NBA Voodoo: David Stern Fixes The Playoffs

[Way Of The Ray <wayray@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bill Simmons has remarked about this for years.
Depending on whether the NBA wants the home team or visitors to win in
the important and determining games of a series, the NBA assignes either
a strong, objective
crew of refs, or a weak group of bad officials, that will be
intinmidated and influenced by
the home team and fans.

http://www.geocities.com/nstix/nbavoodoo.html

NBA Voodoo:
David Stern Fixes the Playoffs

By
Nicholas Stix


  A Different Drummer [June 5, 2002]


Well, the Lakers got their threepeat. Let's hear it for Shaq and Kobe
and the gang. Coach Phil Jackson was again proven a genius. What's that
you say  The finals have yet to begin? A mere formality.

NBA Commissioner David Stern wanted the Lakers to defend their two
consecutive NBA championships in the finals. And whatever David wants,
David gets.

Friday night, in game six of the Western Conference finals against the
Sacramento Kings, in the most corruptly officiated pro basketball game I
have ever seen, the referees charged the Kings with a foul, every time
one of their players blinked at a Laker, but "let the Lakers play
[their] game"  a euphemism for not calling fouls on the Lakers  as an
obsequious Jim Gray of NBC volunteered to Shaquille O'Neal after the
game. Gray helpfully left unsaid that the Lakers had gotten to shoot an
unheard-of 27 free throws  making 21  in the fourth quarter alone,
which would have made clear that the referees weren't letting everyone
"play their game."

The Lakers were down three games to two; a loss would have eliminated
them, and sent the Kings on to their first championship finals since
1951, when as the Rochester Royals, they beat the New York
Knickerbockers for their sole NBA championship. But the fix was in; the
refs were not going to permit the Lakers to lose. They won, 106-102.

When O'Neal told interviewers that teams that won two or three
championships had to do it different ways, I didn't know that this was
what he meant.

Any doubt that the outcome was rigged was erased when, with one minute
left in the game, Kobe Bryant tried to get free of tenacious Kings guard
Mike Bibby, in order to catch an inbounds pass. Kobe got free, alright.
He smashed Bibby in the nose with a forearm.

What did the refs do? Naturally, they called a foul ... on Bibby! Bryant
drained two free throws, to bury the Kings. Adding insult to injury, the
Kings had to burn their last timeout, in order to give the indispensable
Bibby a chance to reflect on what day it was, and where he was playing.

A would-be mugger named Andre Bernard once broke my nose with less
violence than Kobe Bryant applied to Mike Bibby. But I prevailed against
Andre, thanks to my friend, Mr. Mace. Unfortunately, Bibby was playing
unarmed.

Crooked pool is nothing new to the NBA. In 1996, David Stern ignored
blatant tampering on the part of the Lakers, when they stole Shaquille
O'Neal away from the Orlando Magic, so I guess something like Friday's
fiasco was bound to happen.

At the highest levels, organized sports can be the closest thing to a
vision of perfection in this world. (I'm obviously not talking about
circus sideshows like the WWF, and some of professional boxing and the
Olympics.) Unlike in the "real" world, where incompetents and crooks
routinely prevail, and keep good men sidelined, the best sports can show
us objective excellence and justice. When "Joe Cool" Montana was leading
the San Francisco 49ers or John Elway was leading the Denver Broncos on
come-from-behind drives in the last two minutes of playoff games or
Super Bowls, I don't recall anything looking fixed. Likewise, when
Michael Jordan drained his many "buzzer beaters" to win playoff games,
in leading the Chicago Bulls to six championships, I don't recall him
getting Laker-style help from the referees, or the basket being expanded
for him.

Prior to last Friday, I had taken for granted that if the Lakers met my
beloved Nets in the finals, Shaq, Kobe, & Co. would bury the Nets, like
so many mob hit victims, in the Jersey swampland. But now, I'm angry,
and I'm not taking anything for granted. Although I'm not a prayerful
man, I'm going to take a page out of the book of a Guyanese woman I used
to know, who said of an enemy, "I gonna say a prayer, and bind her
spirit." That is good "for I," too. I gonna say a prayer, and bind the
Lakers' spirits! You hear that, Shaq, Kobe, Phil? You sure you're
invincible against my voodoo?