Bottom line, you get calls when you're the champ and until you're the champ, you literally have to overcome everything until you establish yourself as the better team. Is it fair? No, but it's the way ALL SPORTS IN EVERY LEAGUE HAS ALWAYS BEEN.
Disagree, this is just not true of other sports. Ask the patriot fans about the calls against the giants(I was pulling for the Gmen!). Football is highly objective in officiating. In baseball, the champs dont get all the calls. Indians over the Yankees and rockies over the cards. Superstar treatment is a basketball original, except for barry bonds in baseball(an outlier). Basketball is the only sport that pretty much has had 6-8 champions over the last 25 years and favors the champs like boxing with the officiating. Basketball is unique in that the rule biases(how much contact, physicality is allowed), changes every game, and noticably for the playoffs versus the regular season. This is the root of the NBA's credibility problem, the calls arent made the same for all players, even within a single game, let alone in different games. When Billups or Melo jumps into the defender, he gets the call. Steve Nash rarely gets that call. When AI uses his off arm to fend off the defender, he gets the call, shaq doesnt get that call, hardly ever. I frankly dont think any fan understands what these players put into the game, effort wise. So fans are lousy judges of the frustration level, justification of complaints of the players when the calls are biased. Yes the NBA often uses corporal punishment to shut players up, and dont give a crap whether it alters the outcome of games. It is hard to make that case for other sports. When tom Glavine complains about the strike zone called on him, it DOESNT shrink next game to punish his verbalizing his frustrations with the umpiring. The suns are racking up techs, some that are normal techs and some that are not, its obviously punative. I cant recall football officials suddenly calling lots of penalties to punish player behavior, can you? Football doesnt limit video replays to protect the conduct of officials, do they?
I watched the baseball playoffs last year for the first time in years, and it was a superior product to the NBA playoffs(ditto for the NFL), not even close. After the Dbacks lost out, I had no favored team, I saw very little "favoritism". The Dbacks lost to a better colorado team, dont think umpires had anything to do with it at all.
