10 from the field goal, about 13 percent difference from three on the road versus home. And then like a 15 percent difference between his free throw. That's that database alone. These little statistics alone tell me everything I need to know. That's low key insane. I had no idea again that he was colorblind. Maybe I'm a casual. Maybe that's like widely known across NBA fandom. But I didn't know that. This might be an anomaly, but I thought about which other team had a predominantly red court. Chicago comes to mind. His career shooting splits in Chicago ridiculously bad compared to the rest of his career. That is a, like at this point, is it even really considered a conspiracy theory if we have evidence to support? Maybe it still is a conspiracy theory. I mean, he's not even playing anymore. I bet we can ask him. Like I bet someone, maybe I should take initiative to find Ryan Anderson's Instagram and Twitter and try to DM him about if he's aware of all of this. And even before he became a rocket, he only shot 29 percent from three in the games that he played against the rocket. So again, ridiculous right up from six years ago that makes its way back into NBA culture right now. I remember seeing this one before. The Moore's brothers definitely switched places during the playoff series before. I think it was 2017. One of them was playing and the other one was out for the playoffs. I think Marquise got hurt and it looked bad, but he still suited up to play the next game. I convinced it was Marcus playing. Nowadays, they wouldn't be able to get away with this because Marcus has been a significantly better basketball player. I mean, he might even been that way in 2017 as well. But the thing that makes this fun is the Mark, the Moore's brothers have identical everything, hairstyles, height, near weight, tattoos. These boys are yatted up and they all are identical too. They're identical brother. I think it was a story a little while ago that they share a bank account. These two identical twins NBA money have one bank account between the two of them, which is crazy. I'm going to try to dive deep into this though because that's a far one. For reference, I want to show you the injury that everybody's talking about right here. Guarded by Al Hor for Al Hor for undercuts him and he steps on that foot. And as you can see, he is on the floor for over a minute and agonizing pain. And again, two days later, he suited up without a hobble and this was a big moment. And while I don't want to spend too much time on one singular one, the Ringer put together an article once this happened, just saying like, hey, this is what happened and they admit that they've done it before. Not in the NBA circuit, but like when they played AAU, they've switched jerseys and played for each other. I mean, yeah. I mean, I can see them looking different. Obviously identical twins don't literally look the exact same, but like on national TV, from that view, they could have been the same person. It could have been different. It's a good conspiracy theory though. Okay, this one is low key kind of crazy. Ersan Ilyasova equals Arson Ilyasov. Now that might be confusing to some of you cause it was just confusing to me before I looked this up. So according to this conspiracy theory, Ersan Ilyasova isn't a real person. That's what they're saying. Back in 2003, a Turkish news channel came out with a report saying Ersan Ilyasova lied about his name, age, and nationality. Ilyasova's official birthday of whatever, whatever, was allegedly false. Ersan was actually born in 1984, making him three years older than the list of age. Now, obviously if you're an NBA fan, you know that this is not anything that's too out of the ordinary. Sometimes people come from overseas and they just lie about their age because the younger of a prospect you are, the more likely you are to get drafted. Like Buddy Heald from the Bahamas, it came out like five years into his career. He's like two years older than what everybody thought he was. The theory is that Ersan Ilyasova is actually a person named Ersan Ilyasov, born in, I'm gonna apologize. I'm not even gonna try to butcher this country's name, but born there. And in 2002, Ersan crossed the border into Turkey at age 18, but then went missing, never showing up again. All the documents about Ersan Ilyasov simply vanished. But only a month later, a person would go to the Turkish authorities and say that they forgot to register a 15-year-old son, a boy that turned out to be named Ersan Ilyasova. So it's low key a really crazy story and conspiracy that I mean, based on this one article, I can't see if I agree or disagree, but it's a part of NBA lore that I had nothing, I knew nothing about. So that's fun that we're learning something today. Uh-oh, uh-oh, me and very cool guy, Smas, we are on the same page. He said that 2019 draft ladders, master specialists, pelicans get their futures, the future after AD and the Lakers get the fourth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn't even, I didn't even peep or remember that the Lakers got the fourth overall pick that season to make the trade happen. Yeah. Whoa, so that low key kind of rigged it for the Lakers to end up with Anthony Davis. That's low key insane. I forgot about the aspect. Shout out to you. Very cool guy, Smas. This is a funny one. That the nuggets are employing and playing Deandre Jordan to artificially boost Yoko just already ridiculous plus minus. That's, that's, that's a fun one. Obviously not true, but still fun. The 2006 NBA finals was rigged. Obviously this is the one where we got to see the he versus Mavericks. Now the person that did comment that was a Mavericks fan and you're looking at the series and if you weren't around then you're probably asking why would anybody even consider this to be a rigged series? Well, in game six, the game in which to Miami he closed this, this one out. Dwayne Wade shot 21 free throws by himself. I don't agree that it was rigged, but I can see someone seeing the, the imbalance and foul shots and believe that it might have been rigged. I mean, in a six game series he shot nearly a hundred free throws, nearly a hundred free throws and the highest person on the Mavericks was 55 from Dirk. So again, I don't necessarily agree, but I can see if I was a fan in 2006 of the Dallas Mavericks watching that game and being like, what the heck? Because in game five, that set up game six and closed out game Dwayne Wade shot 21 of 25 from the free throw line. So two back-to-back games with Dwayne Wade took over 20 free throws. Maybe a little fishy, depending on who you ask. And it was a 2-2 series at that point. We had a 4C Dallas Mavericks that wasn't supposed to be there. Shaq, I want to say on his last leg because he played a few years after this, but an older version of Shaq at 33 years old, you got this young emerging superstar 24 year old, Dwayne Wade. So, you know, I don't agree, but I can see the world in which people think it is. Okay, this might be the last one we end on. Here's one. The sports news shows deliberately make their anchors unlikable. Those scripts and overexposed to generate hate buzz and potentially let them go more easily if they want. Um, it's an interesting one. Sports shows deliberately make their co-hosts unlikable. Ah man, I don't know how to feel about that. I will agree the majority of the people on TV, at least when I watch them come off as unlikable people, I can't say that they actually are. I never met them, but I do know for a fact that a lot of the people on TV that talk sports are playing a character. Undoubtedly, they're playing a character. They don't have that same level of energy or that same level of passion about things that you might think they do because they're playing to this. They're trying to do this. They're trying to get the numbers up. These people worked 20 plus years to even have an opportunity to have a TV show. So they're gonna do everything in their power to keep it. They're gonna do everything in their power to keep the numbers up. So yeah, you might get a bad take that they don't even believe in because they know that it might go viral on Twitter and they might get people to talk about it and talk about it and talk about it. For example, I don't know what happened between Shannon Sharp and Skip Bayless the other day when they kind of got into it. I can't tell you it was fake. I can't say that, but it got people talking. It got people talking. At the end of the day, that's what these shows are for and about to get people to say the name. That's why you have Skip Bayless on Twitter, damn it, exclusively talking bad about LeBron because LeBron James gets clicks. If I made a video specifically about LeBron James right now, it's gonna be my best performing video out of my last 10. That's the name that LeBron James carries. So this guy who again, wants to continue to stay, I'm not saying, it makes me seem like I'm shitting on it. I'm not, that job is literally to stay relevant is going to almost exclusively talk about this one thing and that one thing is LeBron James because it works. Unfortunate, but one thing I will say, I think there's next generation of people that do talk shows in 15, 20 years or whatever it may be when the new people starting in, we might see less of that and more of legitimate level headed conversation because I think that's what people enjoy now. The whole talking head thing, I think it's an overplayed and dead medium, close to dead medium. So guess what we'll see. Guess what we'll see.