Worm Guts wrote:frankenwolf wrote:winforlose wrote:
Most people say the Pels. I actually happen to disagree. We lost both games against Zion. One of them was a referee game where they shot 40-16 free throws in competitive minutes. I don’t see that happening in a 1-8 or 2-7 playoff game. The other game was a massive power outage for the Wolves. We shot 45% from the field and 32% from deep. Karl went 8-19 that night and Mike Conley only played 25 minutes and change. JMAC filled in 17:22 the rest and had his worst game of the season going 0-4 when wide open from deep and finishing 1-6 for the game. Mike was 1-3 from deep, 3-5 from the field and had 7 points. Anyway, we can and will raise our game for the playoffs, and the whistles won’t be as free flowing, so do I want the Pels, not especially, do I fear them, not especially.
The Suns have scoring power, but they lack depth. In the playoffs you don’t need as much depth, and the Suns are therefore more dangerous. That said, they need to stay healthy and that has proven problematic for them.
The Kings and Mavs are both favorable matchups for us. Luka is scary but even with him dropping 40 we can still win.
Just to be upfront about this, I am still predicting the Wolves to win it all this year, but, if the NBA is looking for "headline" games/series, they may very well promote a Pels upsetting the Wolves, which would, of course, include the reffing. I think we should win every 7 game series, however.... What does Adam Silver want??
If you think it works that way, I'm not sure why you even watch.
The average O-rating has jumped from 105 to 115 since Silver took over.
That has everything to do with how the game is refereed and those directions all come from Silver.
They used covid as an excuse to push out many of the old guard guys like Ken Mauer too and replaced them with new people a lot less likely to go off script.
If the NBA is a corporation, think of the referees out there as upper management, Brand Managers out there guiding the product to maximize profit.
They can make an average player look good, a good player look great, and a great player look like a fool all with the power of their whistle. And they do. Sometime subtly and other times very overtly.
They can and do tilt the playing field to suit the narrative and the markets with the most money.
They can and do spot a team 20 points with just marginal calls and "marginal contact".
Look at the garbage today where they took 5 points from Naz and we lost by one.
Unfortunately we are in a market where in a normal year, when the team is average or worse, there are games where there are fewer people watching on TV than there are seats in the arena.
Winning a title in a small market in pro sports is like an anti-establishment politician trying to win a modern election.
You have to have an absolute superstar to market, and you have to win so big that it's outside the margin of cheating.
If the league wanted to, they could easily make Ant or KAT the face of the league just by flipping around the way they are officiated.
Newsflash: the league has no interest in that, and that isn't going to change any time soon.
And we are far from the first sports market to experience that.
