My Bitterness with the NBA

Last night, the 2005 NBA season came to a close with Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs claiming the NBA title. I was actually very interested in the 2005 NBA season, until the play-offs really annoyed me.

Yes,– I am quite bitter because my beloved Miami Heat were ousted by the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals, but there were things throughout the whole play-offs that rubbed me the wrong way (and yes, there is a right way to rub me). Anyway...I propose that next year 2 new rules are put in place for the NBA:

1. No players other than the captain is allowed to speak to the refs. If a player speaks to a ref, regardless of what is said, it should be a technical foul. It seems nowadays ANY player (other than Shaq) has something to say to the ref on every call. Not every player does it every time (i.e. Kurt Thomas who has never committed a single foul according to him), but at some point I have seen the majority of players turn into cry-babies. Now clearly these players don'’t believe that by them arguing, the ref is going to reverse the call... BUT... What they do hope is that they guilt the ref into the next call or the one after that. So not only is it painful to watch, but I think it has some un-natural effects of the flow of the officiating.
2. Technical Fouls for all flops. For those that don'’t know what I'’m talking about, anytime a player over-exaggerates the impact of contact, it i’s called a "flop"”Players flopping is beginning to become a worse and worse part of the game and there needs to be a penalty for it. Players cannot believe that there is no harm in doing it and the only thing I can thing of to get this point across is an immediate technical foul. I'’d even go as far as having a committee reviewing game tapes and fining players after the fact, even if the refs miss the call during the live game.

I have often believed NBA games were way to controlled by referee’s. It is for this reason, there is always up and down flows in most games…It is also the reason why David Stern is consistently being accused of having control of the outcome of games. Although this conspiracy theory is quite interesting, I don't buy it. If this was the case, the boring San Antonio Spurs would not have been playing the boring Detroit Pistons in the Finals… However, David does have a lot of power and control. I like to consider him a smarter, more successful version of Vince McMahon. Just as much a bully, but with his brain rather than brute force. And he, too, prefers his organizations'’ single personalities to be the face of the entire league. Will he face the same fate as Vince and his Organization? No, I don'’t think so, but he is endanger of his league becoming more of a soap opera than a competition, and that is just not cool with me.