"Your league is rigged"

[kybuc]

I think if it was rigged they would be playing game 7 Thursday night. NBA is losing tons of money by not playing that game.

Cuban is screaming rigged because of the officiating. He's being biased here towards his own team. The officiating was horrendous but it was poor on both sides of the ball.

What about the Stackhouse/Shaq foul? Cuban thought that suspension was crazy but on replays compared to other fouls of that nature the refs actually made a good call on that one. To me..........that was the hardest foul I've seen in the NBA this year.

[Athens2005]

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060620


Read this article.

It will not behoove me personally to comment on this matter, although I am about 100.0% certain that I have and do and will probably continue to follow the NBA more closely than 100.0% of the people that have ever even so much as considered perusing this site.

Typically, no matter what is said, even it if is fact-based, gets turned into some tit-for-tat, you're just jealous nonsense that does not benefit anyone, and is simply a waste of time.

This article is not perfect, but it covers a lot of the topics that one might address regarding the subject matter of this thread.

The main thing that annoys me in this article is the way Simmons comes off like he is or was the first to recognize problems with NBA officials (sort of like my first paragraph above ;) ). But in reality, that's one of the benefits of having your own sports column.

Anyway, enjoy.

[kybuc]

That author has a major chip on his shoulder. You could just read the sarcasm/jealousy/disgust/disdain/etc. seaping out of that article.

[Doug Hardin]

Typically the rigging would be to extend the Finals to 7 games. Or maybe you could say the conspiracy was that Cuban crossed Stern too many times that Stern wouldn't allow Cuban's team to win the title.

As a Laker fan, back when the "David Stern rigs it so the Lakers and Knicks can win" conspiracy was going strong, that really irritated me. There are some things that even though they might not betrue, they are at least minimally plausible, and theyare repeated enough that casual observers begin to accept them as fact. "Kobe ran off Shaq," "Tubby only won because he had Pitino's players," and "Bush lied to drag us into a war for oil money" areexamples. (Note: Please don't hijack this thread to debate those examples. I'm merely using them as examples of things casual observers accept as fact, even though their truth or falsity are very much open to debate). And it undermines my favorite teams' accomplishments in winning 3 straight titles when a sizable portion of fans look at it like, "Yeah, they won, but Stern rigged it so they'd win."

I guess it's possible that Stern rigs things, but I think the better explanation is the age-old answer of "officials are human, and they're going to screw up, especially in basketball, which is probably the hardest sport to officiate." I thought some of the calls Dwyane Wade got in this series were absolutely ridiculous, and there were several where replays showed that he literally was not touched, so I can see why Cuban was so upset. But I think a lot of it, like the foul called against Dirk on Wade at the very end of the OT in Game 5, is the result of the referees just not having the guts to make a call or non-call against the superstar player on the home team.

[hoosierhateruklover]

Doug Hardin wrote: "David Stern rigs it so the Lakers and Knicks can win" conspiracy

My two favorite teams! Sounds like a good idea to me...Yea I hated it when that little girl Rik Smits alleged that in 99 against the Knicks...What a disgrace....The league is rigged though, just not Lakers/Knicks...Wade,Melo, and Lebron get all the calls. The NBA has to have that 03 draft class winning...I miss the days when they weren't in the league! I liked it right before the Pacers-Lakers Final when Larry Bird said I try not to worry about teams that I have more rings than, and then lost the series. I liked Ron Harpers comment better. Before Game 3 in Indy he sat face up on the scores table and said as I look into the rafters I see no banners, because there are none and there never will be!