Claim: Dick Bavetta told the ref crew to favor the Spurs because they needed the win to win the division ('Personal Foul', page 101 - also here).
For Claim: According to the box score, the Spurs had a huge FT advantage (53-18) and foul advantage (34-23). The Associated Press account said "The Spurs scored 16 of their 32 first-half points against the Nuggets from the line, keeping them in the game" and "who finished with a season-high 53 free throws".
Against: The Spurs were a far better team. The Denver coach said “They had 53 free-throw attempts and I felt a lot of those were a result of our defensive mistakes.” According to the game thread on Nuggets Talk, Denver had nothing to play for and may not have been that motivated. No comments on the refs in that thread but then again it was one of those games that the fans didn't care about.
Effect: In the end nothing. The Spurs still would have had the 3th seed and the Nuggets the 8th.
Accuracy: Maybe. Will reassess if someone can find me video especially of the 1st quarter.
Showing posts with label San Antonio Spurs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Antonio Spurs. Show all posts
Sunday, December 13, 2009
My NBA Background
First, I want to say. I will look at all of Tim Donaghy's claims as unbaised as possible. I want this to be like Snopes.com and at the end will rate the claims as falsehood to truth though I suspect almost all will fall somewhere in between.
I was a Celtics fan for years and remembering watching finals on tape delay. Then when the Dallas Mavericks were formed, they became my primary team.
Over the years, I increasingly convinced the NBA was not fair. There were numerous games by various teams that were making me blame the NBA refs were either corrupt and/or incompetent. You know most of them without me saying them (e.g. Kings/Lakers), but I'll mention a few of the lesser known ones that personally affected me:
2002 Spurs/Mavericks series. Game 1 was called in such a way that it guaranteed a Mavericks victory. Game 2 was the infamous game where Joey Crawford decided to call a bunch of Ts against the Mavericks in the opening minutes destroying the game from the beginning and was supposedly later was called on the carpet.
2005 Rockets/Mavericks series. This one is covered by Donaghy and I will get into it further. Yao was a moving screen machine during the early parts of the series and helped their 2-0 lead. JVG's reveal about NBA corruption and $100,000 fine. And yes, Rockets fan, I will say it: Finley was out of bounds - you 100% got screwed on that critical call.
2006 Spurs/Mavericks playoffs series. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was one of the worst ref'd series in NBA history though nobody talks about it. The refs attempted to control the winner of 6 of the 7 games. They were successful 5 times - only game 7 did they fail in their attempt. It was at this point that I started watching the calls instead of the games and was the end of my NBA watching days.
I was a Celtics fan for years and remembering watching finals on tape delay. Then when the Dallas Mavericks were formed, they became my primary team.
Over the years, I increasingly convinced the NBA was not fair. There were numerous games by various teams that were making me blame the NBA refs were either corrupt and/or incompetent. You know most of them without me saying them (e.g. Kings/Lakers), but I'll mention a few of the lesser known ones that personally affected me:
2002 Spurs/Mavericks series. Game 1 was called in such a way that it guaranteed a Mavericks victory. Game 2 was the infamous game where Joey Crawford decided to call a bunch of Ts against the Mavericks in the opening minutes destroying the game from the beginning and was supposedly later was called on the carpet.
2005 Rockets/Mavericks series. This one is covered by Donaghy and I will get into it further. Yao was a moving screen machine during the early parts of the series and helped their 2-0 lead. JVG's reveal about NBA corruption and $100,000 fine. And yes, Rockets fan, I will say it: Finley was out of bounds - you 100% got screwed on that critical call.
2006 Spurs/Mavericks playoffs series. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was one of the worst ref'd series in NBA history though nobody talks about it. The refs attempted to control the winner of 6 of the 7 games. They were successful 5 times - only game 7 did they fail in their attempt. It was at this point that I started watching the calls instead of the games and was the end of my NBA watching days.
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