David Stern expects your draft conspiracy theories now

When the New Orleans Hornets — still owned by the league, mind you, and about to be sold to the guy keeping them in New Orleans — won the NBA Draft Lottery and the rights to likely franchise changing first pick Anthony Davis, the conspiracy theorists were coming out of the grassy knolls everywhere.

Clearly the league rigged the lottery to reward new owner Tom Benson for keeping the team in the Big Easy. Of course, if the Bobcats had won the lottery Stern was trying to help out Michael Jordan. If the Nets had won it’s because they are moving to Brooklyn. If Cleveland had won it was more LeBron James payback.

All David Stern can do is shrug. Here is what Stern told CBS in an interview coming out this week, via the Sporting News.

“It has gotten enough sort of annual currency, that the one thing we want to do is even though we shrug it off and make a little fun of it, that we also make sure our process is about as airtight as it can possibly be and well reviewed and well viewed so there’s no problem.”

I’ll say it again, you are hard pressed to convince me that David Stern has convinced Ernst & Young to commit fraud on 29 billionaires. And if he did go through all that trouble, he’s doing to send Anthony Davis — arguably the best player and biggest name to come out of college in a decade — to the NBA’s smallest market.

But go ahead. Live in your fantasy world. I bet the aliens in Area 51 work with Stern to fix it every year.