The Latest in the Clippers' Saga: On The Court Edition

(Oh, I'll get to that bat in the Anderson Cooper interview.  Would've last night, but was too tired after doing some off-blog stuff.)

But, last night, the old guard of the NBA stuck up it's ugly head.

Controversial calls at the end of the Clipper-Thunder game give the game to the home team.

104-102 Clippers, they have the ball.  17.8 left.  (1:51 of the clip.)

So here's problem #1:  There's no shot clock here.  The Clippers have two time outs of some stripe, so there's really no reason for the play to get this far to begin with. 

The ball is ripped out of the hands of the Clipper player with apparent good defense, no call. 

Oklahoma City gets the ball back, goes up for a layup, and the ball is out of bounds.  (1:59 of the clip, 11.3 to go in the game.)

The back-side official (referee #25) makes the immediate call of Oklahoma City possession, and they get 3 free throws to win the game after being down 16 -- and down 5 with Los Angeles with the ball with 1 minute to go.

At 2:27 of the clip (2:38 and onward gives a great slow-mo), it's clear that the ball is not touched by Barnes near Barnes.  And I mean NOT REALLY CLOSE.

But the call is made from the back-side official who could not have seen that angle in any respect.

And then the foul on top of it (6.6 left, 3:30 of the clip).

I mean, this is 90's NBA obvious -- the complete ignorance of the reality of anything on the court.

3:48 shows the replay:  HE DOESN'T TOUCH HIM.

Ladies and gentlemen, that game was fixed.

You have a steal which almost certainly would've been called a foul on Westbrook.

Then you have an inexplicable back-side call to have OKC keep the ball.

Then you have the classic "assumed foul" to give the winning free-throws.

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Brian Tuohy has long maintained that there was no way the Clippers were going to do anything in these playoffs because of the Sterling mess.

And he has a compelling case.

I'm still 50-50, even after last night.  I think it's clear the Clippers win tomorrow night to force Game Seven, blah blah yadda yadda.

As I'll talk about in the next post when I get to that, the Anderson Cooper interview shows Donald Sterling as a complete old bat whom I cannot be convinced how this guy has not been shot by some big-wig in Los Angeles. 

So it would be compelling to try to get the story to go away and have as more than one Tweet I've seen today has it:  LeBron vs. the MVP:  Heat vs. Thunder in the Finals.

I mean, that would appear to be obvious.

Except for one scenario that talking to friends of mine who've gotten information on the subject of next season has reinforced:

The National Basketball Players Association (the NBA's PA) had it's first vice president, Roger Mason, on Jim Rome recently.

Mason stated the following:

"If it's not handled by ... the start of next season, I don't see how we're playing basketball. I was just in the locker room with LeBron. At the end of the day, you know we have leaders, we have player reps, we've got executive committee members. ... Leaders of the teams, they're all saying the same thing: 'If this man is still in place, we ain't playing.' "

Now, the article claims that James might be backing away from that, but you can't tell me (especially after the old bat basically all-but-insinuated Magic Johnson was disseminating the AIDS virus to all of his lovers) that there wouldn't be enough players this October, if the Sterlings took the league to court to prevent a forced sale, to basically shutter the NBA until the Sterlings (all of them!) are out.

Since forcing a sale might not be able to be pulled off in time, you might be looking at The Nuclear Option:  If he doesn't accept the ruling of the Board of Governors to sell by an X Date, the league folds the Clippers, puts a successor franchise as the 2nd LA franchise, and pockets the entire bit of money.

I'm going to state it now:  If the Sterlings are not out of the NBA entirely by October, there's a player's strike.  There's no way that's going to be avoided.

And, if they can't convince them to sell or enforce it through a (NBA-)constitutional vote, then the league might be forced to fold the Clippers, create a successor franchise, and then they get all the money Magic-Guggenheim/Geffen/Mayweather/whomever puts in.

That's the only way I could see the Clippers winning the title -- but there are enough murmurs out there!!!