Utah Jazz: Accept it! The Bulls deserved the series

By Amy Donaldson and Chuck Gates
Deseret News
Published: Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008 12:39 a.m. MDT
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WHAT-IFS-VILLE — All you CSI wannabes, put away your spray bottles of Luminol. It's finally time to close the case of "The Stolen Championship Caper."

Referee Dick Bavetta and his crew will plead guilty to a couple of blown calls in Game 6 in exchange for Jazz Nation dismissing charges of aiding and abetting Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in stealing the 1998 NBA title.

Jazz fans have long embraced the notion of a conspiracy. Maybe you've spent the last 3,717 days believing Jordan shoved off Bryon Russell, with the clock winding down — enabling His Airness to hit the game-winning shot, turning the Chicago Bulls into champs and the Utah Jazz into chumps. Or that on the preceding play — when Jordan swats the ball from Karl Malone's clutches — you remain adamant that Bavetta & Co. swallowed a whistle, or two, or three.

Certainly recent court proceedings on felony gambling charges involving former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who claimed that the NBA wanted certain teams to win and that officials sometimes (wink, wink) helped make that happen, raised eyebrows and piqued interest here in Jazzland. Could it actually be that Stockton-to-Malone wasn't denied its rightful glory by a superhero donning No. 23, but instead was jobbed by a Grinch in stripes?

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But what if Donaghy's accusations, self-serving as they might seem, had merit? What if the NBA was an accomplice in the theft? Thinking a more critical examination of the 1998 NBA Championship series was in order, the Deseret News assembled a panel of four college basketball officials to review NBC's broadcast of controversial Game 6. The panel evaluated the game dispassionately — dissecting and critiquing what they saw — much the way a forensic pathologist might examine a crime scene. But because it's bad form in referee circles to criticize another official's work publicly, they only did so on the condition of anonymity.

And the Grinch, it turns out, has an airtight alibi.

"I don't see a Dick Bavetta conspiracy at all," one official said with the others agreeing. If anything, their unbiased consensus is that Game 6's officiating actually favored the Jazz and with a few notable and highly publicized exceptions, the game was called consistently from start to finish.

Now let's go to the tape ....

We'll start off with a call that even a kindergartner could have made, but three skilled NBA officials didn't. Howard Eisley's 3-pointer with just under 10 minutes to play in the second half, which Bavetta incorrectly waved off, and is the root of many of the conspiratorial overtones haunting memories of that game.

The panel of referees doubted a similarly bad call could happen today with replay in use on 24-second violations. Two of the officials did think Bavetta erred by not consulting with the other officials because of the call's potential importance. The other two thought the play in real time was still close enough that too much shouldn't be read into the game crew's miss.

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Recent comments

No, Justice is Blind, your reference to the Holocaust isn't just…

Just A Game! | Aug. 21, 2008 at 5:01 a.m.

What a couple of gasbags! I sat at the first Jazz game that Bavetta…

Justice is Blind | Aug. 20, 2008 at 6:40 p.m.

For those of you who keep commenting on not believing the article…

Ashamed | Aug. 20, 2008 at 8:10 a.m.

+ Click to enlarge
The Chicago Bulls' Michael Jordan makes the game-winning shot, on a play Jazz fans still question whether or not it was a push-off, during Game 6 of the NBA Finals against Utah at the Delta Center. (APPhoto/Scott Cunningham, Nba Photos)
APPhoto/Scott Cunningham, Nba Photos
The Chicago Bulls' Michael Jordan makes the game-winning shot, on a play Jazz fans still question whether or not it was a push-off, during Game 6 of the NBA Finals against Utah at the Delta Center.