Nuggets, Knicks make trade that brings neither closer to a title

Salary caps, they're grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat!

 

Basketball has almost always been the province of 1-3 dominant teams. It's the nature of the sport. The fewer players on a team, the more impact gifted individual players will have on team success. It could be argued that of all the NBA champions in history, maybe only five or six didn't contain two or three superstars or one top 10 player in history who were the reason they won. Been true from Mikan through Russell through Jordan through Kobe.

 

If you think the Heat's title was fixed (I don't entirely disagree...), what are your feelings on the 2002 Western Conference Finals when Stern bent a small-market team over and let the refs have their way with them.

 

Never is this more apparent than this season. Last season the Cavs were among the best teams in the league. This year they're the worst. Look at the Bulls pre-Jordan and post-Jordan and I'm not talking about the year and a half when he was on "baseball sabbatical".

 

If Jordan hadn't taken that year and a half off, the Bulls would have eight and the Rockets two titles would be gone. Not that Houston is a small market, but that would basically mean that other than San Antonio, every title has been won by a team in a top 10 market. (I'm assuming Miami is in the top 10).

 

Yes, I'm a Lakers fanboy, but Sacramento could have made a free throw or two in Game Seven. The refs didn't exactly hand the Lakers Game Four. And Shaq fouled out in Game Five, which happens . . . how often?

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/200205280SAC.html

Nah, just focus on a single game in a seven-game series. Fix! Watergate! Stern! Big markets!

So, so disgusting how Stern makes the refs deliberately keep small market teams - teams like San Antonio! - out of the Finals.

It is. That's why your rant wasn't taken seriously.

 

Yeah, Sacramento shit the bed in Game 7. But Game 6 in that series has to be one of the biggest travesties in sports of the last 30+ years. I sat courtside and watched it and I have never in my life been so convinced that a game was fixed, maybe not for the Lakers to win the series, but definitely so it went seven games.

Hell, Donaghy has even admitted that series was fixed.

 

San Antonio is the exception. But it did take the Spurs tanking an entire season to get him.

 

As reliable a source as Pete Rose.

 

If you watch that entire series you can come to one of two conclusions. Either it was one of the most poorly officiated series in the history of the NBA, all of which completely was in favor of the big market team in Game 6, or it was fixed.

But you're a Lakers fanboy, so I'm never going to convince you.

 

How many NBA teams are in "small" markets, anyhow? Oklahoma City (used to be Seattle, big market), Sacramento, Indy, San Antonio, Portland (notable financial success, did win title in 1977), Memphis, New Orleans, Milwaukee, that's about it. It's maybe a third, max, of all franchises. That alone is one reason they haven't won titles. And it's worth noting how many of those franchises are in small markets because they couldn't make money in big ones. That indicates incompetence rather than market size is their problem.

 

This trade is a classic example of why the NBA has turned to shit. With the cap the way it is teams can no longer build based on building solid core of players that their fans can watch develop.

Team that Donnie Walsh put together had become entertaining to watch. I had not watched a lot of The Knicks in past 5 years but found myself drawn back to this team. Sure they were a few stars short but they competed enough.

Now Knick fans are asked to hold on for another year with the hope of getting Chris Paul as final piece.

The NBA is a joke.