Article

["Dan Forant" <dforant1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the article Ray. The money managers are still making things happen.
Besides being bought off, the refs are inept. It's all about $$$$$ baby. This
whole Country has gone so corrupt from Church to Government including Sports.
Which way to Camelot?

DanF


"Way Of The Ray" <wayray@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
3CFCF79C.D38AF4D8@ix.netcom.com">news:3CFCF79C.D38AF4D8@ix.netcom.com...
> 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?