this could be really good for the Blazers in years to come, as few people want a small market team to be a champ for years and years, and in the aftermath of this, Stern might have to pull back his henchmen.

That it was in fact game 6 of the Kings/Lakers series. 25 4th quarter freethrows should have been enough evidence to begin with. Stern has problems right, about…. now.

unfortunately this will all blow over. No one’s going to buy it coming from a guys who’s been busted for what he’s done. This would have carried a lot of weight if he was a trustworthy whistle blower, not some guy trying to cut a deal with the feds.

http://www.sacbee.com/100/story/297829.html

There are still no excuses for not winning the seventh game at Arco Arena, for allowing the horrific officiating by Bob Delaney and Ted Bernhardt (and very few of the mistakes in Game 6 are attributable to crew chief Dick Bavetta, by the way) to mess with their minds.

Could they be the two “company men”?

Holy crap.

...it could be bad news.

Is it true? I don’t know… obviously few of us do. It could be a crooked ref trying to get a shorter prison term.

Or, it could be true. The problem with virtually all pro sports leagues, especially the NBA, is an astonishing lack of transparency in these matters.

Methinks that Game 7 of the 200 WCF was fixed myself… :(

my mind just exploded

http://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/NBA_2002.html

HOOOOOLY.

That’s the ONLY game that went 7 games that year.

(bad choice of words there…) that tonight’s game will be the best called game in the history of the NBA? EVERYONE will be watching this one through a microscope.

Ben is right. My head just exploded.

Quick story: I once sent a girl the April fool’s joke fake bbc page that claimed zombies were real, because she has a real fear of zombies. Her immediate reaction: “I KNEW IT! I always said I didn’t believe in zombies because I didn’t want to be made fun of, but I ALWAYS KNEW THEY EXISTED!”

Anyway, that was pretty humiliating for her.

So, for the current, I won’t be shouting “I KNEW IT!” to too many people, but I certainly want to.

Still a great prank to play on people. The page looks so real:

Cambodian Troops Quarantine Quan’sul

I believe him for two reasons. First of all, he has little to gain (except some publicity…maybe he already has an idea for a book) It wasn’t the NBA that busted him, rather it was the feds. A grudge against the NBA wouldn’t make a lot of sense.
Secondly, you would have to be a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t even there to honestly believe that games are called the right way all of the time. There are way too many times when we have all seen refs make a rediculous call. It is the call when all 20,000 fans in the stands can see it is a silly call, as well as all 20 million viewers at home can see that it is silly. How is it that everyone EXCEPT the referee knows what the right call is, yet it is failed to be made correctly? How else do you explain that these same refs that make these horrible calls never seem to get reprimanded. Supposedly there is a head referee or referees that evaluate all of the calls throughout a season, and then game refs are dealt with later on. Good grief, there is no reason on God’s green Earth that Steve Javie, Violet Palmer, and such should still have jobs in this league.

Want a perfect example of a game being rigged? Look no further than the job Jake O’Donnel did on us in Game 6 of the Blazers vs Bulls Finals. That was as lopsided of a 4th quarter officating job as I’ve ever seen. I was 14 and knew it was BS back then. Believe me, the refs did everything they could to help the Bulls make their great comeback. Our own players have even gone as far as to insinuate that was the case.

Looks like Bubba may have some new company in prison before all is said and done.

I want so badly for the games to not be fixed or manipulated (I know they can’t ever fix the games COMPLETELY, but a manipulated game is just as bad). I get no peace of mind if the 2000 WCF was fixed, nor the 2002 WCF, in favor of the Lakers. I want it to be the better team going on, or the luckier team, or ANYTHING besides uppity muckity mucks deciding star power over letting the teams PLAY.

This hurts my head to think about.

EVEN IF NOT TRUE, it feels true to many, many people. This claim, even if never really proven, will serve as FACT for every NBA conspiracist. It may not explain the Spurs, however…

I want our small market team to have the chance to win it all because of the talent we have, not because of our stars or lack thereof. This is incredibly disheartening if true.

One quick question (I’ll have more later I’m sure): How does not kicking a star out of a game help ticket sales? People are already there. Nobody gets a refund if Kobe gets ejected for having a pretty mouth. That doesn’t make any sense.

I believe refs have always had biases, as it is normal human nature. If they don’t like someone or some franchise on a personal level, it will effect their refereeing—to think otherwise is to think too highly of the common person. I just wished it wasn’t a NBA mandated secret rule, that certain refs try to ensure certain teams make it further.

Hey, it casts a shadow across what the Lakers and Phil Jackson have done, so there is some good in it.

Mortimer

to thwart the Blazers impending dynasty.

The powers that be-the guys that control David Stern’s strings-have determined that allowing the Blazers, with B-Roy, Oden, LMA, etc. to bring title after title after title to the Pacific Northwest, is simply intolerable.

So they’ve decided to blow up the NBA; in the New Order, we’ll be the Charlotte Bobcats.

:)

Am I being paranoid? Probably. But it’s so much fun to promulgate wacky conspiracy theories—especially if by sheer coincidence, you turn out to be right.

Time to go home now…

It’ll be interesting to see how they handle it.

you’d have to consider that the league doesn’t just pander to big markets, they also HEAVILY market specific players. Wade became huge suddenly (granted it started by just drafting off Shaq) and after that title he was “the next Jordan” according to many people.

Does this worry me? No, between LMA’s comcast commercials and Oden with his now legendary car commercials, we have some heavily marketed talent for the league to “massage” deep into the playoffs.

I don’t mind the refs fixing the games. For the most part, If the NBA is successful, then the teams in the NBA are successful. I hope this all goes away so we can get back to the draft.

Which is another cause of all of this. When you allow fouls on every trip down the floor, and only expect the refs to call them at certain times, on certain players, you’ve already destroyed whatever integrity the rules had. If your rules have no integrity, how can you expect the men enforcing them to? To this very day i’m in disbelief that the NBA re-hired convicted criminals to referee their games. CONVICTED CRIMINALS!!!

http://robots.cnnsi.com/basketball/nba/news/1998/06/24/referee_taxes/

And nobody seems to care.

......................... I watched about 60 NFL games a couple years ago, and the first one of all those where it felt like the fix was on was the Steelers being handed the SuperBowl. There are good calls and bad calls in every game, but in that case there were drive-killing calls that were sheer fantasy.

I doubt Arlen Spector (R-PA) is gonna be too eager to hold hearings on THAT one though…

t