What is it about basketball and home advantage? In no other sport is the disparity so large, I believe. Gonna be a good game tonight, with warriors looking to avenge that embarrassment last time around.

The disparity is larger right now than it has ever been. Not sure why yet, but it may be some combination of more jump-shooting, more unified crowds, and coaches who prefer managing minutes to making a good show of it in the final minutes.

I would think the disparity is fairly similar in sports where communication is so critical but I guess I don't know. Basketball is an adrenaline and a momentum sport too, so if the home team gets amped up, especially late, by the home crowd getting amped up, they can take over. That's how it always was. We went to semi state one year and we were outnumbered by people in the crowd about 4000-600 and it seemed like it was really easy for the other team to feed off of that advantage.

Draymond Green suspended for game 5. I want to see the Warriors crush the Cavs anyway.

I'm no defender of Green but suspending him when Lebron stepped over him is unfair.

Makes up for not getting suspended last time.

Also do you notice how they treat it differently when it's LeBron he targets instead of Steven Adams? I like LeBron but this is pretty obviously done to demonstrate that they protect the stars, not the nobodies.

Right, a karate kick to the balls and he plays the next game, a love tap after he tries to get up after being stepped over and he gets suspended.

I think home advantage matters more in basketball because the arenas are smaller than in other sports and the fans are quite literally right next to you when you're playing, not to mention that spatial awareness and muscle memory seem to matter more than in other sports.

Technically though he didn't get suspended for the flick, he got a flagrant one. He got a flagrant two (more extreme) for the kick in the nuts. He was suspended this time for the accumulation of all his points/sins

That didn't warrant a flagrant one, is the point.

Sure, but the plays the next game and suspension comparison is ingenious

Ingenuous

A little bit but not really, since typically in a F2 situation a player is ejected and yet Green got to play even though the NBA could have suspended him, and yet James commits an act which gets him a technical and that doesn't mitigate the F1 and Green gets suspended.

The rules are rather arbitrary in how they're interpreted. Although not as arbitrary as the NFL.

I think they are interpreting the rules to try to not be outcome-determinative. Had they suspended Green in the OKC series, OKC likely would have won and there would be controversy over whether the NBA insured that outcome by suspending Green. Here, even if the Warriors without Green lose Game 5 to the Cavs, that's not going to be the end of it. Really, the NBA benefits by having the Finals drawn out to six or seven games anyway.

I agree with that

Oh, he was automatically suspended by flagrants. That makes more sense

Great to see LeBron and Kyrie taking matters into their own hands tonight. Warriors started second half poorly and then never made up for it. Looks to be a good finish, whatever the outcome.

They might have started the second half poorly but the fourth quarter was simply an abomination on offense.

Warriors thought being intense for the first four minutes of the game was enough. It wasn't enough.

http://www.si.com/nba/2016/06/13/tim-donaghy-draymond-green-suspension-prolong-nba-finals-warriors-cavaliers?xid=si_social

A guy who hasn't reffed in ten years, who was fired for corruption, decides without any inside knowledge the suspension was rigged? Seems trustworthy, especially when we consider that even if this is how it was there's a different nba commissioner. Wonder what he thinks of the crazy calls against the cavs yesterday (e.g. The out of bounds call???)

Hanlon's Razor on the reffing. Shitty calls and non-calls both ways all night. Donaghy gets fifteen minutes of fame for saying something outrageous that pleases cynics. Let's go to Cleveland.

Can someone explain to me why every Cavs loss is rigged in the Warriors' favor and every Warriors loss is rigged in the Cavs' favor? Why is it so hard to believe that teams lose?

The explanation is that my team is special and yours sucks. Therefore, if your team beats mine, there must be some kind of cheating involved.

Because an evenly matched postseason is sooooo rigged.

Officiating is really hard and really subjective and always has a significant impact, to the extent that (IMO) any game within single digits was within the refereeing margin of error. I think of this as the Hard Problem of pro hoops. For a fan, it's easy to get from there to speculating about deliberately skewed refereeing (against teams they like/in favor of teams they hate, of course). Then they look at things like how Green was/wasn't suspended through the lens of confirmation bias. When there's also monetary incentive to extend playoff series, an "evenly matched postseason" is exactly the scenario conspiracy theorists are looking for. Coincidence is not a word they understand, and they think cynicism is always wise.

Game 7 isn't a coincidence, it's amazing. I have never heard of any sports fans in my life outside of basketball that, when they put aside their collective biases, don't want to see a game 7. It's only in the NBA that everyone tries to find the next way to prove the league is rigged.

Should be a good game. I'm thinking about going. Finals Game 7 at home presumably isn't going to happen too many times in my lifetime.