Uncle Luke, the man whose booty-shaking madness once made the U.S. Supreme Court stand up for free speech, gets as nasty as he wants to be for Miami New Times. Luke explains how the NBA commissioner is assisting Dallas Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki.
The Heat hater brigade loves to harp on LeBron James and Dwyane Wade for flopping around to get foul calls, but the real Tinseltown actor is Dirk Nowitzki. He has gone to the stripe 24 times through three games. That's the mark of a great whiner. And Dirk is definitely a crier.
What do you expect from a dude whose hero is David Hasselhoff? Any man that likes the Hoff is a flipper and a flopper.
Nowitzki lost his chance to get a ring when he let Mark Cuban send Steve Nash packing in 2005. Dirk has been trying to win a championship all by himself ever since. And we already showed him he can't do it alone when Dwyane Wade led a veteran team to the 2006 title. Dallas won't win this series either, but Dirk can thank NBA Commissioner David Stern for making sure it wasn't a sweep.
The NBA should change its name to the NBE, as in National Basketball Entertainment, because the league is all about creating drama. We're talking about a sports organization that employed a referee who served 11 months in federal prison for relaying inside information to gamblers. That ex-ref, Tim Donaghy, went on to write a tell-all book about how the NBA head honchos influence the outcome of games through the officiating.
So you know the NBA has no credibility. Dallas has only one player who can make an impact. Stern has instructed the refs to extend the finals by calling fouls on anyone who so much as breathes on Nowitzki. Anyone who follows basketball knows that giving Dirk the calls leads the opposing players to start giving him some space. Not only does Nowitzki get to the foul line, but also he's getting some separation from the defense thanks to the officiating crew.
All the games so far should have been blowouts for the Heat, but the NBA needs to make money. The 2011 finals are blowing away the 2006 Dallas-Miami series in the Nielsens. Sunday's game was up 23 percent from 2006's game 3. The NBA has the officiating down to a science when it comes to allowing teams to get back in the game.
This is why the NFL officiating is superior because of instant replay. NBA coaches should be allowed to throw a red flag on the hardwood to protest a questionable call. But if that happened, the league's parlay would be exposed.
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