Reply With Quote
It's entertainment brah. Stern has to sell this to the Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian types.
I don't believe in the whole conspiracy of rigging games, however...
The 2nd half of that game REALLY REALLY had me surprised. THere wasn't even any subtlety when it came to shifting the momentum by making ridiculous calls and missing obvious ones.
I'm a rockets fan so I may have been biased but half way through the 4th I was about to turn the game off because some of the calls were just criminal. Did anyone else feel that way? I don't normally complain about the reffs, I'm still pissed at Harden's head up ass play too.
It's entertainment brah. Stern has to sell this to the Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian types.
Most of the Thunder games are like that sadly.
It's rigged
Rigging games isn't a conspiracy, Donaghy already blew the whistle (no pun intended) on the reality of it years ago, tbh.... luckily for the NBA, they have a monopoly on pro basketball at the highest level and we've all already built long-standing allegiances to our teams, so we continue to watch anyway...
i dunno why you bother watchin games that involve OKC......
Just a regular OKC game
Yea I've been hearing that a lot on ST, but the thunder are much better than us we can normally ignore it. I see why the spurs complain about it all the time. Funny thing is none of that will work on the heat if they had a chance of making it there this year.
If you talk to any low end NBA basketball player they will complain about how bad the officiating is. I can remember a conversation with a guy that used to play with the Spurs about how the older guys in the league told him that they would rather play in Europe if it weren't for the fact they were payed so well in the NBA. He didn't believe it but after a few years he held the same views. It's a well known fact that refs allow more popular players to get away with certain things to benefit their play style because it draws ratings, and OKC isn't the only team that benefits from this.
Not at all, but they benefit from it more than any other lately.
OKC gets preferential treatment, simple. If Miami wasn't such a resilient team, OKC wouldve been the eventual champions. Unfortunately for Durant and company, Lebron doesn't give a how many FT's OKC shoots. He was winning that series one way or the other.
It's not as much fixing as it is manipulating via the refs. A missed call here, a phantom foul there, can really increase the likelihood of the desired outcome. I'm sure if Stern could mind control the players to get the exact outcome he wanted he would not hesitate.
Ehh, it's a curse more than it's a blessing. If KD was playing in the 1990's he would of grown some balls by now and stop being so soft. I still say that most fans exaggerate how much more foul calls OKC gets but I will conceded that it's more.
Harden does too. Nice transparent post though.
The desired outcome thing is bull and only brought up by conspiracy nuts. As long as players are flying down the court and dunking because defenders are too scared to body them up then Stern is happy and there's a ton of scoring happening then Stern is happy. The league is always going to make money no matter who is playing, the issue is how that playing is done. Is it boring team oriented pass and shoot play or is it Super Star iso ball followed by a dagger 3 or thunderous dunk; that's what matters.
Watch game 6 Lakers V Kings 2002
Lakers V Celtics 2008 game 2
Celtics V Cavaliers game 2 2010
The league only fixes series that have interest, and they DON'T always get their way ie trying to get Lebron to win in 2010 but it's notoriously known that the powers to be try to have a certain story line in the finals.
In the years they couldn't fix anything, it was Spurs V Pistons, and while purists enjoyed the series, the NBA was relatively hurt by this series. Personally, I would like to see Spurs V Heat at this point.
Then I guess Stern himself is a conspiracy nut, since he once said his dream Finals matchup would be "Lakers vs. Lakers"
I'll always shoot straight even if I am aiming way the off; I leave it up to other people to point me in the right direction if I miss because Lord knows people love doing that.
Once upon a time maybe but I think OKC has shown Stern that a team can be marketable in the Finals even if it is a small market. Then again maybe it's just because Durant is the poster boy for the NBA and happens to be on the Thunder; who knows. Having his BFF be our owner doesn't hurt either I suppose.Then I guess Stern himself is a conspiracy nut, since he once said his dream Finals matchup would be "Lakers vs. Lakers"
My take on it is that Stern and Clay Bennett made the league look absolutely horrible for what they did to Seattle in '08, and so Stern needed to make OKC be a smash success relatively quickly to make the average sports fan forget about Sonicsgate - hence the series of high lottery picks and the ridiculously favorable officiating OKC gets....
didn't Durant get called for an offensive foul in the final minute of the game?
/thread
Yeah, because if there were 0 calls on OKC in every 4th quarter and 12 per on the other team, that wouldn't get incredibly obvious really, really fast.
Somewhat of a non sequitur but Stern pulling strings for OKC made me think of this
That was pretty blatantly obvious. It also came after there was a phantom charge call on parsons (NOBODY FELL DOWN) and Fisher jumped in front of harden to give him his 5th foul.
Even if this was the case, they still need to draft right. Durant was a no brainer, but Westbrook, Harden and Ibaka were all queation marks. It so happen they all developed to become solid players. Assuming the league can tamper the lottery, not all high picks guarantees success. For every Shaq and Duncan, there's Olowokandi, Kwame and Eddy Curry.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
