June 5, 2002: Game Six Fix - Laker's Tainted Victory
Ralph Nader | Nader's Letter | Michael Wilbon | David Aldridge
On
Friday, May 31, 2002, a sports fix of epic proportions was on full display
as three basketball referees handed the Los Angeles Lakers a tainted Game
6 victory in the Western Conference Finals of the National Basketball Association
between the Sacramento Kings and the Los Angeles Lakers. What happened on
the court is an outrage, what follows is the reaction from various sources:
Nader
Blows Whistle
June 5, 2002, Sacramento Bee, Bee Sports Staff:
The controversy over officiating in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals between the Kings and Los Angeles Lakers reached new heights Tuesday when consumer advocate and former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader called on NBA Commissioner David Stern to review the fairness of the outcome.
"At a time when the public's confidence is shaken by headlines reporting the breach of trust by corporate executives, it is important, during the public's relaxation time, for there to be maintained a sense of impartiality and professionalism in commercial sports performances," reads the letter Nader and a watchdog group called League of Fans sent to Stern. "That sense was severely shaken in the now notorious officiating during Game 6" that went against Sacramento in a game won by the Lakers 106-102 at Staples Center.
Nader cited various media accounts of the game, including stories in the Washington Post and USA Today that were highly critical of the officials.
At the core of the problem, Nader claimed, is Stern's absolute power that allows the referees to "escape all responsibility" under a system that gives Stern the authority to fine players and coaches who complain about the officials.
"It seems you have a choice," said Nader's letter. "You can continue to exercise your absolute power to do nothing. Or you can initiate a review, and if all these observers and fans turn out to be right, issue, together with the referees, an apology to the Sacramento Kings and forthrightly admit decisive incompetence during Game 6, especially in the crucial fourth quarter."
Nader told The Bee on Tuesday that "the Kings beat the Lakers in six games, but that's not going to be remembered. They (Kings) were robbed of an entire season.
"There will be no inquiry, and meanwhile the suspicion of the public increases. They (NBA) are losing credibility and the trust of the fans. They called 27 fouls on the Kings in the fourth period? Come on, that's a joke."
Nader Urges NBA Commissioner David Stern to Initiate a Review of Officiating
NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: Tuesday, June 4, 2002
Ralph Nader and League of Fans sent the following letter today to David J. Stern, Commissioner, National Basketball Association:
Dear Mr. Stern,
At a time when the public's confidence is shaken by headlines reporting the breach of trust by corporate executives, it is important, during the public's relaxation time, for there to be maintained a sense of impartiality and professionalism in commercial sports performances. That sense was severely shaken in the now notorious officiating during Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Sacramento Kings.
Calls by referees in the NBA are likely to be more subjective than in professional baseball or football. But as the judicious and balanced Washington Post sports columnist Michael Wilbon wrote this Sunday, too many of the calls in the fourth quarter (when the Lakers received 27 foul shots) were "stunningly incorrect," all against Sacramento. After noting that the three referees in Game 6 "are three of the best in the game," he wrote: "I have never seen officiating in a game of consequence as bad as that in Game 6....When Pollard, on his sixth and final foul, didn't as much as touch Shaq. Didn't touch any part of him. You could see it on TV, see it at courtside. It wasn't a foul in any league in the world. And Divac, on his fifth foul, didn't foul Shaq. They weren't subjective or borderline or debatable. And these fouls not only resulted in free throws, they helped disqualify Sacramento's two low-post defenders." And one might add, in a 106-102 Lakers' victory, this officiating took away what would have been a Sacramento series victory in 6 games.
This was not all. The Kobe Bryant elbow in the nose of Mike Bibby, who after lying on the floor groggy, went to the sideline bleeding, was in full view of the referee, who did nothing, prompted many fans to start wondering about what was motivating these officials.
Wilbon discounted any conspiracy theories about the NBA-NBC desire for a Game 7 etc., but unless the NBA orders a review of this game's officiating, perceptions and suspicions, however presently absent any evidence, will abound and lead to more distrust and distaste for the games in general. When the distinguished basketball writer for the USA Today, David DuPree, can say: "I've been covering the NBA for 30 years, and it's the poorest officiating in an important game I've ever seen," when Wilbon writes that "The Kings and Lakers didn't decide this series would be extended until Sunday; three referees did..." when many thousands of fans, not just those in Sacramento, felt that merit lost to bad refereeing, you need to take notice beyond the usual and widespread grumbling by fans and columnists about referees ignoring the rule book and giving advantages to home teams and superstars.
Your problem in addressing the pivotal Game 6 situation is that you have too much power. Where else can decision-makers (the referees) escape all responsibility to admit serious and egregious error and have their bosses (you) fine those wronged (the players and coaches) who dare to speak out critically?
In a February interview with David DuPree of USA Today, he asked you "Why aren't coaches and players allowed to criticize the referees?" You said, "...we don't want people questioning the integrity of officials. ...It just doesn't pay for us to do anything other than focus people on the game itself rather than the officiating." "Integrity" which we take you to mean "professionalism" of the referees has to be earned and when it is not, it has to be questioned. You and your league have a large and growing credibility problem. Referees are human and make mistakes, but there comes a point that goes beyond any random display of poor performance. That point was reached in Game 6 which took away the Sacramento Kings Western Conference victory.
It seems that you have a choice. You can continue to exercise your absolute power to do nothing. Or you can initiate a review and if all these observers and fans turn out to be right, issue, together with the referees, an apology to the Sacramento Kings and forthrightly admit decisive incompetence during Game 6, especially in the crucial fourth quarter.
You should know, however, that absolute power, if you choose the former course of inaction, invites the time when it is challenged and changed – whether by more withdrawal of fans or by more formal legal or legislative action. No government in our country can lawfully stifle free speech and fine those who exercise it; the NBA under present circumstances can both stifle and fine players and coaches who speak up. There is no guarantee that this tyrannical status quo will remain stable over time, should you refuse to bend to reason and the reality of what occurred. A review that satisfies the fans' sense of fairness and deters future recurrences would be a salutary contribution to the public trust that the NBA badly needs.
We look forward to your considered response.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
Shawn McCarthy
Director, League of Fans
League of Fans is an effort designed as a sports industry watchdog to assure accountability to fans and less harm to the cities that host sports franchises.
Talk About Foul! Game 6 Was A Real Stinker
By Michael Wilbon, Washington Post
Sunday, June 2, 2002; Page D01
LOS ANGELES - All along, I've wanted to see a seventh game. But not if it had to come about like this.
If you care about basketball, Friday night's Game 6 of the Western Conference finals was a rip-off. The Kings and Lakers didn't decide this series would be extended until Sunday; three referees did. Statistical evidence is usually circumstantial, but consider this anyway: the Lakers had shot an average of 22 foul shots through the first five games of this series, but on Friday night here at home they shot 27 . . . in the fourth quarter.
Hardly ever in 12 years of writing commentary have I devoted an entire column to the issue of refereeing. Overwhelmingly, these guys are terrific at a next-to- impossible job. And the three men assigned to call Friday's Game 6 -- Dick Bavetta, Bob Delaney and Ted Bernhardt -- are three of the best in the game.
But to ignore the role officiating played in Game 6 of the NBA's showcase playoff series would essentially be to ignore the primary story line in the Lakers' 106-102 victory. And not addressing it would leave unexamined the swelling chorus of concern among everyday basketball fans that the league and/or its TV partner, NBC, has an interest in either helping the league's most glamorous and marketable team, the Lakers, or at the very least prolonging an already dramatic series.
Of course people believe that. The players themselves sometimes believe it. Yes, Vlade Divac has a flair for the dramatic, but he spoke for any number of people when he said late Friday night, "Why don't they [the NBA powers-that-be] just let us know in advance? We come here, we go back to Sacramento, back here. Just let us know."
Let me start by declaring I have no ties to Los Angeles or to Sacramento, and have no rooting interest in the series other than that I did pick the Lakers to win in six games. And I have zero tolerance for "conspiracy" stories, that the NBA and NBC conspire to influence if not straight-up arrange the outcome. Don't believe a word of it, never have.
Having said that, I have never seen officiating in a game of consequence as bad as that in Game 6. It was bad in Game 5 in Sacramento, when the Kings got the benefit of some very questionable calls, then unforgivably rotten on Friday night in Game 6. Scot Pollard, on his sixth and final foul, didn't as much as touch Shaq. Didn't touch any part of him. You could see it on TV, see it at courtside. It wasn't a foul in any league in the world. And Divac, on his fifth foul, didn't foul Shaq. They weren't subjective or borderline or debatable. And these fouls not only resulted in free throws, they helped disqualify Sacramento's two low-post defenders.
On the other hand, Kobe Bryant elbowed Mike Bibby in the nose in plain view with the Lakers up by one, but no foul was called on Kobe, even though Bibby lay on the court and then went to the sideline bleeding. The difficult thing about refereeing an NBA game, compared with Major League Baseball and NFL games, is that virtually every single call is subjective. But the calls made on Friday night were just plain wrong, right out in the open for everybody watching on TV to see, even before replay.
I wrote down in my notebook six calls that were stunningly incorrect, all against Sacramento, all in the fourth quarter when the Lakers made five baskets and 21 foul shots to hold on to their championship. I don't believe for one second the referees have any agenda. Still, what would account for perfectly competent officials making such bad calls in such a big game? Maybe the same thing that affects players, like nervousness, or being intimidated by the crowd (or mouthy participants), or anticipating contact instead of waiting for them to occur.
Whenever I'm feeling so absolutely certain about some complex basketball issue, I consult my basketball mentor, former Post colleague David DuPree, now of USA Today. And DuPree told me Saturday afternoon that while he, too, has no tolerance for conspiracy notions, "I've been covering the NBA for 30 years, and it's the poorest officiating in an important game I've ever seen."
And when I checked my voice-mail late Friday night, I heard exactly what I expected to hear: outrage. And these callers live mostly in metropolitan Washington, D.C., with little emotional attachment to either the Lakers or Kings. If people watching these games at home see Pollard fouled out of the game without touching O'Neal, what do we think they think? I know what they think. They think exactly what Divac thinks, that Sacramento would have to have been letter-perfect to win Game 6 in Los Angeles because there is a larger agenda.
I didn't say that's the reality of the situation. But that is, increasingly, the perception. And therefore, the NBA has a problem.
It's not particularly new; we started hearing this in the late 1970s, heard it through the Bird-Magic era, heard it sometimes when the Bulls dominated. But I don't think the perception has ever been so widely held as it is now.
I talked Saturday morning to an NBA season-ticket holder and marketing executive, a rational and insightful observer of sports. I asked him what he thought of Game 6. "I didn't think it was that bad at all," he said of the refereeing, momentarily stunning me. "It wasn't that bad because we all knew NBC needed a Game 7."
This is what happens when you have such a wild disparity in fouls called from one game to another, ridiculous 180-degree swings from one game to the next to the next, as if Shaq ramming his elephantine shoulder into a defender is a foul on Wednesday night, but not on Friday night. The Kings shot 20 more free throws in Game 3, and Phil Jackson whined like a little pooch that the Lakers were getting hosed. Then the Lakers shot one more free throw in Game 4. The Kings shot 10 more in Game 5, prompting accusations from Shaq that somebody was cheating the champs. And the refs responded by awarding the Lakers 15 more free throws in Game 6. "Our big guys get 20 fouls called [in Game 6] and Shaq gets four," Kings Coach Rick Adelman said. "They obviously got the game called the way they wanted it to get called."
It speaks well of the Kings that they were overwhelmingly composed after Friday's game, though a couple of veterans worry the younger Kings will adopt a "They're-all-against-us" defeatist mentality that could hurt Sunday. The Lakers, seemingly oblivious to being taken to the mat again, appear to have regained some of their swagger. "We're the champions," Bryant said. "They're going to have to take it from us."
The key matchup for Game 7 isn't Kobe vs. Bibby or Peja Stojakovic's health or the Lakers' three-point shooting; it's how the referees are going to handle Shaquille O'Neal. When we get deep enough into the game to make that determination, we might have a handle on whether it's the Lakers or Kings who will be headed to the NBA Finals.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
Perception More Harmful to NBA Than Reality
By David Aldridge, June 2, 2002
Special to ESPN.com
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The NBA has a problem.
The problem is not that there is a conspiracy to put the Lakers (or, in their day, the Bulls) in the Finals, or that playoff games are fixed.
The problem is that so many otherwise rational people think there is a conspiracy to put the Lakers (or, in their day, the Bulls) in the Finals, and that playoff games are fixed. The problem is that the very teams who compete now state openly that they expect to get screwed in important games.
For 15 years, I've listened to crackpots tell me how the league is no different than pro wrestling, that I should be ashamed to cover a sport where the results have been determined in advance by a cabal of power-mad men (the list is never the same but frequently includes David Stern, NBC Sports President Dick Ebersol, the heads of various Fortune 500 companies, and once -- only once -- Suzanne Somers). I laugh to myself, for there is nothing I can do to help these people.
And then comes a game like Friday's Game 6 of the Western Conference finals. There is nothing I can say that will explain 27 free throws for the Lakers in the fourth quarter -- an amount staggering in its volume and impact on the game. It gave me pause. How can you explain it? How can you explain a game where Scot Pollard fouls out when he's two feet from Shaquille O'Neal, or that Doug Christie is called for a ridiculous touch foul just as Chris Webber spikes Kobe Bryant's drive to the hoop, or that Mike Bibby is called for a foul deep in the fourth quarter after Bryant pops him in the nose with an elbow? Regardless of whether the fouls were called correctly or not, they put a black mark on what has been as compelling, dramatic and well-played of a series as I can recall in recent years.
What gives one pause, though, is not that these fouls were called against the Kings in this one game. The pause comes because these fouls were called against the Kings in Los Angeles two days after O'Neal fouled out of Game 5 in Sacramento -- the same game in which Bryant was saddled with five fouls. How can consecutive games be called so diametrically opposite -- with such dramatic differences in the impact on the respective teams?
This is my problem: the 180-degree turns from day to day in the playoffs. One day, Shaq is allowed to drop his shoulder and knock any defender senseless. The very next day, if Shaq looks at Bibby, he gets the foul. How can it be the exact opposite of what it was the game before? And I think people pick up on that, and think something is not right.
I am not speaking here of your garden variety fan who roots for his or her team passionately, sometimes nonsensically, and who will thus create boogeymen to explain his team's losses where none exist. Nor of the poor souls who have to assign the state of their own wretched lives to some unseen, omniscient force. Nor of the professional cranks and nutjobs who earn a living by finding gunmen in grassy knolls -- no, they fired from the bridge above! No, wait -- it was from the sewer below! But of ordinary folks who pay their taxes and hold themselves responsible for their lot in life.
After Game 6, I went out to dinner in L.A. with a couple of sportswriters and three or four other folks who aren't in the business. Each one of us at the table had a college degree. None of us had a dog in this Lakers-Kings fight. But us Sports Guys wanted to see if we were overreacting. So we asked the woman with the business degree who has season tickets to an NBA team (not the Lakers, not the Kings) what her immediate reaction was after watching Friday.
"They stole the game from the Kings," she said, matter of factly.
The next morning, I call for a bellman for help with the bags. The door is open five seconds when he says, and I'm paraphrasing here because I don't generally quote bellmen, "What was up with that game last night? I mean, I'm a Laker fan, so I appreciate the calls. But I don't want to win that way. It was like Chris Webber was saying, 'I can't win, so why should I play hard?' "
Which, if the bellman had been in the Kings' locker room on Friday, was exactly the demeanor he would have seen from Webber. His lip was literally quivering, he was so angry. He spoke in guarded tones about how "we're still the Sacramento Kings" and how he had been told it would be impossible to beat the Lakers Friday. "I was warned," he muttered. Twenty feet away, Vlade Divac was asked if he played O'Neal any differently than he had the first five games. "Of course," Divac smirked. "I thought 'Tonight, I will play him very aggressive and foul him every time.' "
You can dismiss this as sour grapes from the losing team. But this has gone on for so long in so many losing locker rooms over the years, it is now part of the postgame procedure: Winning coach compliments spirit of losing team, losing coach laments horrible officiating. It is so matter-of-fact as to be a cliche: We got the calls tonight; they'll get the calls tomorrow. Only in the NBA does a coach who's won eight championships whine more than a stuck engine valve about refs. You may hear Lou Pinella rant about the strike zone on Monday, but he's not still at it on Thursday. Officials blow calls every Sunday in the NFL, but that league makes sure you know about it on Tuesday, while the NBA still muzzles all discussion about its officials' performance.
So why do NBA coaches do it?
Because it appears to work.
When Phil Jackson gripes about the Knicks and Pistons not allowing flow and freedom in a game -- when he says that Dennis Rodman is being persecuted; when he says that Shaq isn't being allowed the same freedoms a man six inches shorter receives -- he's not talking to the guy or gal that asked him the question in the news conference, and he's not talking to you, dear reader. He's talking to the three people in the striped shirts who will call the next game.
Please understand: I think NBA refs have the hardest job officiating of all the major sports, and that includes the guys who do it on skates. Basketball -- and pro basketball in particular -- has more subjective calls in a half than you'll see in a season of football. Block or charge? Did he jump straight up, or come over the back? Is he hooking, or using leverage? And I think because the game is so subjective to call, no one knows what to expect night in and out.
The NBA also suffers because of the nature of the game. One dominant player out of five will necessarily have more impact than one out of nine in baseball (including the pitcher, who only plays once every four or five days) or one of 11 in football. So someone like Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson or Larry Bird or Isiah Thomas -- or Shaq -- tends to win more often than in baseball or football. This tends to lead to the same teams winning championships -- which creates the impression that this is desired by the Commish, the networks and advertisers looking for common themes, one-name superstars and storylines to sell to the public.
(Of course, the public is as hypocritical on this as it is on so many things. The very people who say they're sick of seeing the same faces win year after year in the NBA are the same folks who stayed away in droves, and didn't watch, during the league's most democratic era -- the 1970s, when talented if nondescript teams like Golden State, Washington, Portland and Seattle won championships.)
I acknowledge I am at a loss about what to do. The Commish acknowledged last week that the game has gotten, in some ways, too quick for the refs, which is why he's now behind some form of instant replay. The Competition Committee will receive a proposal from the league for replay at its meeting this week. And here, the NBA can learn from the NFL, which is always perceived as tinkering with its game to improve officiating and make the game more pleasant for fans.
Of course, the NFL often does no such thing. But people think it does.
Perception is reality.
David Aldridge is an NBA reporter for ESPN.