To everyone arguing about if the NBA is rigged or not, I don't think it is for a few reasons. One being, when you watch FIBA (international basketball if you don't know what it is) certain players are much better than others. Like Kobe is the usually one of the best players, in the world. That would explain him doing good in the NBA. Also, as for the big market cities, it isn't fixed so they win, they just have the most money and tend to buy the best players. Example: L.A. gets Gasol and Artest and Fisher to go with Kobe, other cities can't afford that, Boston gets, well, their whole team, other teams could not afford Ray Allen and KG and Pierce, but the Celtics can. You might say, oh why don't the Knicks have a good team. they are a big city? A few reasons why, one being they were poorly managed, their gm/owner/front office has been screwed up for the last few years. When David Lee is your go to man, of course you aren't going to be a championship team. Also, basketball isn't that popular in Manhattan. It's not like Brooklyn where people love basketball. Also, the true fans of the Knicks tend to be, not millionaires, who can't afford to go to lots of games, so less money is generated to the Knicks. As for Portland not making it, Portland has to get one great player to go with Brandon Roy. Then maybe they can, but their big move was to get Oden. He got injured. That injury isn't rigged, he just go injured. Plus, look at all the games that came down to the last second where a crazy buzzer beater was hit to win a game. You can't rig a buzzer beater. Now, the refs surely might be in favor of a team, but regardless of how much they are in favor of a team, they still can't make say the Nets beat the Lakers, they just weren't good enough. I will say that watching college basketball surely is more interesting because the players try harder, since they wanna make the NBA, and the NBA sometimes is quite boring, because they don't always try as hard, but saying the whole league is rigged to make L.A. win is quite crazy. L.A., Cleveland, and Boston were the most stacked teams, and we all know what happened to Cleveland, they just didn't try. My personal favorite basketball to watch is FIBA, the players actually try.