I just finished watching one of the most obvious conspiracies in the history of professional sports on full display, as the Dallas Mavericks somehow came back from a 9 point deficit with 3 minutes left to defeat the Golden State Warriors, final score 118-112.
I watched the game with Bob, a big-time Mavs fan, who was wearing his Mavs cap and 2006 NBA Western Conference Champion Mavs T-Shirt in desperation, since his team needed to win to avoid one of the biggest upsets in basketball history. The referees failed to call a foul on any of the Mavs at any point after 5 minutes were left in the game. They didn't call an obvious foul on a 3-point shot attempt when Mavs star Dirk Nowitzky slapped the hand of a Warriors player. The shot would have given Golden State a 2 point lead with about a minute left. Instead, the refs called a phantom foul on the Warriors best player, Baron Davis. The inexplicable foul call knocked Davis out of the game when the difference was 1 point and less than a minute remained on the clock.
In Bob's estimation, the Warriors "got jobbed."
So, what else is new? The NBA has been jobbing teams all year. They extend playoff series to seven games whenever possible, by any means necessary to keep the ticket sales rolling in. The officiating in the NBA is terrible, as I've said before, and it's bad for the sport, bad for the fans, and most of all it's bad for America.
And to pour even more fuel on the burning embers that are all that remains of the NBA's credibility, according to a new study out of Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania, the officiating isn't just conspiratory, it's also racist. Screw this league.
Oh, by the way, Go Pistons!
I totally agree... they didn't call any fouls on GS down the stretch, and the call that ended Baron Davis' night was extremely questionable.
Extending the series does help the NBA though ($$), and also the Suns. Whoever they end up playing will be much more tired than they will be.
please...dont even get me started on the san antonio floppers. piss on the nba.
Wanting games to go to 7 is one factor, but having the west's strongest team lose in the first round to a team that comes from a market that doesn't really care about basketball, which also happens to not have had national exposure in 15 years (save for Sprewell's choking incident)isn't too great for the NBA either. As a Warriors fan, I ALWAYS think the Warriors get hosed, I just happen to actually believe it this time also.
While the NBA officiating is bad, I think there's also other factors that aren't conspiratorial.
#1 - players just do a lot more bickering and interact with refs much more frequently than any other sport. I could see how this could lead to unequal officiating. Think of Rashid Wallace and his "reputation" for so many years which was largely based on the way he interacted with refs. That wouldn't happen in the NFL or MLB.
#2 - the home-team advantage in officiating shows up a lot more frequently in the NBA than in any other sport. I think a big factor of this is just the way that NBA stadiums are designed (and the size of the playing field). Refs have a lot of distance between themselves and fans in MLB and the NFL, where as in the NBA fans and refs are just a couple feet away from each other. There have been enough studies on the effects of proximity on social influence to make it not too far of a reach to think that partisan fans in the NBA could cause unintentionally partisan refs.
3. In the NFL, we tend to debate pass interference calls much more than false-starts and holding. A big part of this is b/c PI calls are very subjective (how much interference is TOO MUCH and warrants a penalty?). In the NBA virtually all fouls are of the PI variety. The players are going to bump into each other and touch each other all the time, but the subjective aspect of how-much-is-too-much causes almost all fouls in the NBA to be easily debated.
y'all are just h8rs. texas rulz!
but seriously, that was terrible last night. but i'll make that deal with the devil if it means the mavs can get past a team that doesn't even have a freakin' city in its name. piss on the NBA and piss on its cat.
Extending series like the Detroit v. Orland and Cleveland v. Washington series? You mean like that? Fuck you, you fucking retard.
Hey, Jay, way to make a point.
The NBA doesn't much care about the "quality" of the games, it just cares about playing as many games as possible. More games = more ticket sales and more advertising dollars. Why do we have a best-of-7 first round?
It just gets more obvious that the NBA will conspire to extend a series when one team obviously deserves to win -- like the Warriors last night -- but somehow loses due to the awful officiating.
sorry, e, the warriors didn't clearly deserve to win as you say. they got down by twenty points early and they played shoddy defense down the stretch. did the mavericks deserve to win? not necessarily, but the outcome was still in doubt. a small distinction, but an important one to your argument.
In full agreement on the f'ing of the NBA. In other sports news, CARDS WIN.