Former NBA Ref on Game 7 Officiating: "Something Was Strange" on @JoshInnesShow

LeBron and Curry are two of the most (if not THE most) marketable figures in basketball. Bay area / San Fran is a big market. Cleveland has small market appeal.

Honestly, if it wasn't for the fourth consecutive time they were meeting, I'm willing to bet general fans, casual or otherwise, would rather see CLE-GS than something like HOU-BOS.

 

You give people too much credit. The crowd always flocks to established dysnasties. Ratings when the Lakers were pasting people 4-0 in the finals year after year with Kobe and Shaq were much higher than they were in the mid-2000's when it was Duncan, Dirk, Nash, Lebron, Chauncey, and Wade all mashed up against one another in a perpetual state of competitive parity.

The businessmen who are the most successful in this world know to treat people like instinct-driven animals. We are susceptible to all the lowest common denominator tricks of psychiatry, marketing, and advertisement. The NBA is chief among the sports at realizing this.

 

Nope. Casual fans will always flock for super teams and Lebron. The ratings will be enormous.

 

gsw were fouling 3 pt shooters and not being called

 

I appreciate Rob Manfred more, because when Yuli did his Yu Darvish Impression. In my head I was thinking Rob Manfred seems like a good person. During the media Racism storm was happening I was right he didn't suspend Yuli at all, during the World Series, I believe in all players competing at Full Strength. He Suspended during the Regular Season which is the correct call either way. Remember when Draymond got suspended 1 game against the Cavs in the Finals. Adam Silver did favor LeBron James and helped him win the Title. LeBron is still playing now because of corrupt officiating. Tony Brothers in Game 7 Cavs vs Pacers every time you give a light touch to LeBron in the Low Post Tony is calling fouls.

 

Not saying anything, but the only guy that was added was Foster.

Gm 4.

 

I would counter that with this





https://twitter.com/nballaccess/status/1001427698823155712
https://twitter.com/nballaccess/status/1001428155364708353
https://twitter.com/nballaccess/status/1001429901310914561
https://twitter.com/nballaccess/status/1001431472618819584
https://twitter.com/nballaccess/status/1001432583299887104
https://twitter.com/nballaccess/status/1001434335336128512

 

Interesting stat. Does this mean we're being unfairly biased against Foster as Rockets fans?

 

Fouls are only part of the arsenal. The inconsistencies in the other calls and non-calls were bad. I do think it all started after D’antoni had his shouting match with Foster early in the first half. Foster supposedly has a lot of pride.

 

Remember he called a foul that cost us 4 points

Rocket River
sometimes the call to harm you

 

When I went to the game last night, basically every kid under the age of 15 was wearing a Warriors jersey. Kids are bandwagon fans for the most part, and the league probably knows that the parents are going to be willing to shell out money for merchandise and tickets to keep their kids happy.

 

last year’s NBA finals had the highest ratings since 1998...the NBA was not going to pass up GS-Cle for ISO Harden and the Rockets...Silver gave the refs his orders and they executed it to perfection

 

Hou - Bos I definitely could see the league's concerns...but how do people get off on watching the same two teams in the finals EVERY year? It's boring. Cle - Hou would have been new and it would have had better story lines.

The merchandise and jersey sales is a good point though.

 

its called life

 

We talking about YMCA league right? Da fuq

 

Isn't parity good though for the overall health of the league? Who gives a crap about the ratings for the Finals? That's 4-7 games tops. What about the rest of the season? If 80-90% of NBA teams legitimately feel like they have no shot at the title, that's not gonna bode well for fan interest in those markets. Think of how many organizations aren't even trying to win lately.

This season ain't even over and I can already tell you going into next year, there are maybe 5 teams with legit title hopes: Warriors, Rockets(assuming they resign Clint and CP3), Celtics, Sixers, whatever team LeBron is with.

 

First, parity hinders marketing. Second, the NBA doesn't care about those 80-90% of non-contender NBA teams. They bring in a lot more TV money from China than they do from Memphis. In any case, it's well-known that NBA refs favor teams that are behind in the series and in the game. See for example this paper -- Sub-Perfect Game: Profitable Biases of NBA Referees
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.169.9492

Most of the time these biases are relatively mild, but yesterday was just so blatant. I think the NBA is choosing a terrible path for itself, especially coupled with their expansion into more betting on NBA games. Of all the major sports, basketball is the easiest to fix and their temptations are going to get a lot bigger.

 

Donaghy probably lost money since he is on the record for saying Rockets in 7