Is the NBA office messing with Mark Cuban?

Published May 4, 2009 at 2:00 p.m.

The Mavericks weren't pleased with the officiating in Game 1, to put it mildly.

That shouldn't come as a shock. The Mavs never seem to be pleased when they see Dan Crawford. They've won one of their last 16 playoff games that Crawford has officiated.

Is it a coincidence that Crawford got the Dallas-Denver series opener? Not if you buy into my conspiracy theory.

Remember Mark Cuban's ref-ripping Twitter incident after the Mavs' last regular-season meeting with the Nuggets? Cuban couldn't believe J.R. Smith didn't get called for a technical after blatantly taunting Antoine Wright late in the game and pointed out that the same crew chief also worked the Mavs' previous meeting against the Nuggets, which had a controversial finish and featured some Smith/Wright drama that Cuban smack dab in the middle of.

That NBA fined Cuban $25,000 for that tweet. While he hasn't said so publicly, it's a safe bet that Cuban believed it was money well spent to make sure that Ronnie Garretson wouldn't work a Mavs-Nuggets playoff game.

The league just happened to assign the opener to a ref that has even worse recent history with Cuban's Mavericks.

Back | Read more at Dallas Mavs blog