Who in the NBA do you believe controls this, how do they control it, and how many people know about it?
There are too many rich, cocky personalities with power there that I have trouble believing shyt wouldn't get exposed if it were too overt. Someone like a Donald Sterling or a Mark Cuban gets too pissed off about how they feel they are being screwed over, and they could just let shyt fly about what they know, then start their own "legitimate" league out of the ashes. And if the owners don't know, then what's the point? Things like shuttling certain players to certain teams are just too high-risk, low-benefit for the NBA to care. New York has sucked for the longest and the NBA still makes money, the Lakers will always have pull for free agents no matter who they draft...the league has much greater concerns about it's product to worry about than manipulating which teenagers (who may as well end up as busts) end up where.
Not that this strikes me as an "impossible" conspiracy theory. Just unlikely. I'd believe ref biases to influence certain games long before I'd believe draft influences, because the payoff is more immediate and certain and hardly anyone has to know.
