Oh So Shady.

Sunday night I witnessed one of the ugliest displays in sports, referees blatantly calling a game in favor of a team. The team they were calling in favor of was actually playing against my manfriend's team Ikaros.  Now you might think I am saying this because the calls were against my guy's team but anyone who knows basketball or sport in general would agree with me if they were in the arena, well maybe not the fans of the team getting all the love from the refs but you get what I'm saying. 

From the tip off it was clear the refs were after Ikaros' big man Deon, they called him for two fouls in the first two minutes of the game, which forced the coach to take him out. The whistles kept blowing, all against Ikaros, it was almost comical when you looked up at the scoreboard and so the disparity of fouls between the two teams.

Fortunately the other team could not shoot from the free throw line, so Ikaros managed to stay in the game even with all the calls against them. It was an extremely close game neither team leading with more then six points the whole game, but I knew the refs weren't going to let Ikaros walk away with a victory.

With less then two minutes to go Ikaros was up by one 79-78, well the refs of course called a foul and sent a member of the opposing team to the foul line, pulling them ahead by a point 80-79. Ikaros called a time out with 16 seconds to go drawing up what they hoped to be the last play of the game that would lead to a victory. My guy got the ball and went one on one with the other team's pointguard with time dwindling down, my guy pulled up for a jumper and bam he hit it! I went freaking nuts, this was the third time in four games that my guy hit a shot at the end of the game to give them a victory 81-80, or so we thought. 

There was three seconds left, a time out was called. What I then witnessed was so disgusting I couldn't believe my eyes, the refs were literally in a huddle covering their mouths in what only looked like a conversation about how they were going to get the other team a win.  With just three seconds left the ball was inbounds at half court and all I could hear was the whistle, they called a foul on a member of Ikaros at top of the key, that sent the other team to the foul line. This was honestly so ridiculous that Ikaros' coach was actually laughing because it was so blatant. The game ended up being tied 81-81 at the end of regulation, meaning there would be an overtime, the bad part about this was that Ikaros had all their big guys foul out, so they couldn't hold on. They lost in one of the most corrupt games I've ever witnessed. 

Shady, shady, shady.

This was extremely disappointing, I mean it didn't matter how hard Ikaros played, they weren't winning that game. I kind of takes the whole "purity" of sport away from the game. It was clear that the refs most likely received some kind of payment, as I've heard that this kind of stuff actually goes on over here. 

Four people on Ikaros fouled out and had a total of 33 fouls called against them.


This is my personal point of view as I am just a fan and I may not know all the the "in's and out's" of the game, but when you see such a drastic difference in calls, one begins to think something isn't right here. I told my guy it was like watching the movie Remember the Titans, when the refs were calling every play against the Titans because they were a racially mixed team, it was that ridiculous. 


We'll see what happens next game, I hope to watch a more evenly called game because watching what I saw on Sunday was not very enjoyable.