Quest for the Ring reported on several occasions this season that the Denver Nuggets were going to be "contained" in the NBA playoffs by referees sticking up for the rules. It did not happen, and for all practical purposes, the Nuggets have been cheating to make sure they win playoff games.
The irony is that Denver has had so much luck, including playing Dallas while the Lakers had to play the much better Houston Rockets, (which is backwards since the Lakers had the far better record over Denver, so in a strict seeding system, the Lakers would have played Dallas and the Nuggets would have played Houston) that Denver did not have to in effect cheat in order to win. They probably could have won without cheating.
But they have been cheating. They have been committing numerous fouls that have not been called. They have been cheating the soul of basketball by basing their offense entirely on their defense, meaning they have no real offense, and meaning that the offense that you see is a smoke and mirrors type of mirage, it seems to be there, but it actually is not really there. If you look behind the curtain, there is nothing there, whereas for example the Lakers and the Cavaliers have real offenses that exist separately from their defenses.
In other words, the Denver Nuggets' offense is an artificial creation that is virtually a fraud.
I can't quit watching games but I wish I could at this moment. No, on second thought, I can not wait until the Lakers defeat these Nuggets, who think they can win an NBA Championship by committing more fouls than any team ever did including the 1989 Pistons Championship team. More generally, they think they can win an NBA Championship by using strategy right out of the Pittsburgh Steelers system for winning Super Bowls.
Wrong Sport, Denver, you are not the Broncos, and you are most definitely not the Pittsburgh Steelers.
I have been saying "laugh out loud, Denver," to this scheme, but quite frankly, I'm not going to be laughing anymore until the Lakers put this madness to rest. The Nuggets are attempting to change basketball at this point, to make it much more like football, to spoil it in other words, and I want it stopped.
I honestly think there will be at least several flagrant fouls in the LA/Denver series, and am half expecting a fight at this point. The Lakers will not be intimidated and they will not go down without a fight. They will not let Chris Andersen do whatever he wants, let alone Dahntay Jones (spelled it right). If these Nuggets want to fight, they will get a fight from the Lakers. Literally.
I will grant you that Denver was using more defensive skill and less fouling in games 1 and 2 than in many regular season games, but nonetheless, in game one, fouls just were not being called to any extent, period. Which made it impossible for Dallas to win.
In game two, Dallas but not Denver was being called for too many touch fouls. What an obnoxious irony that was! Once again, it was impossible for Dallas to win that game.
Now as for game 3, this is the kind of game that needs to be watched probably three times from start to finish before making many summary judgments. But having said that, I knew for a fact that the referees were going to go much harder on the Nuggets in Dallas than they were on them in Denver. Because the refs might as well not have been there in Denver.
The referees obviously did stand up for the game more in game 3. However, even so, the game apparently gets decided on some bizarre non-call.
What an ugly, stupid game that was. And an ugly, stupid series. And an ugly, stupid team, for that matter. How many fouls would the Nuggets need to commit in order to beat the Lakers? 60 fouls a game? Yes, it would be about that many, with only half of them called, since the Nuggets would have no players left if all of them were called, laugh out loud.
Just screw George Karl and Denver at this point. Trying to win a Championship while basically disrespecting the game of basketball, by for example having no offense separate from the defense. Denver, doing what you do, coming up with a new way to make basketball look bad every year, you would still be a punk franchise compared to Boston, Los Angeles, Detroit, San Antonio, Houston, Seattle (which doesn't even have a team anymore, but they are still more respectable than Denver) and others, even if you did win a damn Championship, which you will not.
Go back to the ABA if you want to play basketball as if it was football.
Much, much more on these subjects later.
On behalf of basketball, I apologize to Quest for the Ring readers for the failure of the NBA referees to properly stand up for the game of basketball during the 2009 Dallas Mavericks-Denver Nuggets playoff series.
Also, the League apologizes:
The NBA admitted officials were wrong when they didn’t call an intentional foul the Dallas Mavericks were trying to commit before Denver’s Carmelo Anthony(notes) made a game-winning 3-pointer Saturday.
Dallas had a two-point lead and a foul to give when Denver inbounded the ball with less than 8 seconds left. Antoine Wright(notes) was clearly trying to foul Anthony, and bumped him twice.
But the whistle never blew and Anthony swished a 3-pointer from in front of the Dallas bench with a second left that gave the Nuggets a 106-105 victory and a 3-0 series lead.
“At the end of the Dallas-Denver game this evening, the officials missed an intentional foul committed by Antoine Wright on Carmelo Anthony, just prior to Anthony’s three-point basket,” Joel Litvin, NBA president of league and basketball operations, said in a statement issued by the league about two hours after the game.
“It’s a shame the game had to come down to this, but that’s the way it goes in the NBA sometimes,” Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said in an e-mail to The Associated Press after the league’s statement.
Cuban was visibly upset on the court after the game, but had declined comment while standing just outside the Mavericks’ locker room.
In the aftermath of the scandal involving former referee Tim Donaghy, the NBA has begun publicly acknowledging certain officiating mistakes.
Donaghy is serving a prison sentence for betting on games he officiated and taking cash payments from gambling associates for information to help them with bets.
A day after Game 4 of the Western Conference finals last year, the NBA said a foul should have been called against Derek Fisher(notes) of the Los Angeles Lakers on the final possession. That could have given San Antonio a chance to win the game and get even in the series.
Fisher jumped and came down on Brent Barry(notes) in the final seconds of a two-point game. No foul was called and Barry missed badly on a 3-pointer as time expired.
Mark Wunderlich, one of the three officials for that game last year, was part of the crew for the Denver-Dallas game Saturday night and was the one closest to Wright and Anthony.
“I’m almost as disappointed for Mark as I am for us. … It’s a call he makes 100 percent of the time,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said after Saturday’s game.
Added Wright: “I was positive a whistle was coming, just like everybody else was positive the whistle was coming. I made a play on the ball like I was told in the huddle, and the call wasn’t made. … I’m upset like everyone else in this locker room, and I feel like we have a right to be upset.”
The apology is appreciated, but sorry, it's not enough. I want the last seconds played over again and the win properly given to the Dallas Mavericks.
Fortunately, according to my calculations and knowledge, there is almost a zero probability that the Nuggets can beat the Lakers no matter what they do, no matter how many rules they break.
So I guess I don't have to bother saying that were the Nuggets to win the Conference, that it would be a tainted win.
But I guess I just did say that.
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