Avery
Well-Known Member
Imagine:
The Utah Jazz, after 42 long years in SLC with no championship banners and a trail of heartache, beat the Boston Celtics in seven games in 2021. Donovan gives a MVP performance tossing up 35 PPG on 53% shooting as the Jazz outlast the Celtics 106 - 95 at the TD Garden.
Salt Lake goes wild - people dance in the streets and a parade downtown is planned. After years and years of hoping this year would be different, it finally is.
But not so fast.
The Celtics ownership group, Danny Ainge and various leaders of the Celtic front office petition Adam Silver and the league office to overturn the championship. Their reasoning is simple: it's not fair that they lost and that the Jazz have cheated to win game seven and the series as a whole. They point to a clock operator who they don't believe was accurate, a pre-game meal that they believe was tainted by Jazz sympathizers posing as servers and referees who they claim have been paid off with Park City property to swallow their whistles. If that wasn't enough, they also bring into contention games 2, 3 and 5 (won by the Jazz) where they state similar issues of uncalled fouls, faulty court conditions and a myriad of others issues such as poor air quality. Games 1, 4 and 6, all of which were won by Boston, pose no issue to them as this was the correct outcome and isn't in question.
None of the above can be proven with any evidence - Ainge holds multiple press conferences where he spits and sweats and tells of great conspiracies against the Celtics. When pressed for evidence, he simply recites scenes from Hoosiers. Complaint after complaint is investigated by third party arbitrators who can find nothing wrong and ask the Celtics to stop wasting their time.
Finally, Silver calls his own press conference. He decides to award the Celtics the championship because they spent a lot of money building a winning team and collecting assets and there's simply no way they couldn't have won the championship as they tried so darn hard and are just too talented. The Jazz are stripped of the Larry O'Brien trophy and told to try again next year.
******
And if that sounds insane to you, we're seeing it play out in real life right now.
The Utah Jazz, after 42 long years in SLC with no championship banners and a trail of heartache, beat the Boston Celtics in seven games in 2021. Donovan gives a MVP performance tossing up 35 PPG on 53% shooting as the Jazz outlast the Celtics 106 - 95 at the TD Garden.
Salt Lake goes wild - people dance in the streets and a parade downtown is planned. After years and years of hoping this year would be different, it finally is.
But not so fast.
The Celtics ownership group, Danny Ainge and various leaders of the Celtic front office petition Adam Silver and the league office to overturn the championship. Their reasoning is simple: it's not fair that they lost and that the Jazz have cheated to win game seven and the series as a whole. They point to a clock operator who they don't believe was accurate, a pre-game meal that they believe was tainted by Jazz sympathizers posing as servers and referees who they claim have been paid off with Park City property to swallow their whistles. If that wasn't enough, they also bring into contention games 2, 3 and 5 (won by the Jazz) where they state similar issues of uncalled fouls, faulty court conditions and a myriad of others issues such as poor air quality. Games 1, 4 and 6, all of which were won by Boston, pose no issue to them as this was the correct outcome and isn't in question.
None of the above can be proven with any evidence - Ainge holds multiple press conferences where he spits and sweats and tells of great conspiracies against the Celtics. When pressed for evidence, he simply recites scenes from Hoosiers. Complaint after complaint is investigated by third party arbitrators who can find nothing wrong and ask the Celtics to stop wasting their time.
Finally, Silver calls his own press conference. He decides to award the Celtics the championship because they spent a lot of money building a winning team and collecting assets and there's simply no way they couldn't have won the championship as they tried so darn hard and are just too talented. The Jazz are stripped of the Larry O'Brien trophy and told to try again next year.
******
And if that sounds insane to you, we're seeing it play out in real life right now.
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