Personally, I don't care if the NBA ratings fall into the negative...if the Lakers keep winning titles, then I'm a happy man!
Seriously, I will address your concerns...
(1) Shaq and Kobe come off as arrogant to non-Laker fans just as Webber, Bibby, Iverson, McGrady,
et al come off to me, a non-Kings, non-76ers, non-Magic fan...but I believe that "arrogance" has a lot to do with "success" in today's NBA. There aren't too many great players out there who aren't "arrogant." Hell, even MJ came off as arrogant most of the time.
(2) The Nets may have been the worst team ever in the Finals. Not my opinion, but a lot of reporters' opinions after seeing how they played during the Finals. So, people tuned out.
(3) The Sacramento Kings' fan base tuned out. Many feel that the "refs handed the Lakers the series." Well, the Sacto papers have mostly put that to rest...
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<b>Mark Kreidler: Forget the conspiracy and hit the free throws</b>
By Mark Kreidler -- Bee Sports Columnist
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Thursday, June 6, 2002
The NBA Finals began Wednesday night in Los Angeles, and you can color me fully naive, because I'll cop to it straight up: I never thought a sentence fragment that simple would need to be repeated.
After receiving from the source the full text of the now famous Nader Letter, though, and the reaction it has engendered among a significant portion of the local faithful, it has become apparent that I was wrong in spades. The overarching truth is this: The Kings-got-cheated conspiracy theory isn't going to die until we drive the stake all the way through the black heart of this ludicrous, amazingly misguided argument.
And even then, I've got my doubts.
Ralph Nader officially no longer has anything to do. He spent his time earlier this week firing off a letter to NBA Commissioner David Stern that set a new standard for thinly disguised bitterness. Who knew Nader was a closet Kings fan?
(This is the man who once crusaded against unsafe cars on behalf of the American people, right? Guy who ran for president? Just checking.)
The premise of Nader's letter was basic: That the NBA's integrity comes into serious question when an important, closely followed series like the Kings-Lakers Western Conference finals is so badly officiated that one side cries "fix."
This is, of course, not only an acceptable position but the proper one. The one thing all sides can agree on is that the series we just saw featured some of the worst work by paid referees since Vince McMahon was wearing short singlets. It was a black eye for the league, it underscored the ways in which the NBA undermined itself by chasing off some quality officials in a travel-scam imbroglio a couple of years ago, and it boldly highlighted the ways in which lousy officiating can kill a product by taking the customers' eyes off the floor show.
And if Nader's letter had served to advance this argument even one useful inch, I'd applaud it from the rooftop. Instead, the man exposed himself as a sports fraud, a pure, one-sided rooter. Worse still, he sent out a new wave of encouragement to those Kings fans already in full snipe over the notion they had their conference title stolen from them by a league that wanted the Lakers in the finals.
In a word: Nope. This is a crisis of competence, not corruption. There is no conspiracy here, and saying there is a thousand times in a row isn't going to change it.
There can be no conspiracy when a series goes to a seventh game and the home team loses not because it didn't get enough free throws, but because it didn't make enough. There can be no conspiracy when the single most egregious blown call of the series goes in favor of the Kings -- wins them Game 5, in fact.
Most people around here remember that call; they just don't speak of it often, because it's inconsistent with their outrage. Chris Webber flat threw the ball out of bounds, simply lost it. He was trying to make a pass and didn't, and the ball should've gone to the Lakers, who had a one-point lead with 11.4 seconds remaining; and the official blew the call and awarded the Kings the ball, setting up Mike Bibby's memorable winning jump shot.
That's not a conspiracy. That's a crummy job by someone who is paid to do better.
What the Kings-Lakers series is going to be remembered for, in terms of officiating, is a hundred blown calls, not a handful of particularly terrible ones in the fourth quarter of Game 6 (and make no mistake, they were putrid).
Having seen every minute of every game in real time, I feel qualified to say this: It was a poor show practically from the start, and it never got better, and it bloody well ought to prompt Stern to seriously reconsider the hiring and training methods he's currently employing in that area.
That's where the focus should be: On ridding a high-stakes, big-money sports league of its poorest officials -- who have, by the way, an impossible job. No one can officiate the NBA anymore, because it's a game that was designed for players barely two-thirds the height, weight and width of the stegosauri who roam the lanes these days.
Game 5 was called embarrassingly in favor of Sacramento (Shaquille O'Neal: 18 field-goal attempts, one free throw). Game 6 favored the Lakers to a self-humiliating degree. Different officiating crews, same set of "stars" who we are told consistently receive star treatment, disgustingly tilted kinds of results -- and we haven't even discussed any other game in the series. It smelled from start to finish.
And Nader's letter might have squarely focused Stern's attention on this.
Instead, it became a bad parody of a disgruntled fan's notes, the easiest thing in the world for the commissioner to ignore.
Nader quoted liberally from Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon's assessment of the dismal Game 6 performance -- yet, while fanning the flames of conspiracy (without actually using the word), he barely found room to include the fact that Wilbon was railing against lousy officiating, not some dark conspiracy. In fact, Wilbon hooted that notion right out of the room: "Don't believe a word of it, never have."
Worse, Nader's letter mentioned the Game 6 calls exclusively, as though Game 5 didn't exist. Rather than call for an overhaul of the officiating system, the consumer crusader asked Stern for "an apology to the Sacramento Kings" for a "growing credibility problem" that "took away the Sacramento Kings' Western Conference victory."
If you listen closely, you can hear Stern chuckling as he heads for the paper shredder. And that's the shame: Whatever you think of Nader, he might've had a chance to do some good here. With real friends like this, the Kings need no more imagined enemies.</span>
