NBA Gone Stale
The NBA has completly lost my interest. I started watching when I was 9 years old. Thats 20 years of watching bad calls, no calls, cry babies and way too much money spent on nothing.
The Pistons were not beaten by talent, they we out super star’d. It does not take a better basketball team, it takes a money making super star, or in the case of the Heat, 2 super stars to win a basketball game. I am not talking about skills, I am talking about money. The players that bring in the most money, will win the most games. This season was proof. The Miami Heat did not out play the Dallas Mavericks, they out super star’ed them, therefore made the NBA more money, therfore were given more games.
As I speak to people about their thoughts on the playoffs and the finals I find more often than not no one payed attention. They may have checked the stats on espn, but no one watched the games. Very few Detroiters even watched the Pistons. Not only did they not pay attention around here, Dallas Metblog has not even mentioned the fact that their team was in the finals. And the Miami Metblog just posted for the first time today with the time and date of the Celebration Parade and top billing in the post went to water.
David Stern has the fate of the NBA in his hands. If he lets this slip any more College Ball players will get paid to play and the TNT Basketball crew will have to cover play by play for next seasons Americas Got Talent side by side with David Hasselhof.
As a Pistons fan, I dislike Miami more than any other team in the league. I can’t stand Shaq, D-Wade, Antoine Walker, and ‘Zo (especially). I do have to give them props though for beating the Pistons and coming back from two down to win the title. While I disagree with you that the Heat was basically given the title (teams still have to make shots and coaches still have to call good plays, mind you, no matter how many calls they were given), I did find some of the calls (such as at the end of Game 5 when Wade was “fouled” with 1.9 seconds left, not to mention the refs not allowing Dallas to use their final timeout after both free throws) absolutely atrocious and I have been annoyed with the “superstar” treatment since MJ played for the Bulls in the ’80s. When Wade shoots more free throws than the ENTIRE Mavs team in a Finals game, then there is something wrong with how the officials are calling the game. I don’t however think the Pistons were jobbed in losing to Miami. Yes, there were some silly calls; it seemed any time a Piston defender breathed on Wade, a foul was called. The same thing happened in the Cleveland series with LeBron. The Pistons, though, were out-coached by Pat Riley, out-hustled by the Heat’s role players, and flat out couldn’t make ANY shots when it mattered most. It was bound to happen sometime. For the past three seasons, no matter how poorly Detroit played in a game or two during a certain series, they always found a way to win (except against San Antonio in Game 7 in ’05). Fate caught up with them this time. As far as the Finals go, I think Miami did outplay Dallas in the last few minutes of each game. Miami overcame a huge defecit in Game 3 and if the Mavs had stepped on the Heat’s throat there, they would have won the series. They also had chanced to win both Game 5 and 6. I do think the NBA “helps” certain teams as far as calls go, but I don’t think by any means that its games are fixed. The draft lottery? Well that’s another story…
And I did find the Stackhouse suspension puzzling.