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The NBA playoffs cannot be complete without umpires playing a role with controversial decisions. The last was between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Miami Heat.
I’m not going to break that game for you; we have the experts for that. But you know what? Reading about all the reactions to that play on social media made things, at least for a while, return to normal.
You know, that moment when we’d watch the NBA playoffs live before going to work (if we’re lucky) or trying to steal moments from work to surreptitiously watch the game while the boss isn’t watching. And it was nice.
Now, with everyone mostly on work-from-home setups, you don’t need to sneak out for a couple of hours to watch the game, do you?
This is why fans love and hate the NBA or basketball for that matter.
Some games are decided, not by the players themselves, but by those who blow the whistle and these games will be talked about for years to come. Do you remember the series LA vs. Sacramento Kings in the early 2000s? That Kings team was supposedly destined to win the championship, but the umpires decided otherwise. That’s according to one side of the argument.
If the Heat win this one, I think Bucks fans will list it as the latest in a series of NBA conspiracies that deprive a deserving team of a title. However, if the Bucks win this one, I wonder what the narrative will be.
I also wonder if this latest mistake will be overshadowed by another mistake, say in the conference finals or the NBA finals.
There are always controversial calls, and none are arguably more controversial than one that is still being talked about more than two decades after it happened. I’m talking about Michael Jordan’s shove of Bryon Russell in the 1998 final. Air Jordan’s last play as a member of the acclaimed Chicago Bulls.
Unlike soccer, these types of plays are analyzed endlessly by the media during slow days or even during anniversaries. In soccer, game-changing calls have decreased due to VAR. And the controversial calls, although some are mentioned, only come to life in dark lists like “10 calls that prove that Uefa favors Barça”.
I suppose it could be because while some fouls can sometimes change a game in soccer, it almost always does so in basketball, with subsequent free throws and all that.
Anyway, I wonder how the Bucks will react in Game 3. Will fans be counting the calls to add to their “NBA hates Bucks” list?
I wonder what the next cool twists are in the playoffs. Will it be another involving King James?
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