It’s hard for NBA fans like myself to not believe some kind of conspiracy that the NBA wants particular teams to end up playing each other, for revenue purposes. I mean if you’re a business, you want to be end up pleasing the majority of your consumers or in this case fans. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, ‘the NBA wants a certain matchup in the NBA Finals’. All those controversial claims came to the fore-front of this years NBA Playoffs, when Draymond Green was not suspended over kicking Steven Adams in the groin.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is aware of these NBA conspiracy theorists, but he ‘swears’ that the NBA has the best intentions when officiating the Playoffs. Silver spoke with ESPN Radio yesterday to acknowledge the conspiracies around the NBA:
Silver acknowledged he has heard the conspiracy theory that the league prefers Golden State reach the Finals instead of Oklahoma City.
“I hear it, and it’s the most sensitive issue for me, and it goes to the core integrity of the league and frankly to my integrity,” Silver said.
“Even from a business standpoint, it would be impossible to predict which Finals would have a greater following. It depends on how many games, how close the games are. I can only thus sort of swear to the world that we do the best we can and that we don’t prefer one market or one team over another.”
Oklahoma City fans aren’t the only ones that have suggested this conspiracy, in the Eastern Conference, Raptors fans have been suggesting the lack of foul calls against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the East Finals. Despite not having any really context to it, many analysts have spoken about the officiating in that series, and the West Finals series as well. The Thunder were up 3-1 against the Championship Warriors, but Golden State came back to tie the series, with Game 7 tonight, raising questions of it’s own. The truth is, we’ll never be able to know. All we can really hope is that the league’s integrity to keep it up to the players and the natural chance that comes with playing the sport is what decides the outcome of the games.
If all you conspiracy theorists want to listen to the full audio, click here.
