The JVG Rockets were considered to be one of the most boring teams to watch. Also the fact that JVG made those infamous statement could be another reason why they didn't want the Rockets to win. They were making a statement. Question the officals publicly and you'll regret you ever did.
He's not saying that the NBA is "fixed". He's saying referees have their own personal favorites and enemies that they may call for or against, and that partiality is rampant. To say that the NBA is completely rigged and they choose their own champion every year would be ludicrous. But to say that there is a dark cloud over the officiating and they obviously are not ethically and morally sound (and neither is the league) is quite justifiable.
I agree that's the type of call (no-call in this case) that makes you go hmmm. But still the only logical reason I can see the refs giving favorable calls to the Mavs is to force it to seven games. Unless I'm mistaken the series was tied 2-2 at that time, so once again what's the motivation?
But once again talking about this particular series, which referee's had good relationships with Mark Cuban? The guy has berated them far more than JVG ever did, and probably more than any other owner, coach, player in the entire league.
People seem to think the allegation is that Stern had TD fixing games to favor a teams advancement. Or that Stern wants big market teams to win because its more fans and what not. TD was gambling based on what he recognized as biases by certain refs towards certain players. When he was caught he spilled some of the little things the NBA did that seemed like they might be true. He was not fixing games he was betting on. No where is it alleged that Stern instructs the refs to make big market teams win championships. What it says is...favorable ref treatment is given on occasion to push series further. Evidence here can be seen in Lakers/Kings series and the Mavs/Rockets series, heck even the Heat/Mavs finals. It appeared that the Mavs(in finals), Rockets and Kings had the advantage and would win thier series in less than 7 games. Questionable officiating pushed all those series further than they might of gone had it been officiated normally. Unfortunatley in these specific cases, the team which recieved the favorable treatment ended up being the victor in the deciding game despite perhaps not being the better team. Thus when people say well then how come big market team A didnt win here or how come little market team B had so much success, its not a contradiction to TD's claims.
Did anyone who hear the entire interview catch this part: Somebody on another forum mentioned this part and I didn't see it mentioned here. Very interesting if he said that.
Donaghy has said elsewhere that the Lakers got some benefit on calls because they were good about being a pain-in-the-ass about sending in complaints to the league about mistakes. Cuban's complaints could annoy the refs and make them want to punish him, or they could cow the refs and make them call things in Dallas' favor so they don't have to hear Cuban complaining. I think Cuban was aiming for the latter when he made his complaints, and I think it worked. Not just with the moving pick violations, but with officiating, generally.
This no-call happened in Game 7 if I remember correctly. We were about to go on a run to pull us within reachable deficit to compete for a win in that situation. Momentum changes quickly after that obvious action by Finley, completely and abso-****ing-lutely out of bounds and stripped the ball away from Jon Barry. Me and my homeys were cut up with that officiating back in taht day, but life moved on and it's all brought up like 4 years later? Well, already get over it.
What I'm reading here is "certain refs didn't like certain players and were nasty towards them." But that isn't corruption, or heck even anything that's even remotely fixable. Refs in general are going to have biases towards one player or another, as it's simply human nature, and to claim that a ref being possibly biased towards one guy or another is a sign of corruption is ridiculous - at worst it's a sign that that is just not a good ref, and if the Tim Donaghy story is to spout "The NBA has bad refs", than we're wasting our time talking about this.
If he did say that in his interview, then screw him! That was T-mac's prime year I may say, he just screwed up that series, which was supposed to be highly likely the first time since 94-95 Rockets advanced to the 2nd round of the playoffs, also would have been T-Mac's first time.
If your conjecture is true, then this isn't even news. It's the same reason coaches sometimes decide to get the themselves thrown out of games in order to make a point. They know complaining can sometimes work or else they wouldn't do it. Happens in every single sport at every single level. That's just part of the game and if that is the case, then kudos to the Lakers and Mavs for doing it so well. Every time I've tried to refute a point in this thread a new explanation is brought up for why the refs might have favored the Mavs over the Rockets. A lot of these points seem to contradict each other. I think this is what we have so far.... 1.) The NBA fixes the games so big market teams win...but wait the Mavs aren't a bigger market/draw than the Rockets 2.) They want the series to go to seven games...but wait the game that was the most blatantly poorly officiated of the series was game 5 when the series was tied 2-2. 3.) Refs don't fix games but call games favorable for guys they like and have good relationships with. Wait, refs hate Mark Cuban. There's not a figure in the league who has been more critical of them the past decade. 4.) And finally, refs don't fix games for guys they have good relationships with, they only call games favorably for the assholes that give them a hard time about their officiating. Did I leave anything out? There's a whole lot of circular logic going on here that I just can't compete with.
