Hope for Phoenix Next Year

So everybody is talking about the Suns now in light of the referee scandal that is giving David Stern his own personal hell on earth. In question now is game 3 of the Suns-Spurs series that was plagued by the most inane officiating I had ever seen in a championship series. Talk about pouring salt on an open wound, this is like the nightmare you can't wake up from if you're a Suns fan. You can watch the video on Youtube, it's depressing to relive those moments. You also have to note that the bad calls came mostly from the referees that aren't under question by the FBI, so does that mean that they were all in cahoots? If it turns out that this isn't a 'rogue individual' like David Stern wants it to be, it's not the downfall of the NBA but you know that could open up a hellstorm that the league can't afford.

The question remains though, is the Spur's championship tainted? A part of me wants to think so just to make myself feel better, but it's still in the record books and unless they burn that book no one is going to see an asterisk next to it nor question it 10 years from now. Also, they were better than the Cavaliers, can't deny that at all. The Suns also aren't guaranteed a win simply because of a 7 game series. It's just sad that to me this year's championship wasn't decided by playing ball. Even if the Suns were to have lost in a 7 game series, Suns fans could go home with the thought that at least they went the distance. Now we've got rampant conspiracy theories resurfacing and even questioning of whether the Mavericks are the real 2006 champions. This is what happens when you create an almost totalitarian ruling about questioning the referees, one only needs to look at Duncan being chucked out of a game by Joey Crawford to realize that there is something terribly wrong with the officials in the game.

So why do I say there is hope for next year? No it's not because of Grant Hill, it's because hopefully this means Phoenix has something to prove. Playing with a chip on your shoulder and without any dignity left to lose is powerful. Hopefully Stern doesn't decide to fix games for them to win the playoffs next year, it'd be even bigger a travesty at that point to have the team you screwed sink just as low. The Spurs should also look to repeat and prove that they were the better team, after all it's really not fair to the Spurs at all to assume that they were somehow in on this or something.