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Show Critical calls may have changed the season Time has come for NBA to 'Officially' improve become a major player in professional profes-sional sports. Teams are financially sound, the league is making tons of money, and the athletic talent is at an all-time high. If David Stem really wants to give teams an even chance to succeed, which I don't believe he does, then it's time for him to attack the next biggest prob lem area for the league-its officials. offi-cials. At a grocery store recently, the checkout girl, frustrated that the same teams were advancing each year in the playoffs, asked me if I thought the NBA playoffs were fixed. fix-ed. I told her that they weren't, but I added that there is no question in my mind that the NBA and its leadership would like nothing better than two high visibility teams in major markets to meet in the finals. And NBA officials may be one-dumb, one-dumb, but they're not too dumb. After all, when you've been given not only the authority but the apparent ap-parent permission to control the outcome of a game, and you know what your boss desires are, what would you do? NB A action may be fannnn-tastic, fannnn-tastic, but its officiating is plainn-nnnn-awful. Let's hope David takes some Stem action where it really belongs this off-season. BvTOM HARALDSEN Clipper Correspondent Now that the NBA season is over for the Utah Jazz, 1 feel I can safely voice my opinion about a subject near and dear to the hearts of most of us basketball fans without it sounding like sour grapes. I'm speaking, of course, of NBA officials. Anyone who watched the Jazz during the playoffs knows that the bulk of the calls went the other way. I'm sure many other playoff teams felt the same way at times, but several critical calls that could have changed the complexion of this year's season are still fresh on my mindand even some that didn't change a thing. Take Game Four in the Phoenix series. Here were the Jazz hoping to pull off the upset, and even after the game was long decided, the officials offi-cials were still calling ticky little fouls on Utah while ignoring the hammer job the Suns were doing inside on Jeff Malone and Karl Malone. Commissioner David Stem, he with the cheesy little East Coast country club smile, was even in the Salt Palace, making small talk with local writers and all but promising prom-ising that Salt Lake would get its long-overdue NBA All Star Game after the Jazz arena is built, "if we can get enough hotel rooms.' On this night, however, even his striped officiating goons couldn't derail the Jazz from setting the Suns in the West. Game Two in Portland was the scene of the great Jazz comeback. With Utah making a run and Portland folding like a pup tent in the final minutes. Blue Edwards went up for a rebound long off the iron, grabbed the ball at the same time as one of the Blazers, and was whistled for a loose ball foul. - Replay j showed Che caJI was terrible, terri-ble, and Portland eventually made both free throws which proved pivotal in the final minute. Portland also benefitted from some bizarre calls when the Blazers split their games in the Palace, and who can forget that debacle during the regular season when Portland and its extra three players (refs) beat the Jazz here? Who can blame the fan that got tossed for giving one offi cial the one finger salute? Officiating is not an easy way to make a living, and having tried ref-ereeing ref-ereeing basketball a couple of years myself, I know it's difficult to be right all the time. My problem with NBA officials isn't just with the calls they make or don't make, but in the way they make them. The key to successful officiating, whether it be basketball, baseball, hockey, football, soccer, whatever, is to remain inconspicuous. In other words, if you've called a game in such a way that players hardly noticed you were there, you've succeeded. suc-ceeded. On this count alone, NBA officials flunked out long ago. The NBA is not about basketball, or even about having the world's best athletes. It is, first and foremost, like most athletic events in this day and age, about revenue. Stem wants games to be big-money producers, and thus, entertaining. And NBA officials are showboats. They not only govern the action, they control it. The veterans are the worst-guys like Jess Kersey, Mike Mathis and Jack Madden love to stop a team's momentum with some fabricated call that 18,000 others present couldn't see. Stem, who once told former Jazz president and Bountiful native Dave Checketts that the Jazz were the "worst run franchise in professional profes-sional sports," doesn't seem to care much about all this. After all, when the officials anger players with calls or non-calls, and those players later get into fights, guess whose league coffers benefit from the fines? Think I'm making this NBA greed factor up? Why else would the NBA send Utah and Phoenix to Japan for that profit-generating two-game series last October? After all, the Jazz and Suns boast the two smallest unenas in the league, and since the NBA had to make up the difference to those clubs' owners for lost gate receipts, Stem chose the cheapest approach. But the story on that series gets even better. Up until the last month, neither the Jazz or the Suns were going to be allowed allow-ed to take any of their state crews to Japan. Instead, guess where Stern was going to take them from-New York. What a surprise. The clubs protested, and the NBA finally relented. The fact is that the NBA has now |