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| Brad Miller was clearly fouled flagrantly at the end of a 2009 Eastern Conference Semifinal game by Rajon Rondo. The officials instead only assessed a shooting foul as opposed to a flagrant foul, just one of the many examples of poor officiating in recent league history. |
Watching Friday night's game three of the Bulls-Heat series was one of the most frustrating things I have ever watched. As you all know, I love the Chicago Bulls. I'm a huge Bulls fan. Very often we hear people upset about the referees and the officiating of games. It's like a defense mechanism. We don't want to admit that our team lost to the better team, so we blame it on something such as officiating. There are games that happen where the officiating is not good and it is favoring a side. I've played in games. When I played baseball, I would often be playing catcher for a couple innings each day out there. I witnessed the inconsistencies of an umpire's strike zone. When I played basketball, in my junior high league I remember officials having their favorites and the kids they didn't like. There was one guy on my team that no matter what he did, would never get any love from any officials. But that's junior high basketball.
Again, there are games where the officials screw up. Which is why I think we could use more replay in sports. Even if it takes more time, I'd rather have a game slowed down by replay and make sure they have the right call, than a game moving quickly that doesn't. In the summer of 2010, umpire Jim Joyce blew a call at first base that cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game. He felt horrible about it all. Bad calls happen, and sadly it is a part of the game, which is why I think we can take measures to get a more fair game.
But this isn't just me talking about one game. This is me talking about a cycle of shady behavior and officiating in the David Stern era. It goes beyond officiating. The NBA Draft Lottery. Blocking an attempted trade by a league-owned team. It all just smells funny.
That's not to say that everything that has happened since David Stern took over as commissioner has been corrupt. I don't want to outright say it is all fixing. I just want to point to some shady moments in the recent history of the league.
Where to begin? Why not the 1985 Draft Lottery? One year after taking over as the new commissioner of the association, Stern decides to change things up and hold the first ever Draft Lottery, where the seven teams with the worst records would all get an equal shot for the first pick of the draft. The winning team would get the prize that was the future Hall of Fame big man out of Georgetown, Patrick Ewing. Everyone wanted him.
Bill Simmons wrote about this. He pointed out the different things that happened in this draft lottery. All of the envelopes go in to the drum cleanly. Except for one of them. One of them is kind of banged up against the side. This makes it have a crease or a mark on it. Then when Stern goes to pick out the envelope, he doesn't pick the one on top. No, he reaches down, flips over a couple ones that are on top of this random one, and then takes that one. He then reveals that the New York Knicks have the first pick of the NBA Draft. The Pacers fans (Pacers got the second pick) react in the disgust and Stern stands there looking guilty. And the Knicks win. The team that needed it most. The biggest market, and one of the league's marquee teams. I have a tough time believing that all of that happened by chance.
The whole idea of the draft lottery allows for people to be concerned with what's going on. I'm not sure when they decided to start having it behind closed doors, but that's the way they do it now. So anyone that questions the legitimacy of it all, has no reason not to.
In 2003, the consensus #1 overall pick was LeBron James. Carmelo Anthony was an attractive option, but LeBron was going first no matter who was picking. The Cleveland Cavaliers and Denver Nuggets had the two worst records in the regular season, so they each had the highest chance of getting the top pick. The pick went to Cleveland, which made some people wonder if the draft lottery was fixed. LeBron is from Akron, Ohio, about 40-45 minutes from Cleveland. They wondered if the league wanted to have the nice story of LeBron growing up and playing for his hometown team.
Could that have been fixed? Perhaps, but there was a really good chance that Cleveland would get the top pick anyways. I think there are better examples of draft lotteries that smell funny. And that example comes from 2008.
Entering the 2007-08 season, the Boston Celtics were pretty much everyone's favorites to win the East. But experts and fans looked at the Bulls to be the toughest challenge to them. Some were even declaring the Bulls as the new "Beast of the East". The Bulls were coming off their first playoff series win since the Jordan era. They gave the Pistons a solid challenge in the second round of the playoffs and the future was looking bright. The team didn't have a superstar though. Actually, they still hadn't had an all-star since MJ. 10 YEARS without an all-star. But anyway, people thought this Bulls team could compete.
What came was next was a season that Bulls' GM John Paxson called "disappointing" and "disturbing". The Bulls won only 33 games, and the team missed the playoffs for the first time since the 2003-04 season. The season pretty much showed that the Bulls were still a star away. The young core they had that looked good (Kirk Hinrich, Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, Andres Nocioni, Chris Duhon) ended up not being the core they would need to build around. We weren't sure of this at the time and we weren't exactly sure what the future would hold. But it looked like we could be in for another season like that one.
It looked like we could be mediocre, and if were a playoff team, it didn't look like we could be actual championship contenders. But one sudden twist of fate changed everything. The NBA Draft Lottery came around, and people looked at this as a rather solid draft. The top two talents were Memphis point guard Derrick Rose, who was born and raised in Chicago, and Kansas State forward Michael Beasley. While both looked like they could be all-stars, I think most teams coveted Derrick Rose with the top pick. His career has turned out well for him. In just his third year in the league he won the MVP award, being the youngest player to do that at the age of 22 years-old.
Anyway, as I was saying, things didn't look too great for us Bulls fans. We hoped we could maybe grab someone at the back end of the lottery section of the draft. Instead, with a 1.7% chance of winning the lottery, we did just that and were granted the first pick in the draft. While I was extremely happy and I still am happy we have Derrick Rose, I can't help but think there's something weird about this. How does team win with that slim of a chance? It looked like the league helped out a big market team and one of the best basketball franchises ever by giving them the best player in the draft, who happened to grow up in the city. It was the best thing to happen to us since Jordan. It was the superstar we needed.
That was also shady. And I will admit to that. I won't lie and say I was upset with the result. I was happy about it and I still am happy we have Derrick. But I still wonder about it all.
An ongoing story line from last season was how the New Orleans Hornets were owned by the league and how that might have had an impact on things going on. This will transition in to my next point of power corruption. But for now I'll focus on the Hornets and the draft lottery. The league sold the team a few weeks before the lottery. The Hornets won the lottery. It made you wonder, could the league have given the top pick to the new owners to sweeten the deal? Jim Rome couldn't help but ask. That's right. Perhaps the ballsiest man in the business, Jim Rome. The guy who wouldn't back down to Jim Everett which resulted in Everett attacking him on his show.
Jim Rome had David Stern on his radio show and after a pretty normal, nice conversation, the conversation drastically shifted. Rome asked Stern in a respectful way if the lottery was fixed. Stern then reacts like a little kid. He flips out and asks if Rome if he still beats his wife. Rome has no history of being abusive or anything like that, but Stern wanted to ask an outrageous question back. Stern acted in a very unprofessional manor, and it made people wonder if it could have been fixed. It could have. Stern didn't react to it well at all.
Skip to around 7:35 in the video to get to the question.
The next order of business I wanted to get to also involves the Hornets. The team was looking to shop star point guard Chris Paul. Early in the season, the Hornets agreed to trade Paul to the Lakers in a deal that also involved the Houston Rockets. Here's how the trade would look:
Lakers get: Chris Paul
Rockets get: Pau Gasol
Hornets: Lamar Odom, Kevin Martin, Luis Scola, Goran Dragic, Rockets' first round pick.
At the time looking at this was a GOOD TRADE for the Hornets. All sides were happy with what they were receiving. We've all been in that fantasy football league with that one guy who craves power. The league GM. The guy that won't let the trades you make with your buddies go through, even though both of you really want to make the deal. We know how irritating that can be. Well that's exactly what happened here. Stern vetoed the trade, preventing Chris Paul from going to the Lakers. I'm not a Lakers fan and I didn't want to see Chris Paul playing with that team. I knew they could be scary good. But I also didn't want a trade that three teams agreed upon not going through. That's an abuse of power. It is just so wrong on so many levels. And yet the league still continues to do this kind of stuff.
So that's it for part one of this article. Ready for Part Two? Go ahead and check it out! Thanks for reading and let me hear your thoughts!
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