Wait....we actually DID get cheated?!!

(Please note that this entry was written last night, when it actually WAS breaking news, but Blogger's FTP server decided to go down for over twelve hours, so I'm just able to get it up this morning at almost 11:00am. COINCIDENCE? Or is the NBA trying to shut me down to keep me from sharing the truth? I smell conspiracy...)

If you’re from Sacramento, chances are you’ve never been able to get May of 2002 (and one day in June) out of your head. It’s in your subconscious. You tell yourself you’ve moved on, but a handful of times a year, your mind goes back to what happened. To what happened, and to what might have been.

In 2002, I was a basketball fanatic. I lived it. God help anyone unfortunate enough to work with me, because every day, I was there talking about what happened in the NBA world the night before. I was living in San Diego, but thanks to the League Pass on the cable, I never missed a Kings game. Scratch that… I missed two each year. And that’s only because those were the home Clipper games that were blacked out by our cable system due to broadcast contracts going on in L.A. And those would be two of the most frustrating nights of my year, too. I knew what was happening with every team in the league, what the standings were, who the hopeful rookies were. I read basketball news online, including having to read the analysis of each game I’d already watched, and listened to sports radio daily. NBA All-Star Weekend was the highlight of my year, and I even took the day off work each year for the NBA draft so I could watch it live.

It was a time when Kings mania had reached its apex. Since moving to Sacramento in 1985, the Kings—regardless of the fact that they stank most of the time—were completely loved by their new hometown. Sacramento had not had a pro sports team. Having our own NBA team made us a TOTAL NBA town, obsessed with the sport. For years thereafter, basketball was a major topic of conversation around Sac, but after the massive changes in the team and the beginning of the Maloof Brothers era (the really rich brothers that bought the team, in case you didn’t know), it was all ANYone here talked about. Why? Because after so many years of selling out games at Arco Arena, despite the fact that the low-rent team rarely scored a win, suddenly the Kings couldn’t STOP winning. There was a whole new team, and one that meshed like magic. Chris Webber. Vlade Divac. Jason Williams. Doug Christie. Bobby Jackson. Peja Stojakovic. Hedo Turkoglu. Jon Barry. Scot Pollard. They were all great players (even if they didn’t even know the meaning of the word “defense”), but more importantly, they were SHOWMEN. They DAZZLED the crowd with jaw-dropping laser-guided passes, eye-bugging slams and a seemingly endless rain of three-pointers that made them one of the most consistently high-scoring teams in the league. And they had more than skill and flash. They had personality. They were this amazing international mix of characters who clearly loved the game and loved playing it together. And that showed between seasons every year, when the management of the team did something quite rare in basketball and actually tried to keep their core team together.

There was improvement each year, but respect was coming slowly. Word was getting out, especially about the circus-style play of rookie Jason Williams (whose jersey, his very first year in the league, became the #1 national best-seller ). Sure, Jason could frustrate as much as he delighted, but that was half the fun…you just never knew what he was going to do, or if that ridiculous half-court shot he let fly was going to just sink right in like the freaking hoop was a leather-magnet. I think it was his dedication to entertaining that became infectious, and his teammates fell into the same rhythm. People couldn’t even watch the scoreboard because they were afraid to take their eyes off the floor and miss seeing the next highlight explode.

Our nemesis (in our minds, at least) became the L.A. Lakers. Part of it was a norcal/socal thing, a little in-state rivalry. The other part was that, to us, they were the evil empire. They were Hollywood. They had all the big stars. They had two of the best players in the league in Kobe and Shaq. They were arrogant. They were cocky. And the reveled in kicking other teams when they were down, as seen in Shaq’s smirking post-win interviews filled with not-very-veiled cuts on the team he’d just stomped all over (often, quite literally). But the greatest reason for the Sac hatred of all things L.A. was the Lakers coach, Phil Jackson. One famous interview – before one of the early Lakers-Kings playoff series – Phil referred to Sacramento Kings fans, who considered themselves (and were called so officially, actually, by Sports Illustrated one year) to be the best fans in the NBA, as “half-civilized rednecks”. This led to the initially comedic but thereafter kind of embarrassing “cowbell” practice. To show their “cow-town” annoyance at Phil, fans brought cowbells to the game. Lots of them. And they spent the entire game, right behind the Lakers bench, ringing them as loud as they could. Our proudest moment? You be the judge. But he’d pissed us off. You wouldn’t like us when we’re angry. Seriously, you ever had a cowbell rung right next to your ear? You REALLY wouldn’t like us.

But for the most part, that “rivalry” existed mostly in our minds, as we could never seem to get passed the Lakers in the post-season. But 2002 was different. With the shocking trade of the undependable (but well-loved) Jason Williams, the Kings picked up a new point guard in Mike Bibby. Me, I was excited about the trade. I missed J-Will, don’t get me wrong, but I’d liked Bibby’s game for a long time, and was thrilled at the idea of a less random guard leading the floor. Mike started out pretty good that year. Nothing to really go crazy over, but he was pretty solid. But we learned something when spring came around that maybe Mike himself didn’t even realize. Mike Bibby was BORN for the post-season.

We watched, though the first two series in the west, as he came more and more alive with each game. First came a tough series against the Jazz that went all five games (this was before round one went to seven games). His game grew tougher. He became a leader, something he hadn’t been up to that point. Then came the semifinals against a fantastic Dallas team, and Mike Bibby just plain exploded. He had one big game-changing shot after another. Until then not very emotional, Mike was now screaming in victorious warrior rage to the home crowd, whipping them into an ecstatic frenzy. Where did this guy COME from, we all wondered? We lost one game only to the dynamic Mavericks, and that was game 2. After that, three victories in a row, one in overtime and the final one with a thirteen point final lead. And in this, we had achieved the goal that we, the fans, wanted as much as the team themselves – we weren’t just going to the Western Conference Finals, as we’d dreamed of for so long. We were going there to face the Lakers.

People will argue, and with reason, that the Kings/Lakers series of 2002 is one of the best in NBA history. And it wasn’t even the Finals, just the Conference Finals. Two heralded teams – one, in the Kings, that had finally earned some respect, selling out their road games all over the nation all season long and having become the darling of the sports media, the other the worldwide best-known and seemingly unstoppable monolith that was the Lakers. For L.A., it was a return to golden era with this team, a memory of the years of Magic, Kareem and Worthy. Now they had Kobe, Shaq and Rick Fox. The buzz on this series, even though most of L.A. figured it would be a sweep anyway, made it a matter of Hollywood pride, and as Hollywood goes, so goes the nation. So suddenly, plenty of non-basketball fans were into this, trying to find out what all their favorite stars were so excited about.

We also pulled out home court advantage to start this series, so things began at Arco, one of the most powerful home court advantage arenas in the world. The battle began. This is what we’d waited for, and the Kings were hungry, and fought with sweat and blood for it. Yet, by the end of game one, the Lakers took a 1-0 lead on us. In our own house. Not the inspiring start we’d hoped for, but it also wasn’t a blowout, something we’d suffered at their hands so many times before. So Sac fans were tense but hopeful. Laker fans were cocky, trash-talking, and already celebrating.

Then we won the next two.

It was unthinkable, at least in L.A. Our boys made a comeback and took their house back on May 20^th, redeeming themselves and the city’s pride and tying up the series. We had worked so hard all year to get that home court, and had felt we needed those first two wins. But we walked away with one. Would it be enough? It seemed so, because we walked into the dreaded Staples Center in L.A., facing not only hostile fans but Jack Nicholson (YOU try to make a free throw with him staring you down), and won again, trouncing them by 13 points. At HOME. Back in Sacramento, the city was going out of its collective mind, knowing it wasn’t over yet but finally starting to believe that maybe, maybe, our time had come.

Game four, still at Staples, was all-out war. We knew if we won this one, we would be up 3-1, and therefore only one victory away from taking them down, and three chances left to do it. Both teams were giving their all. And suddenly, in the final seconds, we found ourselves up by two points. L.A. had the ball. They tried to inbound…the clock was ticking…with the ball close to the net, Vlade used his height and his reach and did the one thing that was the smartest he could do – he swatted it as hard as he could, the other direction.

Right into the hands of Robert Horry, past the three-point line. A cool-as-ice Robert Horry who lined it up, took his shot, and dropped it on the buzzer, winning the game (by one point) and creating one of the best-known replays in NBA history. We even knew it then, sitting at our TVs, stunned, still trying to figure out what had just happened when it seemed that victory was in our hands. We were going to be seeing that shot for the rest of our lives on sports TV. And if we didn’t win the series, it was going to really, really suck, each and every time.

But game five proved that the Kings could finish in grand and dramatic fashion themselves, and it was Mike Bibby who dropped the final heart-stopper in that one, right in front of the home crowd in Sac, and gave us the back-at-you victory. You have not SEEN crowds go wild like that before. I was in San Diego at the time, and could still feel the ground rumbling from the shaking walls of Arco. National attention fell squarely on this series now. If people hadn’t been paying attention before, they were now. Because the word was out. Come the next game, a Lakers loss would do the until-then impossible and put them out of the playoffs. It was fascinating, being in southern Cal and so close to L.A. as I was, to watch what happened to Laker fans. For the first time, they knew real fear. And they knew anger. Not at the Kings as much as their own “beloved” team, who they suddenly turned on, not hoping for victory but demanding it like it was their birthright. It was a tough time to be cruising around San Diego in Kings gear, but I loved every minute of it.

And then, game six.

We come now, to the point of this entry. Here we sat, poised on the precipice of victory, about to become the team that knocked the world’s number one NBA team out of play for the rest of the year, and out of Finals contention. Imagine, if you will, that you’re in upper management in the NBA. And you realize just how much of your money – your ratings, your merchandising, all of it – come from Kobe, Shaq and Company. This was a looming financial disaster for the NBA. Sure, there was lots of buzz about the Kings, but buzz does not make guaranteed ratings – and dollars – in the Finals. The idea of the Lakers NOT going all the way was finally starting to sink in for the league. We knew it. It was being talked about all over sports radio. This was going to be an upset on many levels if it happened.

Which is what made you wonder…when everything went down as it did on May 31^st.

There’s a thing sportscasters talk about when it comes to the playoffs, how officiating is different. The refs tend to let the teams “play the game” – in that they call a lot fewer “ticky tack” fouls that would just slow things up and make the game less exciting. The theory is that it’s not a conscious thing – it’s not a mandate or anything – it just happens, as refs try hard not to get caught up in the flood of a playoff series, but part of them does tend to go with the flow.

The opposite happened in game six. Suddenly, it seemed every foul that could be called WAS called – against the Kings. Little fouls. Dumb fouls. Questionable fouls. Time and time again, the Lakers kept getting back to the free-throw line for more free points. For most of the game, we were just frustrated as Kings fans. But then we, like the Kings themselves, started to feel something else was going on. Per a later interview from Chris Webber, he stopped at one point, after yet another ridiculous foul was called, looked grimly at Vlade, and said “We’re %$*#ed”. He could feel it. It was nothing TOO obvious. Just enough things in a row, at just the right time. It was enough to give the Lakers 27 foul shots in the fourth quarter…compared to 9 for the Kings. Obvious fouls seemed to be ignored when committed by the Lakers (including an elbow to the face from Kobe to Bibby), and fouls that seemed imagined were being called on the Kings. In the end, the Lakers won 106-102 in Laker-friendly Staples Center, so there was certainly no one booing the calls there. Back in Sacramento, though? There was heartache. There was confusion. There was outrage. And Sacramento folks weren’t the only ones crying foul. Ralph Nader (I’m not making this up) and the League of Fans—a sports industry watchdog group—sent a letter to NBA Commissioner David Stern and wanted an investigation. But that wasn’t to happen. No, everyone got what they wanted at this point – the drama of great sports…a series going down to the final game in an evenly-matched (no one could deny that any longer), feverish rivalry. It was a dream come true for the NBA.

And one game later, the end of a dream in Sacramento. Game seven went back to Arco, and the Kings, trying to overcome forces seemingly aligning against them, gave it their all. For most of the game. It went to overtime. You couldn’t write a better sports moment – game seven overtime. Nothing that had happened the previous game mattered. Our destiny was in our own hands. This was our final chance. But this time, no one could point a finger at refs. Our shooting fell apart. As did the game. As did our season. The Lakers took the series with a 112-106 OT victory, in front of a heartbroken Sacramento crowd…that still stayed and cheered their boys for all the effort, and for the most amazing season of basketball in the franchise’s history.

Many felt that this was our best chance at making it to the Finals, maybe our one chance. They seemed to be right. Things started coming apart after this. Slowly, the long-held players started getting traded. The magic was draining away, and it did, bit by bit. The perfect storm of Sacramento basketball greatness had shaken the pillars of heaven and brought their fans so close to the promised land. But with each year after, we seemed to back further and further away from that mark. It happens. There are cycles in the NBA. No one wins forever, mainly because it’s nearly impossible to keep a team together long enough to get them to the point of being able to read each other’s thoughts and moves. Our Kings had their time, and in the first several years of the new millennium, they climbed from the depths of perpetual obscurity to the cover of Sport Illustrated, the racks of sporting wear stores around the world (especially in Turkey, thanks to Hedo…) and the heights of prime-time NBA network gold. We had our shot. And if there was as defining moment that signaled the end of it, was that overtime in game seven. It was all in our hands, then, and we lost it on our own. Sure, we could complain that it never would have gone to game seven if not for the terrible officiating in game six that seemed to hand the game to the Lakers, but that argument lost its punch after so many air balls from Peja in what should have been the biggest clutch minutes of his career. So it goes. And all of us, like so many other sports fans over the decades who’ve had victory so close they could taste it, live with the “what if” thoughts. And we wait for our team to put together just the right combination of new players to at least spark some of the old magic again.

So, yes, we really stopped, for the most part, whining about game six, because it came off as weak and bitter to do so.

Enter Tim Donaghy. And today’s news story.

You know the name Donaghy? He’s the NBA ref that’s facing prison time over gambling on games? That was pretty big news a while back. Well, now as he’s trying to get as light a sentence as he can, ol’ Tim is calling out other refs for bad behavior. And guess which series he’s alleging some fixery went down in?

Let me just quote the article:

The former NBA referee facing prison after admitting to gambling on games claims the controversial Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference finals was fixed to ensure the Los Angeles Lakers would beat the Kings.

In a letter to the sentencing court attempting to show his level of cooperation in hopes of receiving a lighter jail term, Tim Donaghy alleges two of that game's three referees were "company men" who used "manipulation" to extend the series to a deciding seventh game. The team that lost Game 6 had two players "ejected," the letter claims, and later lost the series.

Donaghy does not specify the teams or the referees. But Lakers-Kings was the only 2002 series to go seven games. And while no Kings were ejected, Vlade Divac and Scot Pollard did foul out as Shaquille O'Neal attempted 17 free throws.

"Referees A, F, and G were officiating a playoff series between the Team 5 and Team 6 in May of 2002," the letter states, using placeholders instead of names. "It was the sixth game of a seven-game series, and a Team 5 victory that night would have ended the series. However, Tim learned from Referee A that Referees A and F wanted to extend the series to seven games. Tim knew Referees A and F to be 'company men,' always acting in the interest of the NBA, and that night, it was in the NBA's best interest to add another game to the series."

The letter goes on to say the two referees heavily favored Team 6, ignoring blatant fouls committed by its players and calling "made-up" fouls against Team 5, giving Team 6 more free-throw chances.

"The referees' favoring of Team 6 led to that team's victory that night and Team 6 came back from behind to win the series," the letter states.

Iiiiiiinteresting…

Now, let’s be honest. What you’ve got here, so far, is a dirty ref who’s scraping for anything he can to get less time in jail. Not exactly damning evidence, certainly not from a trustworthy source. This just the initial news, and more will be coming out in the next couple of days (and believe me, every bit of it will be covered in Sacramento). We’ll see if any more comes out of it. But if you watched that game (like EVERYONE from Sacramento did when it broadcast live), you can’t help but feel a certain gasp of hope for validation. Could it be there is actual evidence somewhere that could show this to be true? Is it so hard to believe that the NBA would influence a series like this to maximize profits and extend the series (for more commercial dolla’), to insure that the Laker-loving world got yet ANOTHER Laker Championship to cheer…leading to more Laker merchandise, more “Lakers Championship Season” DVDs, more sponsors the following season?

The paranoia of the bitter? Maybe. The slanted beliefs of those felt jilted? Sure. But I, myself, with an open mind, will be keeping a close eye on this story and seeing what, if anything, comes from it. If by some miracle such allegations are proven, will it give our 2002 Kings their Championship rings? Will it give Sacramento the pride it would STILL be high on, claiming evermore that this is the city of the World Champion Sacramento Kings? Will it get me my Kings tattoo that I was seriously planning to get with a couple of friends of mine if we’d gone all the way? None of the above. But it will give us some peace. And maybe, some justice. Justice for a crime that may have put dollars above the pure spirit of sport, and profits above the dreams of hopes of some of the most faithful fans the NBA has ever known. To betray such fans is to betray the foundation of the NBA, and if such a thing did actually happen, people need to go down. Guess we’ll see.

Ah. I just noticed that the Lakers, down 0-2, managed to take game three and keep their Finals hopes alive tonight against the Celtics.

Imagine that.

:)