The NBA has their perfect scenario and it's not good for the Rockets

Why didn’t the NBA rig the 2009 ECF so we could get a Kobe vs Lebron finals? That would have brought in legendary ratings.

 

I think you have the wrong idea about the nba "rigging games" to put people in prison. It's not like the NBA says to the refs "we want to see a bunch of bogus calls so that the lakers win", because you're right, that could get people put in prison. But the league has meetings with the refs regularly throughout the season. And the league also regularly tells the referees how to officiate the games, giving them general guidelines like "a lot of people are getting away with pushing off on their drives with the offhand, we want to clamp down on that". Then they will show all the referees a bunch of videos of what they're talking about, "here are 10-15 examples of guys pushing off on a drive, these went down as non calls, but from here on out we want this to be called an offensive foul." And this is proven, this is confirmed, this is not conspiracy. This is normal behavior for the league, and it happens all the time, I'm just using the offhand pushoff thing as an example.

But now consider they do this in the playoffs. What if they send out a memo the day before the 2016 finals and say "we really want to crack down on moving screens. Lots of guys are getting away with moving screens, and these are illegal, we need to start calling them. Here's a bunch of videos so you can see what we're talking about" and then show a video montage of Andrew Bogut all throughout the season. Nobody is going to jail for that. But is that "rigging the games" in your mind? To me it is. This is what Tim Donaghy talked about in his book.

It's also worth nothing that it is possible to overcome this. The extra help is still just help, it's possible to win when the refs are against you. They can only do so much.