Did anyone notice that home teams won nearly every game in the playoffs this year. Excluding the final game at Detroit, the home cooking was awful good. It seemed especially so in the Spurs - Hornets series and the Lakers - Jazz series. The referees went especially out of their way to make sure the home team got the W.
I had to laugh listening to all of the sportwriters and commentators make excuses for the terrible refereeing going on. The hot excuse this year is "role players don't play well on the road". Evidently referees don't like role players on the road either. But this year it was even worse than usual. The star players weren't getting the calls on the road. The were calling fouls on Parker and Ginobli on the road as well as Chris Paul and David West, and most of them were fiction.
Having grown up and enjoyed the NBA at its peak, that is, the 80's, I was used to Magic and Larry getting the call. After they were gone it went completely beserk with Michael. In the ref's opinion, you weren't even allowed to breathe on him if he was shooting. For a playoff series Dwayne Wade found out what that was like. I bet he freaked out the next season when they had turned that off.
What I don't understand is, the season right after they find out that a referee has been betting on games, they don't do anything or mention anything about watching the referees calls more closely. It never came up, anywhere. Even when you see the BLATANT none calls, like Game 2 of Lakers - Jazz and Game 5 of Lakers - Spurs. Thats the thing that is so powerful about basketball refereeing. The non-call is just as bad, no worse, than the bad call. A non-call can stop you from even getting a chance to score, at least if you are called for a non-foul you can play around it, unless of course its your 6th.
The two non-calls seem like they could be OBVIOUS if you were looking into whether the 3 striped dudes had money on the game. I'm not saying they did, but it sure would work in their favor. But the NBA has always been the least professional of the major sports leagues. From the players to the coaches to the teams to the commissioner. What other sport has a lottery to determine who gets to pick first BECAUSE so many teams throw games at the end of the year. They had to go to a lottery, no one trusts anyone.
Unfortunately, no one ever talks about this. Especially on television. You should never bite the hand that feeds you as the saying goes. Anyway, it should be interesting to see which side the ref's have their money on in this series.
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