Chris Webber made an appearance earlier this week on “The Dan Patrick Show” where they covered his emotional reaction to how game two of the Thunder/Spurs series ended, where it was chaos and multiple missed calls on both sides by the refs. OKC won the game during a 12 second free-for-all that Webber was not happy about. He wasn’t upset OKC won but he was angry that so many calls were missed. Somehow during the discussion with Patrick, He and Webber wound up going back in time and talking about a particular game that still to this day, C-Webb thinks was fixed.
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Back in 2002, the Sacramento Kings with Webber, Mike Bibby, Vlade Divac and more were pretty much the only team that could stop the Lakers runaway train that was Shaq & Kobe. The teams engaged in a great series in the western conference finals, which ended with the Lakers winning in seven games. It’s was game six of that series that Webber feels was rigged by the refs on the court, not necessarily rigged by the league itself.
Down 3-2 in the series, the Lakers beat Webber’s Kings at the Staples Center in part thanks to 40 free throw attempts, 27 of them in the fourth quarter. Disgraced ref Tim Donaghy, who did not officiate that game, later claimed it was fixed.
After Patrick brought up Donaghy’s game-fixing scandal that broke a few years ago, Webber said, jokingly, “Believe me, there’s a lot about Donaghy I would like to talk about,” but said the NBA currently has fans’ trust. Patrick then asked if Webber had ever participated in a game he viewed to be fixed. Webber paused a loooong time, then said this:
“I’ve definitely played a game — I’ve played one game in which yes, something smelled weird about the whole situation.”
He somehow doesn’t seem bitter about it though, which is a credit to him because I damn sure would be. Later in the interview he said “It happened. I believe that. as an athlete, so what it happened. What are we going to do, make excuses?”
He was very specific that he didn’t think anyone in the league was out to get him or the Kings and he focused the fix on the three referee’s from that game itself. It’s not like that Lakers team needed the extra help to beat the Kings anyway because it was a great matchup regardless but if you’re a Kings player from that team you have to wonder “what if?”.
