Dictatorship, Transparency, and the NBA (or: How Chairman Stern has destroyed pro basketball)

So, one of the potentially great NBA Finals series just ended, with the Lakers topping the Celtics. The series, however, was a huge disappointment, largely because of the one issue that has plagued the NBA for the past few seasons: the officiating. The timing is interesting, to say the least. The league has lost a lot of money the past few years, and each extra playoff game, particularly a Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals game, generates a decent amount of change for the league. Throw in the fact that NBA Commissioner David Stern runs the league like a dictator, allowing no real dissent or questioning about anything, particularly refs, and allows essentially no transparency in the process, and it's not hard to see why there is a mounting view that there is a conspiracy in place, whereby the league does what it can with the refs to extend playoff series as much as possible to make sure they get as much money as they can. Even my mom, who doesn't follow basketball, called me up to tell me she thought the Lakers huge free throw advantage in Game 7 was very suspicious. But those who don't believe there is a conspiracy, read the whole post - I don't know that I believe in it myself!