Scott Foster Time: Heat Get Bad News For Game 6 Vs. Knicks
The numbers are increasingly hard to ignore
The NBA did little to help itself with all of the conspiracy theories in making its officiating assignments for Game 6 between the Miami Heat and New York Knicks.
Miami will try to finish the series Friday night at home, but much of the conversation Friday morning centered around the crew chief for the Game 6 officiating crew: Scott Foster.
Foster obviously has a checkered past. He was tied to disgraced referee Tim Donaghy, as the two reportedly exchanged a whole bunch of phone calls during the time Donaghy was betting on NBA games. That Foster even still has a job officiating NBA games is wild on its own.
Furthermore, if you Google "Scott Foster extender," you get 6.2 million search results about the internet's nickname for Foster based on the perception he's called on in these sorts of situations to "extend" a series by favoring the trailing team to get it to a Game 7.
The big problem, though, if you're a Heat fan (or bettor) is just how little success Erik Spoelstra's club has had with Foster blowing the whistle. Action Network on Friday morning pointed out Miami has lost its last 10 games when Foster is on the call, and the Heat have only covered in one of those games.
Meadowlark Media's Tom Haberstroh dug even deeper. Not only have the Heat lost 10 in a row, they are 1-12 over the last two seasons and 3-10 against the spread. That means the Heat have a .077 winning percentage when Foster is calling the game and a .637 winning percentage in all other games dating back to the start of last season. Perhaps that's technically still too small of a sample size to believe there's really something going on, but the evidence is certainly mounting -- all in one direction.
The Heat have already seen Foster in the series, in Game 2, which the Knicks obviously won, much to the chagrin of Heat fans.
So far, it doesn't appear the betting market is too concerned. The Heat opened as 4.5-point favorites following Game 5, and that has been bet up to Miami -6. In fact, it's even up to -6.5 at the Westgate with lots of money still coming in on the Heat.
