Posts about NBA
Full tweet:
Sad to report that former Miami Heat and NBA coach Stan Van Gundy is mourning the unexpected death of his wife of 25 years, Kim, at age 61. Condolences to the Van Gundy family: https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/greg-cote/article278536224.html
Stan Van Gundy most recently coached the New Orleans Pelicans for one season in 2021-22. Prior to that, he coached the Detroit Pistons, the Orlando Magic and the Miami Heat. He is the brother of fellow former NBA coach and former ESPN broadcaster Jeff Van Gundy.
A few interesting paragraphs from an article Haberstroh wrote a few weeks ago:
https://www.tomthefinder.com/p/the-nba-is-saying-trust-us-should
A while back, I decided to map every NBA referee and track where they went to college. Did any of them overlap with NBA stars? I thought that might be an interesting thread to pull on. I wondered if the NBA would ever let those officials work those games when they share an alma mater with a star player.
Turns out there were. Two overlaps in particular caught my eye back in the 2016-17 season: James Hardenโs Arizona State and Kawhi Leonardโs San Diego State. Longtime official Billy Kennedy went to ASU while two officials Bill Spooner and Rodney Mott attended Leonardโs San Diego State.
I was curious: Did the San Diego State refs, Mott or Spooner, ever work a Leonard game? I pulled up the game logs and scanned for the referees in the box scores.
You know that scene at the end of Usual Suspects, the one when Detective Palminteri drops his coffee mug once he realizes the true identity of Keyzer Soze? That was me when I saw that the officials on an April 17, 2017 playoff game between the San Antonio Spurs and Memphis Grizzlies: Bill Spooner, Dan Crawford and Rodney Mott.
Thatโs right: the NBA put not one, but two San Diego State alums on a Kawhi game. That wasnโt just any old basketball exhibition. That was the infamous โTake That For Dataโ game, the one in which Memphis Grizzlies coach David Fizdale famously unleashed an explosive postgame rant blasting officials.
Fizdaleโs chief complaint? Leonard, who scored a playoff-career-high 37 points, tallied more free throws than the entire Memphis Grizzlies team.
This seems like a pretty easy landmine for the NBA referee ops to navigate around. In fact, Referee Magazine once listed its conflicts of interests to avoid for officials.
The No. 1 on the list?
Alma mater.
https://twitter.com/MagicJohnson/status/1694399568455278855?s=20
This super cool and awesome for TL and the LCS. For Non Basketball fans He is routinely mentioned as a Top 5 player of all time (For Soccer fans think Maradona) and he has 5.7M followers on twitter.
Magic invest through in TL through there parent company aXiomatic Gaming, Other investers include Ted Leonsis (Wizards and Caps Owner) Peter Guber (co owner of the Warriors) and the Qatri Investment Fund.