Another Cover Up Exposed by Jack Bauer!
For those who watched the final season of “24”, you know the intense struggle and pain Jack Bauer endured in the final 12 hours of Day 8. Bauer went to extreme lengths to expose the truth of the involvement of the Russian government in the assassination of dearly beloved President Hassan of the IRK. If only more in the world were committed to truth and less were trying to stand in the way, or run from it.
This brings me to my latest contribution to Taking Back Sports — the first for the new, reformatted website. Poor officiating has long haunted all sports, but in Game 2 of the NBA Finals last night, it reached a point where even the mildest of fans (myself not included) had to quote one of the greatest figures in sports history, John McEnroe, and ask: “You can’t be serious!”
Look at how happy I was to be at the game. It pretty much went downhill from here.
I am not a slave for ESPN (something I’m quite proud of), so I will not recap the game for you. As required by my conscious and unwritten rules of ethical sports reporting, I will give full disclosure by saying that I am a Lakers fan. I was at the game, so I feel I had a pretty good view of everything that happened for all 48 minutes. My boss has already given me his blessing to compose this article at work since he is also a Lakers fan and watched the game.
Let me get this out of the way. Despite me being already sick of the “He Got Game” references, I must admit that Ray Allen was fantastic for the Celtics after being sidelined with foul trouble all of Game 1.
Moving on …
How good was Rajon Rondo in the fourth quarter? Could he had been that effective if Kobe Bryant, who had been defending him the entire game, picked up his fifth foul for simply getting too close to him going after a rebound and never making contact with him. Probably not. Last time I checked, the “two yard halo rule” was only used by the NFL when players fielded punts. I had no idea this rule gravitated towards basketball. There is much more to be said about specific lapses in officiating, and those of you who watched the game know that, so I won’t summarize.
(Interesting in-game notes though from my mental storage: Boston had four big men with four fouls before the start of the fourth quarter, Kobe and Ron Artest had four fouls before the fourth quarter, and Lamar Odom had three fouls with four minutes remaining in the first quarter! Simply put, the box score was a bloodbath. Heck, Boston would have had just as much of a gripe as the Lakers do if they lost.)
Allow me to provide what the refs are saying here. "Okay, boys, how can we screw the Lakers out of a Game 2 win?"
As my loyal follows know, nothing infuriates me more as a sports fan than poor officiating (having been one myself). Preventing players from deciding a game, especially at the championship level is inexcusable. Boston built a fourteen point lead in the first half and the Lakers slowly chipped away as Kevin Garnett and Kendrick Perkins were hampered with foul trouble. By the start of the fourth quarter, the game was tied and the third quarter was played tighter than the lid of Snookie’s pickle jar. (The girl likes pickles, folks. What can I say?). With nine minutes and change left, Kobe was charged with the phantom foul discussed earlier. Shortly after, Garnett picked up his fifth foul. Much of the final quarter of Game 2 was played with star players taken out of their game.
For those who saw the game, the Lakers clearly took the majority of the poor officiating. Kobe was shafted, and props to him and the entire Lakers coaching staff for not getting charged with a single technical foul. The one person on the floor who came closest to getting one, Jack Nicholson, really incensed an already pissed off Laker crowd that was relatively mild by sports standards. If someone paying thousands of dollars for courtside seats is risking ejection, you know something is wrong with the officiating.
The NBA has had its issues with officiating the past ten years. Everyone remembers the Tim Donaghe scandal. Remember Game 6 of the ‘02 Western Conference Finals? I remember, and now I see why the Sacramento Kings had beef. Everyone remembers the special treatment Dwayne Wade got from the officials during the Heat’s Championship run in 2006, and even ESPN was not shy about letting viewers know that.
This sounds very conspiracy-theory-ish, but David Stern has always been a very intelligent commissioner of the NBA. He knows what’s good for business. That’s all I will say about that because I don’t want to formally suggest the NBA is fixing games. What I will suggest is the NBA, like any league, prefers certain outcomes and/or lengths of playoff series. Boston played very good Sunday night, but as a sports fan, I’m not convinced Boston wins that game if all things are equal. Rondo would not have had the impact he did if Kobe was allowed to play basketball, and on the flip side, Bynum and Gasol would not have combined for 46 points and a heck of a lot of blocked shots if Garnett and Perkins were allowed to play basketball.
My time to watch and read post-game coverage was limited because I was at the game and then had to drive two hours home from the game and then go to sleep, but I did have a little time Sunday night and Monday morning. Like most people, I depend on ESPN for most sports coverage, because there are simply limited options at this time until Taking Back Sports becomes a goliath. I didn’t see one mention of the officiating in any article or TV report from ESPN! That is because ESPN is ESPN, and ESPN does not want to enrage the NBA and lose media privileges. Fair enough, but that just makes ESPN more like any other news source and less about highlights of good sports and “real” analysis.
Sadly, there are only two people who I can count on at ESPN to give their true observations and objective analysis: Bob Knight and Bill Simmons. Bob Knight sadly only covers college hoops, and Simmons is a Celtic, and my attempts to reach out to him via Twitter to get his thoughts on the officiating went unrequited. Shocker!
I know Phil Jackson is chomping at the bit to talk about the refs in Game 2 in his press conferences, but he will likely stand down after receiving a $25,000 fine for talking about the special treatment Kevin Durant now gets from the officials. I think Jackson could care less about the fine he would receive (over/under is $49,500). What he probably fears more is suspension … And rightfully so. If my conversations with Lakers fans during and after the game are any indication, there’s a whole bevy of fans willing to have the bill taken out of their paychecks to speak out over a great wrong they feel was done.
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