like that kevin durant "save" against houston where he was lounging in the first row for what seemed like several minutes beforehand. or nearly every 4-point-play that james harden gets, or lebron's inability to travel. or the lack of foul calls for non-stars like josh hart (lakers).
i play rec ball and our officiating is bad too, but it seems worse in the nba despite having professional refs (granted, it's a faster and more powerful game, but their refs are supposed to be the best).
Virtually nobody besides successful gamblers and actual statisticians has any insight into what is actually going on. There's just too much noise and 99.9% of people aren't analyzing enough data to make any sense of it, assuming they're analyzing any at all and not just screaming when a call goes against them.
And I'm sure that referees in most leagues are given directives about which players to favor, etc. In hockey, at least, it's really apparent that the superstars tend to get treated with kid gloves by the refs.
Having said that, I firmly do not believe what some others do, that entire sports are rigged a la pro wrestling. I think the leagues will, on rare occasion, step in to protect their investments. But I don't think someone's sitting behind the scenes writing out the storylines in advance.
Allowing widespread legit betting is asking for less than honest behavior. Even a single player throwing a few shots or missing/hitting a metric can make people money.
The leagues can also not notice things that encourage behavior that fans like. Baseball players on steroids attracted a lot of buzz in the 90s and early 2000s.
I suppose that doesn't mean there wouldn't be any corruption, but it seems like there would certainly be less?
Naturally, I would assume that this rarely happens still if ever. Modern methods of oversight and statistical methods ought to be enough to ensure such things don’t happen. The NBA has a vested interest in maintaining the legitimacy of the league and thus are naturally inclined to root out any kind of cheating or illicit betting. Could you imagine if it got out that this was still happening and a more intense, modern investigation happened? It could destroy the NBA, which is something I’m sure the NBA is working hard to make sure doesn’t happen.
However, at least on reddit’s r/nba it seems a common opinion (at least according to upvoted responses) that much of this is still going on. Obviously that’s not saying much, but it makes me wonder… Do I have it wrong? If so why? And likewise, if so what’s the point in watching these sports?