King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Evil NBA conspiracy works! Or doesn't, but anyway: Spurs beat depleted Suns as the Jazz wait and the entire East stumbles.
Read more: Sports, NBA, Basketball, King Kaufman, NBA playoffs, Sports Daily
May 17, 2007 | The NBA's diabolical plan worked: The suspensions of Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw of the Phoenix Suns allowed the San Antonio Spurs to win Game 5 on the road Wednesday night.
The Suns, making a valiant effort with a small lineup and a reduced rotation, led most of the way, but wore down at the end. The Spurs prevailed by the Spurs-friendly score of 88-85. Raja Bell of the Suns played 46 minutes, Shawn Marion and Steve Nash 45, season highs for all three not counting a pair of double-overtime games during the regular year.
Now they'll have to recover in time to try to win in the Spurs' gym Friday night, though they'll have Stoudemire and Diaw back. Just as that evil genius David Stern planned it.
Of course I don't really think Stern's an evil genius or that the NBA had a diabolical plan to fix this series. In fact, if the NBA did want to fix this series, it seems to me the league would try to fix it to increase the chances of a win by the far more telegenic Suns, the series going to a highly lucrative seventh game or, preferably, both. Helping the Spurs win Game 5 did neither. The likeliest outcome now is a Spurs victory in six.
But I do think the NBA has a serious problem in that a lot of fans and, more important, former and would-be fans believe the suspensions were part of a pattern of the league trying to manipulate things with rigged officiating and disciplinary rulings. And these people mostly don't make a habit of wearing foil hats.
The commissioner dismissed criticism of his decision to suspend Diaw and Stoudemire on ESPN Radio Wednesday, denying that the league had allowed Robert Horry to change the series in the Spurs' favor by committing a flagrant foul on Nash.
"It's being decided because two Phoenix Suns who knew about the rule forgot about it, couldn't control themselves and didn't have coaches who could control them," Stern said.
And please ignore that the Phoenix coaches did, in fact, control them, and no damage was done when the two left the "bench area," an ill-defined zone that could reasonably include the area where Diaw and Stoudemire reached before being herded back to their seats.
But let's not rehash all that. I hinted at the end of Wednesday's column that I'd lost interest because of the ruling and wouldn't be tuning in, but I couldn't help myself. I'm not sure I would have if I were just a fan, without professional obligations. But I think so.
A Game 5 of a contentious NBA playoff series between the two best teams in the league is probably too compelling to pass up, no matter what bone-headed rulings come down from the suite of a commissioner whose iron-fisted rule over the past few years has undone a lot of good he'd done previously.