The NBA: The Miller Lite of Sports and How the Referees, the Commissioner and the Owners Are In On the Fix

   

It was clear to anyone watching the Houston Rockets vs LA Lakers, King James's home debut In front of a raucous Staples Center crowd, that the referees made sure this game would be marred by a brawl.

       We saw the worst game of NBA officiating since Tim Donaghey and his Mafioso connections destroyed the Western conference semifinals between Phoenix and San Antonio...you know...the game where Horry goes crazy and Nash is thrown into the scores table....
      So it's been 12 or so years since the magnitude of the ineptitude of the multitudes of NBA officiating was this badditude.
       I could write an X rated novel, that only fishskin addicts and chaos junkies would read, all about the ridiculousness of basketball at this current continuum: the absolute allowance of offensive plays to stand, no matter how obviously the offensive player runs into the defender, no matter how blatant the kick outs on three pointers by face-eaters like Steph Curry, regardless of how out of control James Harden or LeBron James drives to the basket, if someone breathes on them or even makes an attempt to say "hello " THERE WILL BE A LOUD SHRILL WHISTLE. Hearing the whistle at the end of a drive to the basket is as predictable now as a hit on the quarterback drawing a flag in the NFL, or Russians interfering with elections, or billionaires running over homeless children for Starbucks... we've begun reaching for the drink or turning to talk to the friend next to you or looking down at the phone because we ALL know there's going to be a foul, followed by a minute of a guy staring at a basket while everyone stands there and watches them shoot.
       And they say baseball is boring...
      Any game involving James Harden is already going to be a bad advertisement for the NBA and its horrific officiating, but the game in question was awful for all to see.
     All of the calls were inconsistent, there were phantom fouls, the softest brush against a shoulder got a foul and two shots, whereas a complete decking wouldn't be called, without any apology or contrition, rhyme or reason, the refs weren't going after any one team or player ...but they allowed things to get intense to a ferocious level and then fed into that anger with ridiculous calls and game ruining timing.
    Mike D'Antoni looked like he was having a colonoscopy by the end of proceedings.

Chris Paul was secretly spat at, point blank by Rajon Rondo, who just did his haters the ultimate service in giving them a definitive platform to point at.

    Let's get this out of the way right now though: the Houston Rockets are the softest, most delicate, incredibly fragile and volatile team with ANY defense against them and without a doubt, the most embarrassing group of players the NBA has ever produced.
    Sure, with Chris Paul dishing assists and James Harden flying around and scoring like a madman thanks to defenders being terrified, not of him, but of how they can guard him without a whistle every five seconds, that can be exciting for a psychopath. And, at to that a plethora of inside and outside shooters and some big men down low who stretch the game and yes..sure... they can be exciting and a very fast, fun team to watch.
     But as we saw vs the Utah Jazz and Golden State during last year's playoffs, this team has no problem bogging things down at the free throw line to the pace of a snail's suicide to Brian Eno music.
    The refs played into this on Sunday night, allowing the Rockets to cry and moan over every little touch, screaming like lizard eating zombie babies, LeBron getting softer with each drive into the lane, his arms extended in disgust and eyebrows jutted and slanted like he just watched the DeLonte West sex tape with his mom, then Ennis III destroying Hart on a flagrant foul only minutes before the brawl and Melo getting his headband smacked off  by Ingram which sent even more vitriol into the air.

    When the pushing and shoving began, the refs weren't even close to as hasty as they usually are in breaking up a scuffle, but once the fists started flying, it was too late and they'd let it get out of control...
    Finally....since the genocidal lunacy of the Malice in The Palace, we've ultimately seen a real NBA fight, with actual PUNCHING, absolute hatred and pure rivalry, knowing full well they'll both have to get through each other to get to the NBA Finals, let alone just getting out of the Western conference.
     That was a big factor at play here, with both teams knowing how stacked and how little margin for error there is in the Western conference. It has added an urgency and playoff intensity to regular season games this year.  Golden State vs Utah was a fantastic advertisement for the league. But this??? Houston vs LA, with a whistle blown every three seconds?
     But after 3 1/2 quarters of great offense coupled with near snooze-fest free throws and absolutely aggravating foul calls and no calls, the game delivered on its massive hype in the only way it could:
violence and spitting.
     This thing got nasty. This brawl was an actual brawl for once, not just in title or description of flailing arms and players blocking other players from each other, no this was nasty. Once Rondo's face got close to Paul's and Rondo turns to his right while his lips quiver, Paul flying back (he's a great actor but thanks to the cameras, We know Rondo spat on him) and immediately shoves a finger in Rondo's face.

     Rajon Rondo, someone who Chris Paul hates because he won a ring and was a great player for Boston in only his rookie year in 2008 (something Paul is yet to have done), was not gonna take this and immediately socked Chris Paul, forcing a volley of punches to fly back and forth, with Ingram's shoving of Harden and confrontation with a referee adding to the surrealist puzzle of the situation.
    It was almost slapstick...until Lance Stephenson is being a peacemaker. When I saw that, I knew then and there that this was a brutal brawl.
    The commissioner, Adam Silver, must've been on fantasy island once the punches were landing and the spit was flying and the cursing was happening and all of LA was rocking to the tune of Houston Rockets players speaking in tongues.
     His alien dome must've been nodding in agreement with the tumult in the arena and the insanity on the floor, commentators sounding as if they'd had their first erection in decades and a woman reportedly going into labor in the upper bowl.

     They fixed this to happen.
      It was potentially, at least until the Xmas slate of games, the biggest NBA game of the early season, with LeBron playing his first game in LA, a national audience on ESPN and lots of smack talk before the game.
      The NBA, as a corporation, saw a chance to bring in a ton of viewers, revenue and exposure, with the best part of suspensions and brawls being the obsessive sports media waxing robotically about it on endless stream for days if not weeks.
    This was a major win for the NBA, who've usually found a tough go at getting their audience to watch early basketball. Whether they forced these intense rivalries of super teams to simultaneous cohabitation in the Western conference, whether free agency choices, specifically that of LeBron James's tri-annual ego contest, are his full choice or not are up for open debate (meaning LeBron would be given ample amounts of endorsements, leeway and refereeing calls if he chose LA over say...Milwaukee...not saying he would go there, it's just a thought).
     This not only enforces competitive games in the season early on, with an unusual amount of playoff level intensity, it creates a dialogue among fans, summoning new viewers just to see who gets bragging rights, who kicks who's ass and who's city is supposedly better than the other.
    LeBron James is, after all, a businessman first and foremost. Why else would he have gone to LA?
   He obviously didn't go there for championships....
   Why would you want to develop a kid with a lazy work ethic and a drama queen for a father who's a composite of Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and Donald Trump all in one human being?
   He did the league's bidding after so many years of them doing his.
     Back to Sunday night, The Rockets, the biggest babies in all of American sport, went absolutely apeshit and got what they wanted: some contact.
    They cried about it being there all game, sobbed about being hacked repeatedly, but when it came high time for actual violence, swift degradation and real contact, they jumped in like it was Saturday morning sex.
    Who knows whether this illustrates their profound contradictory basis as an NBA power: on one hand a team that can barely handle a foul, on the other a team that looks for confrontation and drama at all times.

      It's going to be an extremely entertaining jaunt through the Western conference playoffs this season: Only the strong will survive and many bodies will be laid to waste and in the wake of calls deciding games that are bordering on madness or blindness, ridiculous play-acting and bitching from the Rockets, Warriors and pretty much everyone else, defense being relegated to hard flagrant fouls or none at all and star power....lots and lots of it.
     We've got LeBron, Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, DeMarcus Cousins, Anthony Davis, James Harden, Chris Paul, Lonzo Ball, The awesome, underrated and complete team that is the Utah Jazz, the San Antonio Spurs will always be fighting in there and We've even got Portland with their tandem of Damian Lillard and McCollum.
    This is absolutely, without doubt or hesitation, the stackiest stacked stacking of stacked teams in the history of all the stacking of teams and stacked rosters.
    This Western conference is brutal and will be a near Cambodian murder show of a battle just to win a series, any series.
    And whoever gets through, will not do so unscathed.
    But unless it's the Utah Jazz, just wake me up in 79 games or so... I can't....I won't watch another game with refereeing like Houston vs LA.