Deja Vu

The Bulls season ended just at the Celtics did, with the Heat and the referees sending them home for the summer.  That’s not to take anything away from the Heat and their performance to close out games 4 and 5 of each series.  They made the shots when they had to.  The way both teams lost though was eerily similar.  They both had the ball with time running down in Game 4 and a chance to win, but ended up with terrible shots and overtime losses.  Then in Game 5 they both had leads late in the 4^th quarter that they weren’t able to hang on to (Celtics by 6 and Bulls by 12 with 4 minutes left).  Strange considering the two head coaches were on the same bench last year.  It was like the Celtics series wasn’t painful enough so they decided to replay it with different uniforms.  The reason I’m bringing this up is because the NBA has a problem on its hands.  It’s a problem that everyone except the fraud fans in Miami needs to worry about.  David Stern has decided that the Heat will be winning titles for as long as he sees fit.  The referees last night were incredibly bad.  The lead official was none other than Scott Foster, the crooked and completely in the bag accomplice of Tim Donaghy.  Really, what the hell is Stern thinking?  Is he that brazen to put this hack out there and think that he’s not going to get called out?  Apparently his is.  The game took a turn for the worse last night when at the 2:24 mark in the 3^rd quarter Carlos Boozer was hit for a flagrant foul on LeBron.  After watching the replay 30 times (TNT hates doing that) it was obvious to me that it was simply a hard foul.  It was a playoff foul.  Of course the officials overreacted and this lead to the Heat taking NINE foul shots in 75 seconds and turning an 11-point Bulls lead into 5 at the end of the quarter.  I know, they were still winning and they blew it down the stretch, but I would argue that it never should’ve been that close.  The Heat had no offensive flow to their game and it was the free throws at the end of the quarter that saved them.  The Bulls defense was fantastic and the referees (with Stern’s blessing) took that aggressiveness away from them.  LeBron looked like a European soccer player last night, flopping and diving all over the floor and he was rewarded (or bailed out) for it.  It was disgusting.  I understand that the stars will get the calls, but you didn’t see Rose get a single call on the other end as he was bumped all over the court.  Lastly, you had Steve Kerr simply embarrassing himself by DEFENDING the officials on each and every call.  I have no idea how the Finals will play out, but it’s becoming obvious that the shots are being called at the top and Mark Cuban might want to send the Commish a little “care package” if the Mavericks want any chance of winning. 

Side Note:  When and where did the "Let's Go (fill in the team)!" chant start?  I was listing to a Bruins montage on my way to work this morning and they had fans going crazy with that chant and even though it's pretty basic and generic and it was pretty damn awesome.