Dwyanu Wadibili
You can read a totally unconvincing argument that the officials didn’t throw the NBA championship to the Miami Heat here. The argument seems to basically be that if the Mavericks were championship-worthy they would have overcome horrible officiating. I’m not saying that Dallas was exactly world-beating, but come on. That’s like arguing that corruption in close elections is irrelevant because if the losing candidate were really worthy of victory they would have been popular enough to overcome it. Does that make Robert Mugabe a legitimate president? Miami won exactly one game against the Mavericks by more than three points. In Game 5 Dwyane Wade shot more free throws than the entire Mavericks team, and at least five or six of the fouls were complete bullshit. In Game 6 I saw Wade pull up for jumpers on three separate occaisons in the first half alone and collapse to the ground despite no Mav being within in three feet of him, and each time he got a call. I was too disgusted to even watch the second half (and probably any NBA game from now on), but it sounded like it was just as bad. You’re telling me that at least three completely made-up calls like that, resulting in a chance for six free points, in a game decided by three points, was not most likely decisive? And since the same applied to Game 5 and to a lesser extent Game 3, doesn’t that swing the series?
It’s not an open-and-shut case, because no one knows if the Mavericks would have played the same way had the Heat and Wade especially not gotten so many calls (and, to be fair, there were a few questionable calls in favor of the Mavs). Maybe they would have found some other way to lose. But the outcome is so tainted I don’t see how anyone could rest contented that they saw a series decided on its merits. And the refs did the same thing in the finals last year, except then they were only angling to make the series go seven games, whereas this year they were apparently bent on proving Mark Cuban right when he said (if he said) that the league is rigged. And I’m pretty dubious that the league will ever allow a team owned by him to win a championhip. Probably the worst thing about the whole series was seeing what happened to Wade. I used to think he was a really likeable player, because in addition to being extremely good he gets fouled and thrown around a lot and never whines to the refs (then again, why would he ever need to?). I don’t what happened to him before Game 6, but after last night, he’s become Ginobili, he’s become the Italian national soccer team, he’s become a damn flopper. So if that’s the NBA’s new Jordan, count me out.
p.s. In short, the best way to state my point is this: the Mavericks didn’t play well enough to win the game as it was conducted; that’s pretty much redundant. But since they scored more legitimate points in all but one of the games, that should be enough to win.
June 21st, 2006 at 7:01 pm
[Note: I composed the substance of this post while laying in bed this morning with a pillow over my face, but didn’t have a chance to write it down until now. I find it interesting that, in the intervening time, Curt came to essentially the same conclusion about Dwyane Wade, even if he did misspell his name] […]