What’s your problem with ‘Nutbags’? ;-)

I didn’t watch the Finals during the Spurs years. They flop a lot and play an incredibly boring half court game. Most of their players are older defensive vets and they barely have anyone that can dunk. The 2007 Spurs vs Cavs were probably the worst NBA finals ever. If the NBA wanted to make money, the Spurs wouldn’t have won all those championships. Still, they played fundamental team ball and did it.

There’s no conspiracy. The refs are part of the game and will be complained about endlessly for the rest of time. Once you follow the NBA for a while, you realize that great teams trump the officiating in a seven game series. The NBA stood to make a lot of money on a Kobe vs Lebron finals, but no amount of officiating would have helped that happen. The Magic were just better and would have won the series anyways.

I read this article this past weekend; Aldridge brings up some great facts.

I’m so sick of reading all of these message board posts by people saying things like “The NBA is fixed”, “There’s no way Stern would let them win”, etc. The games are not fixed, so to the people doing it, stop with this crap.

On some websites it’s almost impossible to have a legitimate conversation about basketball these days, because when a point is brought up, the rebuttal is “Stern doesn’t want them in the Finals”. How are we supposed to discuss basketball when people respond with stuff like that?

If you think it’s fixed, stop watching… and more importantly, stay off the internet and don’t try to discuss the game.

I don’t believe that officials set out to “fix” games. They do, however, know which teams will net them the most money. To deny that fact is simply foolish. If you’re watching a game with a team like the Lakers, and the game is close at the end, the games do get called tighter against the other team. They are good at hiding it, and they don’t set out to fix the games, but they do influence them. The NBA brought this on itself by conducting its own “internal investigation” of the Tim Donaghy situation and virtually saying that nothing was wrong with the rest of the league. The NBA just doesn’t hold its officials to a standard of perfection.

What irks me about the NBA, though, is not the officials. For the most part, they do a very good job, and the only job in pro sports that would be more difficult would be to be a MLB umpire. What bothers me is the fact that the NBA is very obvious about the team that it would like to see in the finals. Throughout the Nuggets/Lakers series, I wanted to puke every time I saw one of those stupid “Where Will Amazing Happen” commercials with a Lakers highlight.

One more thing about officiating (and this is the fault of the NBA, not the officials) – technical and flagrant foul calls are ridiculously biased. Star players on “star teams” won’t ever accumulate enough technical fouls to be suspended. Anybody watching the playoffs knows that Kobe should have received at least 2 more technical fouls in the Denver series that there was no way he’d ever get. Even if he did, the league office would have rescinded them.

I agree with most of the article, but to deny the influence is foolish.