- Chris Paul was fined $35,000 for his outburst yesterday, which apparently included official contact. No suspension.
- The Rockets also wanted to look at Game 7 of last year's Western Conference Finals, "auditing" the game, according to an ESPN report.
A voluminous report indicates 81 calls during the game which changed the game's outcome. The report was to be sent, but wasn't ever sent, to the President of League Operations, indicating the officials for that game changed the outcome, rigged the series, and denied the Rockets a championship.
The two-minute report given by the league for Game 1 of this Western Conference semifinal all but admits the game was fixed for the Warriors. It outlined at least three missed calls in the last ten seconds, with the Warriors up three.
(And probably was the main reason Paul only got off with a fine and no suspension.)
The report from 2018 Game 7 indicates the refs are too stubborn and entrenched, probably implying that the old-school David Stern match-fixers are still at it.
Meanwhile, over at Wizards of the Coast:
- A second former Player of the Year and World Champion faces expulsion from the Mythic Tournament professional leagues -- this one for marked sleeves causing his disqualification from this weekend's second actual Mythic Tournament. (Kotaku)
Yuuya Watanabe was DQ'd for marked sleeves on four specific cards in his deck by the fifteenth round of the second major Mythic Tournament.
Two-time player of the year (2009 and 2012), 2012 World Champion, helped Japan win the Magic World Cup in 2017, seven Grand Prix victories.
Gee, I'm getting an awful Phil Ivey vibe from this one. You think this might be WHY he got all this done?
And you think there's not the chance (and I've thought so 20-25 years running) that "professional card play" and "cheating" are equivalent concepts...
- And as for the guy who got removed from the $1,000,000 tournament a month or so back: He's been expelled from the professional leagues, replaced with the first Mythic Tournament winner.
Owen Turtenwald has apparently been expelled from professional Magic as of last Thursday. (Kotaku) What remains puzzling is that no actual statement has ever been put forth by Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast confirming not only the move, but people actually wondering if this means they don't want to admit what most players seem to have found out about Turtenwald over the years.
He was replaced by Mythic Tournament champion Autumn Burchett. They won the first Mythic Tournament back in February. (Burchett does not assign a binary gender, and hence, the correct usage is "they".)
Burchett is the first non-cis-male in the new professional leagues. Given their support (they were glomped furiously after Burchett's victory in February's finals of the first Mythic Tournament), Burchett will probably be used to further try to break the old boy's club...
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