NBA Game 5- <i>Redux</i>
 

Just to have a little fun and see how many fanboys pop out of the woodwork, I'll post this interview with Mike Mathis, a retired NBA official who worked quite a few Finals. Enjoy.....

http://www.getsportsinfo.com/lance/mikemathis.mp3

Fanboys should love that one. According to Mathis, his fellow officials, old partners and used-to-be-friends(probably) royally screwed up both the timeout and Nowitzki's foul. He also notes that, generally, the officials now in the NBA are all terrible- except for him, of course.

Before all the Mav's fanboys get too indignant though, you should know that Mathis has got his own axe to grind with the NBA front office. He thought that they screwed him by not backing him up when he got convicted for income tax evasion. He served a year's suspension before being reinstated, then he had to retire a coupla years later under a "disability retirement", supposedly because of his knees. Personally, I think that you can just label him under "disgruntled ex-official" and forget about him.

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/200...ef_mathis.html

Have at it, fanboys......:D

How lame that an official who made it all the way to the top now calls the NBA hiring practices "a good old boy network." It seems that every disgruntled official likes to pull out that tired excuse.

Z

Good article, Dan. The sad part is that if Miami lose the next 2 games, and if the games are close, you'll be reading stories in the same paper about how the officials screwed the Heat. You can take that to the bank.

To me the interesting thing is that every year the NBA officials become the center of all sorts of consiracy theories. The real consipracy is the NBA office encourages this publicity to keep the playoffs in the news. If they didn't want it it would stop.

I may be going out on a limb here, but I have a feeling there will be a small transfer of wealth between Mark Cuban and the NBA's offices for his comment to David Stern, "Your league is rigged!".

His son also works for the Mavericks
 

He was on the radio this morning in Dallas.

I did not listen to the entire interview, but I did find his comments about the time out interesting. I agreed with what he said. It would seem that when the 3 officials met that the time out would have been given following the second FT because the T would have said something along the lines of "they want the time out after the 2nd FT." However it really shouldn't have gotten that far.

It would have been better game management (I would have tried very hard) not to recognize the time out by JHoward because if I was DeRosa, and had all the experience that goes with it, I know that it is very likely that they want the TO after the 2nd FT. By the way, Howard was roughly 10 feet away, not looking at DeRosa, and the TO signal looked as if he was trying to confirm with Coach in the clips that I saw. Also, it would have been easy to just ask, "do you want it now, or after the FT?"

Wow :( If I ever say that stuff publicly, you all have permission to hang me by my lanyard. No class at all. Unbelievable.

To me it looks like Howard started heading towards the bench after signalling the 2nd time. I haven't heard or read any interviews from Josh Howard but the look on his face afterwards seemed to be of the "I f****d that up" variety.

You agree with what he said, even though <b>neither</b> of you has <b>ever</b> talked to the officials involved in the play about the play, and <b>neither</b> of you were privy to the conversations out on the floor either?

Hmmmmmmm.....interesting......

Two of a kind, I guess. Crucify the officials without hearing their side.

EXACTLY! I've said this over and over again. You see Howard's head turn toward DeRosa, his hands come together in front of him and he starts to walk towards the Mavs bench. DeRosa then whistles the TO. Now why is he walking toward his bench away from the FT lane if he didn't request TO?

Then he did indeed have the stupid "I ****ed up look" on his face.

$250K- just announced.

Doesn't that put him at almost $1.5 million in fines to the NBA?

Maybe the money doesn't mean as much to him, but even I would learn after the first coupla' hundred thou.

Just shy of $1.5 mil, I think. Season ain't over yet though....if they lose another close game, watch out again. He's creeping up on Charles Barkley, I think, for the record. :) Of course Charles was hit mainly for throwing people through bar windows and spitting on fans. I remember reading in one of Barkley's books once that he gave up caring about fines when he found out that they were tax deductible.

Cuban supposedly matches each fine he receives with a charitable donation also- so you're looking at 3 mil or so to date.