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I cannot stand Stern. Dude looks very upset. I guess he'll learn. Next year it will be the Spurs vs Bucks in the Finals.
. . . is when you're Commissioner of a Major Sports League, don't publicly yearn for a "Dream Matchup" of two specific teams for the championship. It can lead to bad things if you don't have an unimpeachable aura of complete impartiality, whether you're actually guilty of anything or not.
I cannot stand Stern. Dude looks very upset. I guess he'll learn. Next year it will be the Spurs vs Bucks in the Finals.
Didn't this Celtics team squeak by Atlanta?
Didn't this Celtics team squeak by Cleveland?
Didn't this Celtics team lose a home game to Detroit?
The only way to fix this is for the East to play the East for the NBA Championship….The West should have some sort of hostess Twinkie championship thing…
Ironically, after all the drama of the Western Conference this season and all the "Leastern" Conference jokes, it's going to be a Eastern Conference team winning it all. That makes it the 3rd time in the past 6 years.
Very true. The Spurs are the only Western Conference team in to a championship on the past 5 years. At the end of the day, only one team can win the championship. That's why I find all this realigning conferences talk a joke because one conference is a stronger stretch.
Well, I think there is some truth to it. The WC as a whole is better than the East. And the playoffs are generally a long and grueling process. You saw what happened to the Spurs with just the 3rd seed, they had to go through 3 VERY tough teams just to get a chance to make it to the Finals.
David Stern has never shied away from discussing the business side of certain teams playing deep in the Playoffs. Compounding problems, the sports media (and subsequently sports fans) seem to be infinitely more interested in ratings potential for certain NBA matchups than any other sport. I may be missing it, but it doesn't seem like there's ever this much discussion on whether certain matchups would be good or bad for the NFL or MLB.
Combine all of this with a game that, by nature, is simultaneously the most difficult to call and the most easily influenced BY calls, and you've got a recipe for tantalizing conspiracy speculation.
I haven't seen enough to make me buy into the claims of a disgraced official on his way to prison, but I also have no sympathy for Stern and the NBA for a mess they have partially (or, pending the results of an investigation, completely) brought upon themselves.
I give Boston tons of credit. I didn't think they had it in them. They surprised me.
Said the same thing about Marco Jaric.
Regrouping actually makes sense. you think the celtics will make it to the finals if they would go through some of the teams in the west. They might get out of the first round coz they will still play an eastern team coz of seedings but after the lesser teams are eliminated, are they gonna survive better teams that what they're used to play during the regular season.
lol
lol...backfired on Stern...so much fail.
Stern is an arrogant prick. I love the NBA and am hopeful that the integrity of the sport previals, but I'm really starting to cool this pompous jerk of a Commissoner. If this scandal does worsen, I hope he goes out with it.
Lakers vs Lakers was what Stern said. Whatever. That bunch in LA deserves what's being shoved down their throat right now.
LA wasn't ready. Clearly they had some help to get to the finals in the first place.
Wonder if Stern still favors that LA vs LA matchup now?
The Fakers clearly arrived ahead of schedule. Who knows? They should be much better defensively and offensively when Bynum comes back. But it's not a given. Maybe this team endures the same NBA Finals hangover that the Mavs have endured. Maybe they don't come out of this funk - even after Bynum comes back next year. Who knows?
Does Stern come off as some type of Italian Don in all this?? I mean some of his quotes:
"But I must say as honestly and as directly as I can, that if you have a criminal in your midst who's prepared to engage in criminal activity, whether it's the NBA, the CIA, the FBI, the armed forces, police departments or whatever, you've got a problem "
"I don't know, but I do know there were questions about him ... and as I said earlier, the only person now being sentenced for a crime is Mr. Donaghy"
"On behalf of my officials, I'd like to tell you that they don't engage in the criminal conduct of which Mr. Donaghy has accused them of,"
And finally...
Donaghy claimed this week in a court filing that two "company men" worked that game, in which the Los Angeles Lakers used a huge free-throw advantage in the fourth quarter to avoid elimination against Sacramento.
"The allegations about that are incorrect," Stern said.
I'm just waiting for infamous "I made him an offer he could not refuse."
The league is losing its credibility, and once that happens casual fans (and some die-hard fans) will tend to pay a lot less attention to it.
The constant whining by the players during the game and the league continuing to let a coach like Phil Jackson and players like Sasha Vuijic go on record in their post game comments about the refereeing in the games do not help the cause.
Fakers, along with Jerry West, clearly angered the Basketball Gods. Now they're paying the penalty.
It has more the spirit of the then gradually unfolding Watergate cover up/scandal
I gonna have to dredge the mamory banks & come up with some of Tricky Nixon's old quotes
Stern was an idiot for letting Crawford getting anywhere near a Spursgame...Crawford lost the right to be viewed as an impartial official with Tim Duncan and the Spurs last season.
Stern deserves every bit of the doubt he gets...what an arrogant ass.
As for Bavetta...this guy has been universally reveiled as a Ref for a decade now...he's not a good ref, he should have been fired long ago, and the fact that he not only isn't fired, but seems to wind up reffing the most pivotal NBA games year in an year out...
Again, Stern deserves this.
And Salvator, the truly incompetent ref, needs to be following Crawford and Bavetta out the door.
I'd say about 90% of all su ious NBA games involve Bavetta or Salvator. Crawford is something else...he's a better ref than the other two(as in he doesn't blow as many calls), but he's also long been viewed as hot tempered guy that is easily angered...
The sooner these 3 are gone, the better.
I've been having the same thoughts. Stern is positively Nixonian in his non-denial denials.
The fact that we know the names of so many officials should say something.
Nothing ironic about it. The Celetics had a much easier road to the finals. Eastern conference teams that have a le shot don't go through the same wear and tear that the teams from the West go through. Its pretty damn uneven at this time.
The teams they played were worse, except for the Pistons and maybe teh Cavs, but they had a more grueling process.
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