Yuck!

Last night was everything that is wrong with the NBA. The Bulls have a 19 point lead and figure out a way to squander it, and why? The answer according to all the pundits is because they are young, they have not paid their dues, they haven't had success in the playoffs before. Yuck! This is the worst sort of reasoning I have ever heard, its sickening, especially if its true. On the one level, it does not even make logical sense, "You can not have success until you experience having success" is the sort of Catch-22 circle of pain that makes you wonder if the person saying it has ever slowed down long enough to put together a complete thought. By this standard no one would ever experience success. So there must be another reason, right? Maybe its that the Bulls just are incapable of beating the Pistons, although this theory took a pretty siginificant hit this year in the regular season. Maybe its that the Bulls can not win in the playoffs, I guess with the exception of the first round. Not being able to win in the playoffs is exactly where the argument for experience comes from, but perhaps there is something else different in the playoffs- officiating. The NBA as much, or more than, any other sport lives and dies with its officials. This why Stern gets so angry every year when conspiracy theories and racism studies come up, because it goes to the core of his league. The way a game is officiated creates huge advantages one way or another. In the Bulls-Pistons series it is obvious, if the game is called tight, the Bulls have a huge advatange, primarily because the Pistons defensive scheme has so much grabbing and bodying involved. This, by the way, is always lumped away under "playoff basketball." Its not that defense wins championships, it defense that gets away with the most wins championships. The only team in the NBA on par with the Pistons in this respect is the Spurs who have made a living of playing just over the "line of legality" on defense. This is not new, and everyone in the NBA knows it (just ask Amare Staudamire). The only way to stand up to this brand of officiating is to be a bigger star than the team you are playing (insert Dwayne Wade and Dirk Nowitzki) so that you can get almost every questionable call. The irony is that the refs were to call every game the way they called games for Wade and Nowitzki the players would adjust, and the Pistons and Spurs would still figure out ways to be pretty good defensive teams. One last thought about the way officials control the game, and this is not a conspiracy theory, but it is rarely the number of fouls called in a game, it is when they are called that swings it, particularly when teams are as close as the Pistons-Bulls. So take game 2 and 3 three as examples, in game 2, the Bulls had made a bit of a run in the second quarter to close the gap, and when the third quarter begins, in 7 out of the first ten trips the Bulls turn the ball over. But these are not Pistons kick ass on defense turnovers, they are travellings (2), moving screens (3)
and two throw aways (at least one of these is the result of "inadvertant" contact between a Piston defender and a Bulls player going for a pass). This is not "intentional" neccessarily, and refs are human and get caught up in the emotion of the moment and the building, and in the case of game 2 it meant the Bulls had no shot to get back in the game. In the case of game 3, I am convince the following interaction happened at half time:
Ref 1: Good half guys.
Ref 2: I don't know, I felt a bit off.
Head NBA ref: Guys, you officiated that half like a regular season game, to many touch fouls (what other kind is there?)
Ref 3: Really, our bad.
Ref 1: Alright guys, let the close stuff go.

Twenty minutes late the Pistons are down 1. I am currently looking for empirical evidence to back this up, but there is no doubt in my mind that refs alter their strategies at halftime based on the flow of the game (this happens at every level). When I was in high school, I was the beneficiary of just such a plan. We were playing a team who pressed a lot and hacked like crazy. About five minutes in you could tell the refs were down calling it because the other team was just playing "aggressive defense." At halftime my coach got the stats and realized we had picked up about 5 less fouls then the other team (it should have been well more) and so our coach started are back up five (including yours truly) because he "knew" that the refs would attempt to even out the game in the first few minutes of the second half. I picked up two fouls in two minutes (one was for being near a guy who had the audacity to dribble off his own leg).

The point of all of this is to say that there are only two, maybe three, teams who have a chance to beat the Pistons. The Bulls can't do it, because they can not get away with the same things on defense that the Pistons can. In no particular order:
1 Cavs. They fit the neccessary superstar category. Lebron is far and away the most recognizable player in the series, and could command a Dwayne Wade type officiating effort, which would spell some trouble for the Pistons.
2 Spurs. Of all the teams this is the one that has the best chance, because defensively they get way with so much of the same stuff the Pistons do. Also they would have the biggest star in the series in Tim Duncan. Also, they humiliated the Pistons this season, and beat them recently in just such a scenario.
3 Suns. They have the superstar factors in Amare and Nash, although I don't know if thats enough to get them calls enough to beat the Pistons.

Also, I hate the NBA.