I don't know how the NBA got off so easily with that referee scandal a while back. That should have wrecked them. I am pretty confident the NBA will do whatever it can not to let other crooked referees be found, because it will hurt the league so bad. Just like when there was so much corruption with the NYC police in the 80's. Once they had one big scandal, the police departments did everything it could to prevent other corrupt precincts from being outed to maintain police reputation.
Referees could be perfect, and the Warriors would still be the massive favorites. The issue is these Max contracts that allow one team to be able to afford so many superstars.
I don't think it's all rigged... but sometimes there's obvious bias. But if one team is that much better and executing - the NBA isn't gonna stop them with bad officiating... but if it's close and there's a preference....
Even if it isn't intentional, the impact and subjectivity of officiating in basketball is a big weakness of the game. Officials are not nearly as influential in other sports, and there isn't consistency at all.
I find the draft lottery to be one of the biggest farces. If its RNG drawing, do it for the public eye, not behind closed doors. It really bothered me the year that the league just sold NOP and then they won the first pick. Chance could have dictated that they recieved the pick, but why not show it to remove doubt?
I believe it is rigged, and not just by the refs. I believe the star players intentionally throw games or affect the score for point shaving purposes. Need proof? Look no further than KD & Steph Curry last year. James Harden looked VERY suspect in the finals w/ OKC. Watching the game closely you know exactly what I'm talking about
I fully agree with you... the NBA has the worst officiating of all the major sports... In this day and age there's no reason for poor officiating... with the technology that exists today, you can have umpteen cameras zooming in with pinpoint efficiency at every spot on the court - there's no good excuse for getting a call wrong... The NBA is not willing to put the systems in place to ensure games are called correctly... whether that's due to greed or other nefarious motivations - who knows... The NBA is one step away from WWE... but hey, they're making money hand over fist - so what's their motivation for changing?
This is a major point, comparing 'penalties' across the major sports. In football, you can award yardage, but the defensive team is still out there to compete and try and stop forward progress. In hockey, you can award a power play, but the shorthanded team is still out there to compete and try to kill it. Even a penalty shot in hockey/soccer still has a goalie out there (although soccer goalies are pretty much worthless). In baseball.... well I don't really care for baseball. But in basketball - as a ref, you clear everyone off the playing surface and give a guy free attempts at points at your discretion! It's 1000% critical that you don't try to let your preference influence the game.... but it does. We've seen it over and over even during Finals series over the last 15 years. So I don't think the NBA is 'rigged' in the sense that scores are fixed and outcomes are pre-determined, but I do think the league knows it has weapons to influence 'favorable' outcomes very directly. That's why, even though I love the Rockets, the NBA will never be my #1 favorite league. Don't even get me started on the player egos, or the super-team crap.
Also if anyone questions my opinion on whether the league is partially rigged, my response is "basketball reasons".
Wait what? Where is this example? You do realize they have to make hundreds of calls/no-calls in a game? This is absolutely hilarious and sad. Teams lose because they aren't as good as the other team. It's just a much better coping mechanism to just blame rigging and it makes people feel better.
See, I feel like Football the refs have MORE power. No they don't score directly but if you give a team enough chances to score, eventually they will. They can also prevent a team from scoring by calling a simple holding call. There are so many minor rules that can be called here or there to prevent or encourage a team from scoring. Texan fans know how agonizing it was to go against Peyton Manning, watch him lob some ball 40 yards deep for an easy pass interference call. Now we have subjective Roughing the Passer calls so now they can even take away drive halting sacks. You can outplay bad officiating in the NBA just by being better.
It's an interesting discussion, but in my view you can't beat the way the NBA just awards points directly, abritrarily. Even the worst pass interference call can't directly lead to a touchdown. It can take you all the way to the 0 yard line (and piss you off royally), but in the end, the points can only be scored on the NEXT play.
I don't think the league overall is rigged, but refs are human. Not only do they make critical mistakes, they all have their biases against/for certain players/teams, making it appear rigged at times.
Behind closed doors, they have reps from every team watching + media members + the EY accounting firm handles it. The results are only revealed on live tv for the 15 minute drama. Nobody wants to watch picks starting at 1 and going up. In fact, here's a video of what you're looking for. It's not just done live on tv, but video exists of the real draft lottery. Seriously, the Stonecutters are not controlling the draft. http://www.nba.com/video/channels/draft/2015/05/19/2015-draft-lottery-drawing.nba/ http://grantland.com/the-triangle/behind-the-scenes-of-the-nba-draft-lottery/ <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oRrgvRmKLN8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
you still have to make the free throws. and of course, while there are a lot of free throws over the course of a game, a bad call that leads to free throws might award a team 2% of all the points they are going to score in that game. a bad pass interference call that moves a team from the 50 to the 1 could greatly increase the odds of scoring 25-33% of all your points in a game.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of it being rigged, and my disdain for a rigged system of pro-sports, I still wish the referee scandal didn't come out when it did. That season that Donaughy spilled the beans, the league was setting up for a LeBron-Kobe finals match up, and due to much more closely analyzed and scrutinized refereeing, Orlando made it past Cleveland in the ECF for that rather mundane Orlando-Lakers finals series. Man, kind of a travesty that we never got a Kobe-LeBron finals match up. I guess we'll have to settle for their Allstar game bouts, and team USA scrimmages lol. That's one marketing opportunity that I'm sure the NBA regrets missing out on.
That's a good argument. My counter-argument to that is that the NFL could clean up the way pass-interference calls are made, if that's the worst aspect of their officiating. On the other hand, free-throws are THE mechanism by which almost all infractions are penalized in basketball. It's a tough pill to swallow, and pretty much requires all human bias to be removed. Since I'm really bored at work today, I'll try some napkin math to compare my favorite sport (NHL), with my other favorite (NBA). The average NHL team had about 20% powerplay conversion last season (I think). The average goals scored per game, per team, is about 2.7 over the last several years. The average powerplays per game was 3.11 last year. So 3.11 x 20% = about .62 goals per game. And .7 / 2.7 goals per game means penalties generally contribute about 23% of goals scored. In the NBA, the median team scored about 102 ppg last year. The median team's average free throws attempted per game was 23. The median team's free throw % was 77%. So, 23 x 77% = about 17.71 points per game contributed per game from free-throws. 17.7 / 102 = 17%. So - fouls contributed about 17% of points scored. Football is way too complex for me to try this sort of simplified math. So your point stands that the NBA isn't so bad in terms of the total amount of points being influenced by officiating... but we haven't really gotten into offensive fouls, forced changes of possession, etc. Plus, I think "foul trouble" forcing coaches to change who they can put on the floor during key moments is a major way that bad calls influence NBA games. We also can't objectively measure how "valid" the average NHL penalty is versus the average NBA foul... I'd be willing to bet the difference is significant.
