Not Taking Heed of Tim But Intrigued By Public Reaction

Inside the NBA, no one’s clean. Everyone’s acknowledged there’s ‘star treatment’ and ‘home cooking.’ Once you start giving one player slightly more ‘respect’ than another, then you’ve crossed the line from sport to ‘entertainment’ and major corruption is inevitable.

The refs go along with it, not because they’re getting paid off, but because they wouldn’t be given work in the first place if they weren’t willing to turn blind eyes to such inconvenient things as traveling calls.

Quote from Doc

And he wrapped things up with comments about the Pierce injury, which may or may not have been some kind of jab at Jackson, by saying, “Paul Pierce got injured and we questioned him, but we believe Donaghy? When you think of the logic of that crap . . .”

It needs to be investigated – by a senate mitchell type of investigation. While their may not be rock solid evidence for a criminal case there might be enough to “out” the problem just like with the steroids issue.

The idea that because Tim is a crook he MUST be lying is suspect. He MAY be lying. He very well might not. The VAST MAJORITY of criminal cases rely on other criminals to forge their case. Is every single mafia suspect innocent because the guy snitching is a part of the mafia? I don’t think so.

Why would someone WITHOUT a criminal judgement pending come forward on this?! The idea that we should wait till someone clean comes out is a joke. To be perfectly honest I would be fearful of my life to do so..

Pete

what would i know. no charges against the nba or stern, but how can anybody trust what the corporate stern has to say? would i trust ibm investigating ibm? no. is major league baseball more guilty than barry bonds? yes-we all know they looked the other way with steroids until they were forced to face it and then selig becomes holier than thou. sort of reminds me of stern and all the big buckaroos he associates with, and all his pronouncements.the nba panders to the big network moguls and allows the games to be telecast past midnight and let’s the wrestling-like smokey shows which are pure gimmicks. why not what donaghy says?

also- how about the lionization of kobe, the raper? and how about whose outcome is so thoroughly controlled by ref’s decsions? how about all the time spent by the nba in las vegas?

The mere fact that these accusations cannot, based on video evidence, be immediately dismissed tells a lot. The fact is, NBA officiating is so bad that any accusations of purposeful manipulation have a ring of truth for many fans.

Why is it that in the ’80s, when there were only 2 refs, I hardly ever noticed the officiating. Now, with 3 refs, which should theoretically IMPROVE the officiating, the refs seem to be a third team affecting the outsome of many games? We come to expect at least a few horribly blown calls per game. We expect stars to get all the calls. We expect and accept flops and lean-ins. Friends of mine who are casual fans have lost interest in the NBA because of the heavy-handed officiating and how it slows the pace and creates a WWF-like effect.

Does anyone remember the game 6 between the Lakers and Sacremento when Kobe bloddied Bibby’s nose at the end of the game … and there was no call? If I made a mistake like that in my job, I would have been put on probation. But the NBA refs? There’s never a word about reprimands or remedial training.

If the refs aren’t dirty, they are inept. Either way, the NBA needs to fix it.

NBA refs make judgement calls. If there was subterfuge happening, how would one prove it? There isn’t any evidence of the crime. The referree making the bogus call only has to say, “thats the way I saw it happen, I made a split second judgement, I’m human, and I’m not perfect.” As angry as that answer might make you, there is no disputing it.

To discern the likelihood of such a conspiracy happening, it seems we must first understand what the potential pay-off would be for the league to take a risk of getting caught, and how big that risk actually is. I believe the risk of getting caught is small (see above), and would require one of the NBA referees to admit they were involved in game-fixing situations, sort of a death-bed confession, or a “Serpico” like individual to come forth and break the NBA referee equivalent of the “blue line.”

What is the pay-off for the league to control who wins the playoff games? The league makes its money by awarding the broadcasting rights to a particular network for a certain number of years. This contract is worth billions of dollars, and ABC/ESPN have the current contract. Before the next contract will be signed, prospective bidders will be looking at how much money they can make over the life of that contract. More money is made during the playoffs and finals due to much increased viewership. So if the league can have some influence on making playoff series and the finals go a full seven games, especially between two cities who are major markets that will provide the maximum number of viewers, then the league will be able to get maximum dollars for the next contract they award.

This is not to say that the league can have absolute control over who wins….obviously, the players, and coaches have more input than the referees. But…if the league can influence the results to a certain degree, and the league realizes that the risk of getting caught is extremely low due to there not being any “hard” evidence of the crime, the question has to be asked: Would the NBA take the small risk of getting caught in exchange for added bonus of an extra billion dollars or so that is the payment for the broadcasting contract?

Does this kind of thing happen?

Enron
Watergate
Serpico

All these boggle the mind, yet they all happened.

Don’t heed it? This may be the most poignant Captain Obvious story in NBA history.

Twistedmisfit: The rulebook is the rulebook. It doesn’t have a central nervous system. It’s not a breathing document. It’t shouldn’t be open to interpretation based on who the combatants are. The different application of the same rules has opened the door for the Donaghys of the world. Are there more of him still officiating? I’m guessing probably. It’s too easy to make money being “subjective”

Having said that, I disagree with MPCU40 in that Kobew wasn’t predestined to shoot all of those free throws. He was more aggressive than anybody on our team from the get-go.

I also disagree that nothing will come of it. Stern is a brilliant man. Without question, this will be addressed in some way. I believe it’s too late for the inevitable sleazefest that will be the congressional inquiry. This ain’t dying, 40. It’s too believable based on the erratic behavior of the best officials in basketball. They have to be good to have been able to pull this off for as long as they have.

When the NBA went to 3 referees it was assumed that the calls would be better with an extra pair of eyes on the players. But maybe there aren’t enough competent officials to fully staff 3 person crews. Perhaps they should go to Europe or South America for the better officials there. They go after
foreign players. Why not foreign refs? Perhaps they should have crews stay together like they do in baseball. The thing that is troubling to me is the acceptance of the homecourt advantage and the double standard for the stars. If the NBA doesn’t want to slowly sink to the level of “rasslin” it needs to call the play and not the number on the players jersey.

Finkelskyhook,

I get the feeling you misunderstood me….or at least we aren’t on the same page.

“Twistedmisfit: The rulebook is the rulebook. It doesn’t have a central nervous system. It’s not a breathing document. It’t shouldn’t be open to interpretation based on who the combatants are.”

I agree with that…the rulebook is the rulebook. But the referees, who interpret the rulebook, do have a central nervous system, not to mention personal foibles and motivations not known to anyone else.

Lets not forget that Stern, if there actually is a scandal afoot, might be complicit, and if so, and he is brilliant, what makes you think he wouldn’t employ that brilliant mind to evade detection in this mess?

Do you want a simple indication of the corruption within the NBA? Just look at the results within recent years of American NBA players on the international level. Without NBA league referees around to overlook fouls and infractions, today’s NBA players don’t dominate international players. The game’s different when it’s called on the up and up.

No Kidding. Any player is going to have a hard time adjusting to international rules on a short-term basis. I’m sure that international leagues are called evenly. But the fraud that is the Olympics? A crew of Donaghys would be a step up.

I’ll maintain that Stern is brilliant. Keeping the stars on the court after the Bird era was paramount to save a sinking ship. I think he outsmarted himself in not reacting to this immediately after the Donaghy arrest. He was in a no-win situation then but he could have cut the public outcry off at the pass. His window of opportunity to fix this from within is pretty much closed. The inevitable flea circus that is congress will go through their flummoxed act. I think we’ll see some tangible steps in the right direction. I think we’ve already seen some with those bizarre, by the book traveling calls.

The calling of traveling infractions is something of a litmus test of the integrity of a basketball game. In gyms all across America, you can watch relatively inexperienced refs making traveling calls correctly on grade school players. It’s fairly easy for them to do. You simply watch the player’s pivot foot and see whether he releases the ball down on the dribble before the foot comes up.

Interestingly, the typical grade school ball-handlers all know what they have to do to avoid traveling, and pretty much do it. But they also know what every NBA player knows, their first step’s a lot quicker if you won’t call traveling on them.

During a recent playoff game, Jeff Van Gundy pompously declared that traveling calls were trivial nonsense, and could be called on every play of every game. He then ignored his colleague who said the infractions should be called, and that the players would simply adjust. That exchange reflects the whole problem. People like Gundy don’t really care about the integrity of the game. They just want to live off a heightened sense of drama. TV ratings reign, and to heck with the rules. But once you head down that road, you find yourself mixed in with a lot of guys like Donaghy.