RealGM

Based on my longstanding feeling that the league refs some series for ratings and backed up by this viewtopic.php?f=31&t=797823 I really feel that the Lakers were reffed into a series they didn't belong in and got absolutely thrashed. Did anyone else that watched the playoffs have the same feeling?

Not really. The Lakers were probably the favorite going in;l they belonged. Maybe a few of the calls were kind of suspicious, but nothing blatantly unfair. Do you have any calls in mind?

OK here's my reasoning. The second article on that thread was about Dick Bavetta and it mentioned the fact that he is having a federal investigation conducted on him for being a "company guy" and fixing games for the league. My contention is that the Lakers were probably the third best team in the west and second after Ginobli had his injury. New Orleans was the best but David Stern wanted LA to beat SA because it could be hyped more (they were the defending champs after all), also NO would have destroyed LA. Guess who was the head ref for game 7 in NO where NO was the heavy favorite? Dick Bavetta.

Now, by the time LA got to the finals vs Boston (whose series were actually drawn out by the refs since they were battling calls the whole playoffs) they were completely outmatched. Guess who the head official was for the two games LA won? Dick Bavetta. Also Kenny Mauer was there and he has just as much of a checkered past as Bavetta. Now, after reffing two LA home games into LA's hands it went back to Boston and Phil's squad got absolutely exposed. The whole team looked like D-leaguers other than Kobe (who didn't look much better) and they were losing by 40 early in the 4th.

Specific calls? Do I need to mention more than the Fisher Vs. Barry play?

Oh, when you said "reffed into a series" you meant literally, i.e., that they were refereed into winning the Western Conference, not that they were refereed into being competitive in the BOS/LAL series. (I was thinking that you might have something in mind such as Kobe's late game steal which might have been a foul, though that could have gone either way. In any case, I take it, you have no disagreement with the way the finals were refereed.)

As for Fisher's foul on Barry, to answer your question: yes, I think you need to mention more than that. Please do so.

The way that Bavetta and Mauer changed games was not very subtle. It was repeated over and over. What they did was give fouls early to people like David West in the NO series, Paul Pierce for Boston (in the finals they also did it to Garnett and actually fouled out Ray Allen... RAY ALLEN) and Rasheed Wallace for Detroit (who spoke angrily about it). If that didn't work they'd call two consecutive offensive turnovers on the team they were working against to break momentum in the fourth quarter (they kept games close by manipulating momentum through calls, that's why there were crazy runs in the games that Bavetta reffed in the finals) and go from there. The Fisher call was a clear instance where SA should have had a shot at overtime or to win the game and the refs couldn't afford that chance.

This is why I asked for people who watched the whole playoffs. If you watched all the series you could see them drawing out the Boston series' and helping along the LA series'. The talent gap was huge though and it was exposed in the finals when Bavetta was not the head ref.

Basically, when we're talking about fixing the NBA playoffs there shouldn't be a lot of obvious favoritism calls but this year we had the Fisher one and a really strong pattern of manipulation from Bavetta.