On Tuesday at 4:36 p.m., former NBA player and Sixer Dikembe Mutombo tweeted out (then quickly deleted) an old picture of himself and Allen Iverson and congratulated the Philadelphia 76ers on getting the No. 1 pick in the upcoming 2016 draft. There was one problem… the Draft Lottery wasn’t scheduled until 8 p.m that night.
There’s always been murmurs that the draft lottery is rigged; most notably when the Knicks got the No. 1 pick to select Patrick Ewing (the first ever draft lottery), when the Cavaliers got the No. 1 pick to select Ohio native LeBron James and tons more.
So fans waited intently for the NBA draft lottery last night to see if Mutombo was right. Sure enough the Sixers won and received the No. 1 pick, sending Twitter into overdrive.
Well why would the league want the Sixers to get that pick? Well they’re the first team to sign a sponsorship deal, doing a three-year deal with Stubhub to have the company’s logo appear on their jerseys, it’s the 20th anniversary of Iverson going No. 1 and he was also inducted into the Hall of Fame this year. Also the league intervened to finally turn things around, growing tired of their tanking season after season. Basically there’s many reasons to want them to get the top pick.
The NBA tried to recover, saying this is the first year the lottery held true to form with the league standings but fans weren’t buying it.
*photos in gallery above*
