<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">"I've always thought the most likely targets of gamblers would be the referees. They make peanuts, they're highly abused both by the fans and players, and they have more control over a game than anyone else. Moreover, the normal incompetence of NBA referees would be a perfect disguise for a corrupt one. It seems to me that the NBA has gone out of its way to keep its referees poor and incompetent - and I mean clear around-the-barn-out-of-the-way." Now, I know what you might be saying, "Insane ramblings from another conspiracy theorist. Why don't those people get a life?" Who wrote these silly words: Jim Rome? www.nba-is-fixed.com? Yours truly? How about some bitter Kings' fan who hates the Lakers? No, the quote above is from Bill Russell and it was from his book Second Wind published in 1979. Russell did not have to be bitter and blame officials for losses because the man rarely lost. He won 8 championships in a row and 11 in 13 years. The context of his quote pertained to his being approached by a gambler during his playing days. He points out that high player salaries are a great buffer against gamblers, since only an idiot would take the chump change of gamblers compared to that of their contracts - and remember, this is 1979! After last year's playoffs, I read many articles from fine writers such as David Aldridge of ESPN and Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post. Both of them said that they put absolutely no stock in the conspiracy theories about the NBA being fixed, but both go on to basically say 'However, the officiating was horrible and it seemed like the Kings or Lakers got whatever calls were needed to extend the series to seven games.' Uh, hello guys? Are we missing something here? As Dan Rather might say, 'if it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, do you think it might be a duck?' Are you familiar with the phrase, "where there's smoke, there's fire?" Most writers seem to think if you believe the NBA has a conspiracy to fix games then you are a fan of the Kings, Mavericks, or Spurs, and you are a bitter about the Lakers and/or Bulls (or should I just say "Phil Jackson?") beating your favorite team. Let me explain my background: I am a Sixers fan since the days of Dr. J. In the late 80s, I went from being a casual fan to a full-fledged NBA fanatic. I read every book I ran across, past and present and became something of an authority on basketball history. I knew every player on every team - height, weight, college, strengths, weaknesses, and salary. I knew every team's strength and weakness. I spent 45 minutes a day combing through the box scores. I didn't necessarily care how Larry Bird and Michael Jordan did. They dominated every night. I was more interested in seeing how guys like Willie Burton and Alec Kessler did, because I studied Miami's plan for building their franchise. I wanted to see how players developed, and how traded players performed in new environments. Yeah, I was still a Sixers fan most of all, but let's face it, the Sixers had 2 chances of winning the title back in those days and Slim had already left town. Therefore, I sat back and enjoyed the league as a whole. I enjoyed parity and I enjoyed watching different teams claw their way to the top. If the Internet had been as popular then, I would have been one of the very best fantasy players in the business. Another point writers make is that fans will point out how their team was screwed by the refs, but turn a blind eye to every favorable call their team receives. (Nebraska fans: if you bring up the 1998 face mask, I will bring up the Frank Murphy non-fumble that you guys got 7 imaginary points from, so don't even go there!) Conspiracy theorists, according to profiling, are quick to point out every Shaq charge while ignoring steps on Mike Bibby, right? Well consider this: in the 1994 playoffs, I was cheering for the Knicks. The Sixers were not in the playoffs and my father was a life-long Knicks fan, so I wanted to see his team win. I really disliked the Bulls. I had grown tired of their winning and how they ruined the parity of the league. I especially disliked Scottie Pippen. I thought he was a prima donna who rode Michael Jordan's coattails to fame and fortune. I grew tired of the press calling him the 2nd best player in the league, when it was obvious that players like Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Clyde Drexler, Hakeem Olajuwon, Karl Malone, and Charles Barkley were all superior players. With this in mind, I was ready to see the Knicks destroy the Jordan-less Bulls in the conference semi-finals. To their credit, the Bulls surprised a lot of people that season. They went 55-27, which were only two less wins than the previous season with Jordan. They nearly won home court advantage throughout the Eastern playoffs, losing it in the last two days to the Knicks. Still, the regular season means little, and without Jordan, the Knicks were simply going to clean their clocks in the playoffs. Seattle had been upset in the first round, and the only team that could stop the Knicks from winning it all was the Houston Rockets. These Bulls were simply an annoying gnat that would eventually be crushed by the hungry Knicks. The Bulls had hung in tough and evened the series at 4 games, after Scottie Pippen performed his "Sitting Bull" routine and Toni Kukoc had won the game on a buzzer beater. Still, I knew luck could only go so far, and the superior Knicks would destroy the Bulls. There was simply no way the Jordan-less Bulls could be that good. Game 5 was played at MSG with the Bulls clinging to a 1-point lead in the final seconds. Hubert Davis, a reserve guard, takes the final shot for the Knicks and misses. After the ball leaves his hands, Pippen touches his forearm. Pippen did not affect the shot in any way. Yes, it was a foul, according to the rulebook, but one thing about NBA refs is that in the finals seconds, they put away their whistles. If they called every foul or violation according to the rulebook, Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson would have been called for traveling at least 10,000 times. The refs use a multi-tier system of calling fouls. Superstars receive favorable calls and no-calls. Veterans receive less favoritism than stars, and rookies and scrubs have numerous calls go against them. I guarantee that Michael Jordan would not have been whistled for a foul in that instance. If Hubert Davis, the guy from my team (Knicks), had fouled Pippen in such a way, I would expect him to be called for a foul. After all, Pippen was a superstar and Davis was a bench player. There is no way in the world that Pippen should have been whistled for that call. There is no way Hubert Davis should have received the benefit of that call - especially at the end of the game. However, Davis went to the line, hit the free throws, and the Knicks won the game. Chicago took game 6 at home and the Knicks finished out the series in New York in game 7. Chicago should have won that series. At the time, I was relieved that the Knicks got a lucky call that they should not have received, and like any other fan, I ignored the favored call and complained about the calls that went in the Bulls favor. Any Bulls fan knows the name Hue Hollins, because of this call, just like fans of the St. Louis Cardinals know who Don Deckinger is after game 6 in the 1985 World Series. I was happy the Knicks won, but in retrospect, I wish the Bulls had won, as this was one of the early signs, to me, that the league was fixing games. Without Michael Jordan, the Bulls were not a "sexy" team to NBC. Scottie Pippen lacked the flair of Michael Jordan. He was always Jim to Michael Jordan's Marlin Perkins, Tonto to Michael's Lone Ranger. With Jordan in retirement, David $tern had to make sure that the large glitzy media city was in the finals. New York had more network appeal than the Jordan-less Bulls, so I believe Hue Hollins followed orders from $tern's office and remember, I hated the Bulls and was cheering for the Knicks! That's strange that I would admit that the team I was cheering for cheated their way through a playoff series, no? You might be thinking that I am making way too much out of one bad call. After all, are refs not human - even incompetent refs? Go re-read that Bill Russell quote again. It would be easy to hide a corrupt ref because the refs are so incompetent. The league hires poor refs, so that it's easier to hide a fix. Observe what else Russell had to say in the same passage: "It seems to me that the NBA has gone out of its way to keep its referees poor and incompetent...for years I tried to get the league to hire a black referee and recommended more than a dozen good ones. They always found a way not to hire the ones I recommended, but at the same time officials kept telling me they were looking for "qualified black referees." They always used that adjective: referees were either plain referees or were "qualified Negro referees." Finally, in frustration I sent in the name of a referee who was famous as a bumbling idiot, so the NBA hired him, of course, and he was terrible. He couldn't tell a rulebook from a slide rule, and was a walking argument against affirmative action. The protests against him were so universal that I finally got a call asking why I'd recommended him. "I got tired of recommending 'qualified black referees,'" I said, "So I decided to recommend an unqualified one for a change, and that's the one you picked." Look no further than the Sacramento-Los Angeles series to see that the referees are horrible, that at times it is hard to tell if they are corrupt (Game 6, 4th quarter) or incompetent. The rules of the NBA state that the referees cannot talk to the press about their calls and that coaches cannot comment about an official's performance. We have seen coaches fined for their comments. The NBA has a valid excuse for this rule: if coaches can rip a referee who is not allowed to defend himself, than that referee will be more likely to hold a grudge in future games, and that makes for biased officiating. That sounds nice until you see the next part in this 3 part series, how I prove that officials already have a bias. They are biased towards superstar players, towards home teams, and towards popular teams that bring in strong network ratings. Remember the Bill Russell quotes: it is easy to hide corruption behind apparent incompetence. Why have a referee trying to explain his awful call (and I will point to examples next week) to the press? That referee will sound like the French Olympic pairs figure skating judge who tried to say with a straight face, "I thought the Russians skated better." If a reporter corners a referee with a line of hard questions, and let's face it, they sometimes do this, then a referee may come across to the public as a fixer of games, or he may spill the beans that he was acting on orders. It is a coincidence, I will admit, but if my theory is correct, this would make for a perfect cover-up. Food for thought. In the next part, I will present the six rules for fixing NBA games. </div> link: http://www.bet2gamble.com/PlayerResources/..._NBA_Fix_1.html read the whole thing if youve got time. its pretty interesting and it really shows how the nba is very unfair.
Nice find. Its a really interesting article, especially the last two parts. His argument seems to especially apply to Lebron's game-winning travel. Its almost exactly like Ewing's travel against the Pacers. He certainly brings up doubt, but I can't agree with his theory of rigging from a central authority. It would have its benefits, but its much too unpredictable for Stern to attempt. And he underestimates the appeal of the underdog to the casual fan. Just look at the hype surrounding George Mason in this year's NCAA tourney. He also ignores the low rating finals over the past few years (NJ vs. SA, Det. vs. SA, etc.). Aside from the "conspiracy theory," I thought the 3rd part was very interesting and most convincing. I agree that Stern has shaped the game to promote the individual, and its created a vicious cycle. The NBA now depends on the support of the "fringe fans." Thats why you see the League try to hype up players to fit roles that they don't necessarily fit (eg: Melo vs. Lebron). This method leads to an unstable popularity level that might lend itself to rigging. It has also influenced the way calls are made, and referee's are far more inconsistent as they tend to cater to "names." I think the League pressures refs to call games this way, but I disagree that their is a whole operation going on. <u>On a side note</u>: Did anyone see the link attached to the guy's name at the end of the article? Its ridiculous. (http://airjudden2.tripod.com/ejf/index.htm)
There are quite a few big-name players from the Jordan era that have said the same thing. Clyde Drexler comes to mind. And I heard the same from Karl Malone recently in reaction to his experience in those late '90s Finals. Whether these are just bitter players looking for excuses or there is some credence to what they're charging is very debatable. I know I've seen games where it appeared the fix was in, many times when I had no personal rooting interest. And it would be very easy to fix professional games, don't kid yourself. Combine that with the NBA's placement within the big business power structure and you can definitely see where they have an investment so far as "helping" some teams win certain years or throughout certain eras. I'm not saying this is absolutely the case, but it definitely is a credible possibility in my view.
As someone mentioned above, I doubt also that it's a centralized conspiracy. If it's anything beyond incompetence then it's referee bias for certain teams or players. There could be gambling involved too, who knows. For all we know they're just bored and like to start **** up, hah.
There's no way the Lakers should've lost yesterday. The game was fixed at half time and the LA players seemed to have been instructed to lose the game.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting dallasdude:</div><div class="quote_post">There's no way the Lakers should've lost yesterday. The game was fixed at half time and the LA players seemed to have been instructed to lose the game.</div> More like there's no way Lakers should have won game 4, or even 3. If you had watched the regular season you would have noticed the suns man handled the lakers in all but the last game where half of our starters were DNP. But hey maybe Bush is a Suns fan and Cheney ordered the secret service to pressure the NBA into fixing the games to keep ole dubya happy. Makes sense to me!
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting dallasdude:</div><div class="quote_post">There's no way the Lakers should've lost yesterday. The game was fixed at half time and the LA players seemed to have been instructed to lose the game.</div> Yes the LA players were told to lose and they did and santa clause exists. and i get all my NBA news at bet2gamble really reliable source.
