Every now and then, Bill Simmons turns in one of those columns that every sports fan must read. This is one of those columns:
Forget about who’s winning the championship. I’m starting to feel like the future of the NBA is at stake.
Hyperbole? I’m not too sure — his reasoning is awfully compelling.
I must say that the NBA is soft! I can’t stand how the games are being called. I love the OLD School Bad Boy basketball. How in the world D-Wade make it to the foul line 20 plus times? Reggie Miller said in a interview that Wade is getting MJ like calls. We really have to make some moves to our team if we are going win another ring. D-Wade is good but he is not that good. I would love to see Rick or Bill put him on his ass…..
Have to love the closing rant on Salvatore.
Did we get a link with that?
Rocky Cliffs: Yeah, my bad. I just added it in there.
the refs are going to work tonight. It angers me when dwyane knocks down a player its a blocking foul.
Ugh… the first of many Heats championships to come, unless Shaq wears down, which he wont
Shaq won’t wear down? You must not have been watching the same Shaq I was.
This is the Heat’s only shot…even perennial Pistons’ hater Tim Legler said Detroit would be back next season…
I can relate to what Bill is saying in his artile. But, I am also one of those ole skool fans who likes to see teams just battle it out. But the refs, oh the refs, they just wont let it be will they? At NO time should 1 player shoot AS MANY free throws as the opposing team!
“I don’t think the NBA fixes games, but they have one trick that they use for situations like this — when they want a home team to win the game, they invariably assign the worst referees possible to that game for two reasons: Bad referees have a tendency to get swayed by the home crowd, and bad referees never have the stones to make a tough call on the road.”
This is an interesting theory. I hope the uproar is loud enough. I’ve always hated “the stars get the calls”. It’s crap. A foul should be a foul and refs should swallow their whistles at the end of the game.
I kind of got that feeling in the playoffs whenever I was watching the Detroit games and Bennett Salvatore or that other really old guy was the ref (his name escapes me now)…I always had the feeling that these guys were going to do their best to give the game to Detroit…whereas Dan Crawford always gave technicals to Rasheed Wallace, and Detroit never won a game he was part of in the playoffs.