WE WUZ ROBBED

 

               Conspiracy theories are the rage in the U.S.A., so I’m glad to report the demise of one. Debunking is tough because it’s hard to prove a negative, but I think it’s safe to say that the National Basketball Association no longer labors under the cloud that its playoffs and other functions are fixed for the New York Knicks to win. Forty nine years of no championships for the Garden dwellers, and just one playoffs appearance in the last nine seasons, seem finally to have put it to rest. Now, I guess, the L.A. Lakers have become the focus of the whispers, but they also didn’t make the current POs, so even those have been muted.

               The genre, however, is far from dead. Indeed, it seems to have expanded to make victims of just about every team in the league, and those in our other major sports, too. To hear the players, most broadcasters and many fans tell it, the referees and umpires have it in for everybody, and lay in wait to loose their venom at the most hurtful times. The cry “We wuz robbed!” reverberates through the land.

                Don’t believe me? Then check out the next NBA playoff game you see. Every time a foul is called the perpetrator lifts his eyes to heaven and raises his arms in disbelief, astonished to be so unfairly accused. If it’s a home-team player the audience responds similarly. It happens so often you’d think they’d get worn out, but one outrage just seems to fuel the next.

               I hate to get political here, even in a general sense, but I think what’s happening is that the ultrapartisanship that affects our politics has gravitated to sports. Paranoia is up, as are many forms of nastiness. Twice during the just-concluded NBA playoff between the Phoenix Suns and Dallas Mavericks players reported that their wives, girlfriends or moms had been insulted or worse by opposing fans in the stands during games, and players and fans in that and in other series have traded barbs directly. We Americans used to feel superior to the European and South American soccer fans who experience their loyalties viscerally, but we’re heading in that direction.

               You might think that sports-media pros would bring cooler heads to the frays, but many don’t. I see baseball games from around the country by way of the game’s Extra Innings cable-TV package and must report that homerism is rampant, affecting every facet of the broadcasts.

 Rooting from the baseball TV and radio booths is old stuff, dating back to my distant youth (Bert Wilson used to say he didn’t care who won as long as it was the Cubs), but in memory it used to have a joking aspect. Today it’s expressed by continual complaints about the umpiring, specifically about how all the close calls are going against whatever team the broadcaster works for. Even the electronic strike-zone box most games feature on television, and the microscopic analysis of plays subject to video review, don’t quiet the bitching; when a call goes against the homies it’s often explained away as too close to really determine.

It's no wonder that the NBA playoffs have amplified the bad-call mania. The NBA regular season is too long, meaning that many contests are desultory, but there’s little of that in the POs.  Players and fans are keyed up, and the familiarity bred by the best-of-seven format heightens individual animosities.

 Making it worse is that in the playoffs the league and its officials seem to do what the broadcasters call “let the boys play.”  Fans seem to like that in principle but in practice the phrase translates to “let the boys foul.”  NBA basketball is played by large, fast and muscular men who make the courts look small, and there’s so much banging around in the normal course of things that fouls could be called on just about every play. Not calling some of the usual fouls leads to greater feelings of unfairness about the ones that are called. The question then becomes how much is too much, and the answer varies widely. Where to draw the line on how often or hard Joel Embiid or Luca Doncic can bang his shoulder into an opponent’s chest to improve his position? Depends on who you’re rooting for.  Booooo!

Do the refs, umps, etc., make mistakes? Of course they do, as do players, coaches, sportswriters, accountants and surgeons. But are they intentional and directed toward helping or hurting certain teams? Zero evidence for that. Only once in the annals of modern big-time American sports has a game official being found to have used his position to alter games’ outcomes. That would be the case of NBA ref Tim Donaghy, who spent 15 months in prison for fixing games in 2006 and 2007. As far as is known his actions were aimed at benefiting only himself, by way of his bets.

 I’ve known refs and umps professionally and socially. My nephew, David Trachtenberg, referees high school basketball and volleyball games in and around Denver, where he lives. By my own and others’ accounts they’re a fine bunch, dedicated to their sports to the exclusion of other loyalties. Game officials in the NBA and Major League Baseball do well financially these days, earning between $150,000 and $500,000 a year depending on seniority, but they got their starts working high-school or kids’-league games for, maybe, 50 bucks per, if they were lucky. Without them those games wouldn’t be possible. Their fraternity should be cheered on that ground alone.