I am not really a conspiracy theorist in the "wearing tin foil hats" and "covering my bedroom with thousands of old news clippings" kind of way but, when it comes to sports, there are very few stories that I simply wouldn't believe. I remember shortly after Mark McGwire shattered the single season home run record a reporter casually mentioned that he had seen human growth hormone in McGwire's locker. My intial reaction was: "Oh, so that's how he did it. That makes sense." I have always just assumed that, if there is money to be made and fame to be acquired, there's going to be a lot of cheating and shenanigans in professional sports. There is too much money at stake and a shockingly low amount of accountability which makes all sorts of scandals exceptionally easy to pull off. We're more than a decade removed from 1998 and there is still a huge percentage of the population, many reporters included, who believe that only the handful of implicated players to date actually cheated. Here's a handy tip I use to tell whether someone was on steroids.

Step 1: Pick a baseball player at random from the past 20 years.

Step 2: Determine if that player was good at the game of baseball.

Step 3: If your answer to the above question was "yes" that player was on performance enhancers. If your answer was "no" that player was probably on performance enhancers.

This brings me to this year's Blazers/Rockets series. The NBA is in crisis. Only a handful of franchises are in the black, despite a bevy of exciting and likeable stars in the game today. The ratings and excitement about basketball still pale in comparison to where they were 20 years ago. Basketball is still squarely the third most popular sport in our country and, quite frankly, if you can't pass baseball at this point, you need to iron some things out. There is a potential work stoppage looming when the current collective bargaining agreement runs out that could threaten to erase an entire season and do irreperable damage to the sport's exisistence, especially if the economy doesn't dramatically improve in the next year or two.

So what does that have to do with a seemingly unimportant first round playoff series? Quite simply, if the Blazers were to win this series, the NBA would lose 10s of millions of dollars. Yao Ming is, arguably, the second biggest basketball star in the world with Kobe Bryant narrowly ahead of him and LeBron James in a distant third. Yao is China's biggest celebrity and television ratings for his games are through the roof. Despite mediocre numbers he is soundly voted as the starting center for the Western Conference's All Star team each year by the Chinese population. So here is another activity. Please put on your make-believe hats and process the following facts:

Fact 1: You are in charge of a company that is worth billions of dollars.

Fact 2: Your company is hemorraghing money through every orifice.

Fact 3: If things don't change, your company could go bankrupt and its collapse could go down as one of the most spectacular demises in American history.

Fact 4: Depending on the outcome of a certain scenario, your company could either make 10s of millions of dollars in just two weeks or it might not.

Fact 5: You have the power to decide whether your company actually makes that money or not simply by making a few phone calls.

So, do you do it? Of course you do. What are you stupid? This is exactly the situation that NBA commissioner David Stern finds himself in. Sure it's just a No. 4 vs. a No. 5 match-up with the winner most likely moving on to get drubbed by the Lakers but, if the Rockets win, the NBA gets at least four more games of Super Bowl type ratings overseas. A Kobe/Yao Ming series? It would be enormous. The NBA has already made sure to schedule each game in this series in the evening, even starting at 8:30 Houston time for Game 3, just to make sure that the games didn't air too early in the morning in China.

The officiating in this series has been fascinating. After Game 3, I decided to watch the fourth game a little more carefully to see if I, as a Blazers fan, just had a case of sour grapes. Turns out I do, but, at the same time, I am completely convinced the outcome of the series is fixed. It is the perfect storm for the NBA to get away with it too. Since I'm in an information-doling mood, here are some more facts.

1. The Blazers are a young up-and-coming team without a hugely marketable superstar and the team will be in the playoffs for many years to come and, assuming the league doesn't collapse, will have plenty of opportunities in those years. (You couldn't get away with this against an aging team like Boston. And believe me, if this same crap was happening against the Celtics you would have an army of drunken faux-Irish douche bags burning down the NBA league office right now while ESPN declared martial law.)

2. Houston's window for making long playoff runs is closing. Even with some young talent, Yao Ming's legs have maybe 2 more years left before he becomes a shell of himself as a player.

3. An NBA game is easier to fix than any other sporting event because of how much momentum plays a factor and because a foul occurs on every possession it's just whether or not it's called. (There are simply too many situations that are open to chance in sports like baseball and football to fix entire games. In football you can call a bunch of holding penalties to thwart a team but the league is such a juggernaut and the country is so football crazy that it will watch any team compete in any game. There isn't as big of a need to protect the large markets. And in baseball, the league already tries to ensure that Boston and New York will be competitive by not implementing a salary cap and allowing them to outspend anyone but, as we've seen, that doesn't necessarily guarantee success. It's not that I don't think fixing individual baseball games couldn't happen, it's that I don't think Bud Selig is remotely smart enough to pull it off.) 

4. The NBA already endured a massive scandal involving a referee fixing games INCLUDING playoff games that should have been one of the biggest black eyes in sports history but was swept relatively neatly under the rug. That same official later gave an interview in which he said that the NBA playoffs were fixed for TV ratings and that at least two high-profile officials that he knew of were completely in David Stern's pocket. (The post-scandal interview with David Stern went something like this: Reporter: "Commissioner this low-level referee was allegedly blackmailed by some guys he went to college with and changed the outcomes of dozens if not hundreds of games for nearly two years if not longer without this being detected. It's obviously really easy to do. Are you concerned that, faced with the temptation of making millions of dollars your league might be inundated with referees like this?" David Stern: "Of course not. Shut up!" Reporter: "Really? I mean, the league's officiating has been under fire for years and..." David Stern: "What are you gay or something?")

So far, in five games, Yao Ming has never even approached being in foul trouble while the Blazers' TWO centers have both been hampered significantly. Perhaps the biggest travesty came in Game 4 when NINE fouls were called against Przybilla and Oden and ONE was called against Yao. Intersting note: The SAME official made nearly every one of those calls many of which came when he was out of position and should not have been the referee blowing the whistle in that instance.

My favorite sequence to date occurred in Game 3. Late in the first half, Yao had yet to pick up a foul. Then, out of the blue, he was called for two ticky-tack offensive fouls in quick succession that really didn't affect the game whatsoever. But a simple glance at a halftime scoresheet would show that Yao was, in fact, whistled for fouls.

Now you may be thinking "But wait! The Blazers have won two games and have some momentum heading into Game 6 in Houston!" Of course they have. The NBA isn't stupid. It wants this series to go as long as possible. I told everyone who would listen to me that I guaranteed a Blazer victory in Game 5. And guess what happened? The game was close throughout but, down the stretch in the 4th quarter Portland got to the foul line 12 times to ZERO for Houston and the Rockets didn't stand a chance. That's how easy it is to fix a game. I was amused but not surprised at the post-game chatter from reporters and talk show hosts. The basic premise was "Well this should calm everyone in Portland down. We finally got some calls." And that's exactly what the NBA wants. The series was fixed you say? Just look at Game 5! Are you crazy? That being said, I will almost guarantee a Houston victory in Game 6 on Thursday or, at a minimum, a Houston victory in the series in general. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong and I will readily admit it.

But either way, it's a shame. If Portland does, in fact, rally to win this series and I am wrong about the series being fixed, the officiating has still been a debacle and it's the same throughout thet league. For years basketball was merely an afterthought to me. I rooted hard for the Blazers in the early 90's and was always interested when they advanced out of the first round of the playoffs and I grew up cheering for the woeful Golden State Warriors. But, compared to football and baseball, there was no competition. The NBA's product was completely inferior. This year? I was hooked on the Blazers. It was a remarkable job by a franchise in turning around its fortunes practically overnight and, for my money, Portland is the most entertaining team in the entire league. It's the way basketball should be played as opposed to Houston's unwatchable thuggery. For the first time in nearly a decade, I enjoyed the NBA. But, with this postseason, nearly all of that excitement has been washed away and, once again, I will only be a casual fan at best next season.