Yao Ming targeted? JVG might have been right in 2005

That's a good point....does anybody have the TV ratings information from those countries during those periods?

 

The Yao/Yi high viewership was from China, and correct me if I'm wrong, but that game wasn't even televised nationally in the States. How much revenue does China give he NBa compared to the American market. As we all know, Yao isn't the most popular draw in the States, heck he can't even sellout his homecourt games. Stern and the NBA probably value the American market more. It could be a reason why Yao does not get the "star" treatment from the refs like Lebron.

 

obviously JVG does not want to be blacklisted from the league and anything to do with the NBA. I remember along with the hefty fine he was threatened with being blacklisted.

 

If money is the case then isn't using these player's physical attributes a type of ethically wrong using of another person. I mean sure these players get large sums of money, but when they go out there and put their bodies on the lines, for a lost cause like I guess Tmac, Yao, Divac, Bibby, Webber, and most importantly Sura did...what is the point of playing.

Are they playing so the NBA can get their ticket sales?
Are they playing for entertainment because if they are then why not make it NBE (national basketball entertainment)...That is what the NBA is feeding on i guess...drama!

or

Are we playing to see which team is the best in a competitive sport that we all know and love because it single handedly tests every part of a player?

...on a side note...these players get paid so much, but the physical toll they take and their lives after their careers are over isn't pretty. They face arthiritis, many bone diseases, and several muscle injuries.

If the NBA keeps manipulating games then low market teams will never reach the top unless they hit the jackpot in a lottery and draft the next big thing...

ALA Lebron, Yao (to a lesser extent)

 

say what? All I'm saying is, there are obvious star calls in the NBA, Lebron is the prime example of this. The NBA benefits by helping stars like Lebron succeed. So one would think the NBA would help an international star like Yao succeed by giving him star treatment, but as we know the opposite has happened, More times than not, Yao has recieved poor officiating.

So my guess is that because Yao's popularity is mainly in China, Yao does not get the star treatment one would expect.

 

NBA is just a SHOW and everything is about entertainment.
Why not just calm down, relax and enjoy it? If you can't, turn off the TV, unplug the cable and go out fishing.

 

Oh my god. So much pain. So much pain. Why, oh why did I watch the video? Sniff. We were clearly the superior team.

 

Unfortunately, they sell it as a sports, not a show; and many players still play their hearts out like this is a sports.

 

NBA should apologize to all fans, especially Houston fans.

Or they should be punished for not doing so.

 

Dude you cant be serious. The US market is what counts! Not the International Market. I find it hard to believe the Spurs have a world wide market.

I know they have Ginobili and Parker but there respective countries dont generate the income the US would.

 

I am serious. I remember I read a report about tv ratings of nba finals. It compared 2006 finals to 2007 finals, and claimed 2006 finals won us tv ratings but 2007 finals won worldwide tv ratings.

Manu is the biggest celebraty in FIBA, and Mr. Longoria has many fans in europe.

We all know the nba league's global policy...

 

i've come to the conclusion that david stern is a money-grubbing *insert expletive* who uses to yao to promote his international market and then proceed to screw him over because he simply cannot allow a international player to be a top 5 player in the game. he'd be averaging 30ppg if he got all the calls duncan did.

 

I just don't even want to think about this. It hurts too much right now to think about what could've been. If we were out of the first round by now, the tables could have turned in such a different way.

 

check this out++++

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJTAuxgqBZU

 

yeah i remember it, it was last season's game. we lost it and that yao's foul...i wouldn't have called a foul, especially at that point

 

I don't think this deserves it's own thread so I'll post it here...

Fix not in for game, player or NBA officiating policy


By RICHARD JUSTICE
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

NEVER mind that David Stern may not have fixed a game. Perception is reality in an industry dependent on the public trust.

That's what makes the NBA commissioner's challenge so difficult. There may not be a paper trail proving games have been fixed, but there's unlikely to be one clearing the league either.

That said, Stern should act. Boldly. Quickly. Indeed, some of these problems speak to his arrogance.

Coaches and a few former referees have long been critical of the way the NBA hires and evaluates referees. Now the time has come to remove the refs from the umbrella of the league office.

Will this fix everything? Of course not. No amount of oversight is going to fix everything that's wrong with NBA officiating.

The players are so large and quick and the court is so small that NBA basketball is by far the toughest game to ref.

Even the league's best officials — Dan Crawford, Joe Crawford, Steve Javie — are going to miss calls because of positioning on the floor or the sheer athleticism of players.

Now, about the Rockets and Mavericks in 2005. It makes no sense that the NBA would favor the Mavericks.

The Rockets have two players — Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady — more popular and more marketable than anyone on the Dallas roster. If Stern were going to put the fix in, he'd fix it for the Rockets. Do you think he'd love to have Yao going deep in the playoffs? Sure, he would.

Yes, Mavs owner Mark Cuban complained about the screens Yao was setting. There was nothing wrong with his complaining, and there was nothing wrong with the NBA's telling refs to watch those screens more closely.


No favors for Cuban
But the NBA should have announced it to the world. Jeff Van Gundy ended up hearing it on the sly from a league official and was fined $100,000 after blowing up that one owner would have such influence.

Why not make it all public? What are we talking about? Illegal screens? It's not like the future of the free world is riding on a couple of calls.

To think Stern fixed a game as a favor to Cuban is ridiculous. Their relationship has ranged from antagonistic to icy. If Stern decides to fix a game for an owner, it won't be Cuban.

But the matter was handled badly. Rockets fans are still suspicious. They're overlooking the small point that their team choked like dogs in Game 7.

That Kings-Lakers playoff game in 2002 was worked by three of the NBA's best referees — Bob Delaney, Dick Bavetta and Ted Bernhardt. It's hard to imagine they were part of a conspiracy to fix a game, so maybe they simply had a bad night at the office.

The officiating was so bad that night that it was mentioned the next morning in newspapers around the country. If you were ever going to be suspicious, this was the game to make you suspicious.

Wouldn't you love to inject current Rockets coach Rick Adelman with truth serum and get him to discuss that game? The Kings' coach at the time, he watched the Lakers shoot 27 foul shots in the fourth quarter. The Kings were whistled for 16 fouls in the fourth quarter, the Lakers eight.

NBA fans have long believed certain teams and players get preferential treatment from referees. Coaches have whispered some of the same things.

Now we have a disgraced former referee saying it. Tim Donaghy has offered no proof, no corroboration of any kind. There's no reason to believe a single word out of his mouth.

But because he reinforces our worst beliefs about the NBA, because he's saying what we already believe to be true, his words are being taken as gospel by some.


If the shoe fits ...
Stern has issued the usual emphatic denials, complete with a trashing of Donaghy. That's not nearly enough.

Lakers coach Phil Jackson didn't exactly clear the issue up when he used words like stolen and suspicious to describe calls in that 2002 series.

The problem is that issues of integrity can eat away at a sport's foundation. If fans begin to believe the games aren't called honestly, their cynicism can turn to apathy. Apathy is a killer.

Through the years, every NBA reporter has heard amazing things about officials. There are NBA refs who don't like certain players, refs who don't like particular coaches.

The human element will never be removed from sports. Nor should it be. That said, listen to a couple of stories.

"Michael Jordan is cursing an official right in front of our bench," an NBA coach once told me. "I'm hearing every word of it, and I promise you very few players could get away with the things he's saying. When Michael is finished, the referee asks, 'Can I have your shoes for my charity auction?' "

Just thinking about the conversation, the coach is getting worked up.

"Now I'm ticked off. Are you telling me this guy is going to make tough calls on Michael Jordan when he's hoping to get a pair of his shoes? So I bring it up when the coaches meet with the league that summer. You know what the league guy asks? He wants me to give him the name of the referee. It's like I'm making up the story. No way I'm naming the ref. If the ref doesn't get back at me, one of his buddies will.

"I'm trying to get out of giving up the guy's name when Jerry Sloan speaks up, saying, 'Of course, stuff like that goes on. We've all heard it.' God bless Jerry Sloan."

Wait, it gets better.

"Another time, we're playing a big game late in the regular season, a playoff seeding on the line. Late in the first overtime, a ref makes an amazing call right in front of our bench that basically decides the game. I'm so ticked off I can't see straight.

"And then 15 minutes later, as I'm talking to the media in the hallway, here comes the ref that made the call being hustled out of the arena with a police escort. He had a flight to catch! He made that call to get the game over with."


Stern needs new view
Coaches are paranoid to begin with. These complaints are small potatoes compared to charges of fixing a playoff series or picking on a particular player.

In the end, it's likely the perception is far worse than the reality. But the perception is absolutely terrible, and that's what Stern must deal with. He must first be willing to look at NBA officiating the way the outside world does.

If he's willing to take that difficult step, everything else might be relatively easy.

Listen to Richard Justice weekdays from 10 a.m.-noon on 1560 AM. richard.justice@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/bk/bkn/5832413.html

 

the flip side is that Stern does not need Yao to advance in the playoffs to bolster the NBA's popularity in China.

everyone knows that the NBA is lagging in the US, but in China it's like 1991 all over again... people are NBA crazy. whether yao advances or not they'll continue to watch yao and buy jerseys.

the whole mentality of the NBA is wrong. the idea that stars deserve "calls" is wack and runs counter to the concept of sportsmanship in America. starting with that premise leads down the road to all sorts of abuses like donaghy. let's not pretend that baseball or football hasn't had issues like roids and videogate but in no other sport is the idea of bending the rules and influencing the outcome of games by officials so ingrained in the culture the league. I mean can you imagine MLB telling umps to start shrinking the strikezone on jeter if he gets down 0-2 in the count in the playoffs? because the "NY market is so important to baseball?" can you imagine fans in Boston or other cities SWALLOWING that rationale like in the NBA??

it all comes down to the fans... how much are they willing to take. we had guys arguing on this very BBS that BARRY CALL for god's sakes... and that was something so blatant that even the NBA had to admit was wack. that goes to show that this controversy is gonna blow over for the NBA... there are dudes out there who are willing to be sold anything which is too bad because the NBA does have a great product if the owners would just replace stern and clean house

seriously though if it wasn't for the rockets I'd be done with the NBA. I'm not even watching the finals, I just catch sportscenter and turn off all the crap with steven A and those dudes hyping kobe after the wrapup

 

I HOPE THE WHOLE THING BLOWS UP IN STERN'S FACE! THIS BS OF CALLING AN AGENDA RATHER THAN THE GAME HAS TOTALLY KILLED THE NBA'S REP... I'VE GOT FRIENDS THAT REFER TO NBA OFFICIATING AS A STEP ABOVE WWE - AND I CAN'T ARGUE - THINKING BACK TO WHEN NOBODY WOULD CALL JORDAN FOR A 6TH - REGARDLESS. IT'S JUST TOTAL BS! ADDITIONALLY, AS AN INDIVIDUAL THAT LIVES IN VEGAS... HOW MANY MILLIONS TRANSACT ON EVERY GAME? YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW, MR STERN - IF YOU ARE WILLING TO BE DISHONEST FOR ONE REASON OR ANOTHER, IT WON'T BE LONG TIL THOSE YOU'RE OVERSEEING MAKE THE SAME MOVES FOR THEIR OWN BENEFITS - OH WAIT, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED....