Professional sports has had a rough couple of years with the steroid accusations in baseball, and now the NBA has a brand new scandal that ties into the referree gambling ring. Ex-Ref Tim Donaghy is facing serious jail time for his admission of rigging NBA games, in which some of those games were vital playoff games. One game comes to mind and that would be Spurs vs. Suns Game 4 of the Western Conference Semi’s in 2007, where Amare Stoudemire and Boris “Dorkus-Malorkus” Diaw got suspended for leaving the bench to aid Steve Nash right after he was close-lined by Robert “Cheapsot Bob” Horry. There is much discussion that the suspensions of those players sealed the deal for San Antonio in order for them to go on and win the 2007 title.
The most recent scandal has been one surrounding Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals that had Lakers vs. Kings in a heated epic battle. The accusation from Tim Donaghy is that there were other refs that moderated that game and were payed off and told to protect certain stars and eject other players in order for the series to be extended to 7 games. The idea is that late in the 4th quarter of Game 6 in Sacramento’s Arco Arena, Shaquille O’Neal(then a Laker) consistently abused people in the paint, but yet instead of him being called for fouls for traumatizing people with his elbows to the face, the victims ended up fouling out. The two victims in this case were Vlade Divac and Scott Pollard. At the time no-one really considered listening to the Kings’ side of the story, because everyone was used to Mike Bibby crying about virtually everything, same went for Chris Webber.
If these allegations are true then David Stern as well as many other top officials of the NBA, will more than likely be headed for prison at the end of a long process.
My personal opinion on that is that 2002 Game 7 between those two teams was ultimately decided by Vlade tipping the basketball out to the top of the 3-point line to a wide-open Robert “Cheapsot Bob” Horry, who ended up hitting a game winning 3-point shot with the game clock ticking down.
Flash forward to present day, the 2008 NBA Finals. After 3 games this feels like a Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher vs. all of the Celtics series. I loved watching the post-game interviews in which Phil Jackson makes the statement, “Lamar Odom was confused out there. That’s all.” I love how Phil Jackson makes Lamar Odom sound like an incompetent bafoon, or also like an innocent infant who means no harm but just sucks anyway. Laker fans in LA are now starting to make jerseys that have “GASOFT” written on the back in a mockery of Lakers’ starting center Paul Gasol’s seemingly soft play during this series. Man…that’s a brutal hometown fanbase, not only do you have to go get chewed out and taunted by the away crowd, but now you’re getting taunted and chewed out by your HOME crowd.
Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett in the first two games really played stellar, and added on a huge amount of effort to bring the Celtics to two wins…though game 2 almost became the biggest upset in Finals history when the Lakers cut a 24 point lead with 6 minutes left in the 4th, to 2 with 38 seconds left.
Game 3 went to the Lakers after Kobe Bryant virtually took on the entire Celtics team by himself scoring 36 points, then had Derek Fisher as well as(for the first time in the series) Sasha Vujacic add in some help. That leaves the series at Celtics up 2-1. I will stick to my previous prediction that LA will win this series in 7.
Not only is Infinity Ward not being offered to do Call of Duty 5…….but it is also going back to the freaking World War II setting. How many more of this kind of game can come out before history is destroyed in the minds of young kids about how it all REALLY happened? Call of Duty 4 is a groundbreaking game with new innovations in the tactical team-based FPS world of fast-paced killing. It’s a great game, but unfortunately will not see a continuation unless Infinity Ward gets asked again to do another CoD game. Although this game is coming out on Nintendo Wii, there’s no reason to get it. Just go play CoD1 and CoD2 and you’ll have the full experience of all that CoD5 has to offer.
Oh well, at least Metal Gear Solid 4 comes out June 12th, and The Conduit is shaping up to be a solid FPS multiplayer prospect.
Something tells me that the Conduit guy as seen below, would have a hard time taking on that monstrous beast from Doom.
Semi-related posts:
“would have a hard time taking on that monstrous beast from Doom”
Did you NOT see his sunglasses? That and Agent Ford shops at the same wardrobe store as Solid Snake. No problem with your whole “beasts from the Nine Levels of Torment and Destruction”.
I think it’s interesting that What Happened is a book that is on display everywhere books are sold and that this ref is now coming out (6 years later…but maybe he wanted to keep a job where fat guys drenched in beer yelled at him about his mother). We currently have a market for the truth behind the lies. It’ll be interesting to see how the X-Files movie does.
A tough home team, with those jerseys. But did you hear about the Yankees fans cheering when clouds moved overhead and then when the sun came out, they booed it. Yeah, booing THE SUN.
Did you see Curt Schilling’s blog? (38pitches.com) In it he comments on Celtics versus Lakers, and even on Kobe Bryant. Pretty funny seeing a sports star blog, blog a long article, and be more of an ESPN commentator.
Here’s an interesting quote: “I heard things being said that would have made me swing at someone. These guys talk MAJOR trash on the floor, and the great part is that most of the times I’ve seen it the guy on the receiving end usually doesn’t respond much, if at all, and just plays the game, schooling the guy who feels like he needs to talk to make his game better.”
I just saw an interview where a reporter asks Kobe about the Curt Schilling criticism on the blog and Kobe yells “GO YANKEES!” and the reporters start cracking up. I laugh though seeing Kobe get on teammates and seeing exactly what Curt’s talking about going on. That stuff’s happening especially during this series.
Conduit guy looks like he could be the comic relief side-kick of the Quake guy, so that Quake guy could save him from Doom guy lol.. so many *game-name* guys without actually being named.
Congratulations to the Lakers for a near epic collapse! Seriously, you build a 24 point first quarter lead and then blow it? Wow.
Congrats, Slade! At least when I made this comment you are number 4 on Google.