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Originally Posted by Dan1
No. It's cause, as i said, they cant do anything they want. They can decide the outcome of a game just partially. In 06, it was to risky to bring the game 7 to dallas. In 04, the Pistons were much, much better than the Lakers. Same for the Spurs/Cavs series. And im not sure if they care that much about other teams even with the probable higher rating on games 6~7. But make Kobe the next MJ its a must and brings much more money.
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This still doesn't solve the question of why there haven't been more Game 7's or even Game 6's in the playoffs when teams which the league hypothetically has no rooting interest.
If they truly want money, and the matchup is, say, San Antonio versus Cleveland. You can argue which team they would want to win...I'd say Cleveland because of LeBron's marketability, which wouldn't make sense because they got swept. Even so, Game's 3 and 4 were decided by 3 and 1 point respectively. Just from a financial aspect, why wouldn't the NBA just decide to make it a 5 or 6 game series. I mean, it wouldn't effect the outcome to make the Spurs lose a couple after going up 3-0, and it'd help the league. If they do this on a regular basis, why not there?
1999: Spurs beat New York in a 4-1 series. Why wasn't it closer. Who would the NBA want to win, a San Antonio team or a New York team. NY is about 10x bigger than San Antonio...financially, wouldn't more jerseys and what not be sold if a New York team was the Champion. Maybe the Spurs were way better, but you're saying that they wouldn't influence the last game of the series, where SA was already up 3-1, so that New York won? The last game was a 1 point game. Easily riggable.
2002: LA 4-0 over New Jersey. The last two games were decided by a combined 9 points.
You see my point. There are games sitting out there in various Finals where it would have made sense for the NBA to rig them and likely not even change the outcome just so that they could pocket some more money, if that's all they want.
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No, no. What i meant it's that we need to build a team that is clearly better than the Lakers, not equal. Or bring a superstar that Stern and his puppets like. Saying the NBA is rigged its not a excuse, just look back at the Kings/Lakers series in 02 and even the Mavs/Heat in 06. See the Tim Donaghy scandal, see the good "relationship" that Stern has with his referees. They protect superstars, they try to make new dinastys, new MJs, and always tender to favor the bigger teams. And if the referees are bad or biased, they shouldnt.
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The referees are biased and bad. As you said they shouldn't be, but they are. But as more comes out about Donaghy, I doubt him more and more. Don't get me wrong, he didn't make it all up. However, I sincerely doubt the NBA is as involved as everyone says. They don't go decide which team they want to win each series. I've already said that there have been a couple times this decade where they dropped subtle hints. Actually, maybe I'm underestimating -- maybe there were a dozen times or so that dropped hints that Kobe needs to have a good game, or that the Kings can't win this series.
But a lot of what happened was just poor referees. And now? It's 100% referees. The NBA would just have to be stupid, after all the scandals that have gone on, to be rigging games right and left. You honestly think that something wouldn't slip? In this age, I think it would. Referees are still biased, still give Kobe more FT's than he deserves, still let LeBron travel, but its not because the NBA said so, but because they're just bad.
So maybe we need that better team to overcome those referee biases, but I would almost guarentee that there isn't some memo coming from the NBA front office that says, "Dallas cannot ever beat Los Angeles."