<\/p>\n
Tim Donaghy wrote a book that you\u2019re not going to read.\u00a0 <\/span>His book answered questions that you probably didn\u2019t even think to ask. What if every rumor about the NBA were true?\u00a0 <\/span>What if they did fix that 2002 Lakers\/Kings Game 6?\u00a0 <\/span>What if certain refs were assigned to achieve certain outcomes?\u00a0 <\/span>What if refs made bets about who could call the most fouls or targeted certain players?\u00a0 <\/span>What if Dick Bavetta wasn\u2019t incompetent but instead was diabolical? We\u2019ve always seen it\u2014we laugh about \u201cstar treatment\u201d and that the \u201cNBA wanted it to go 7\u201d\u2014but would it still be funny if it were all true?\u00a0 <\/span>What if the game that we love, the game that we take seriously, the game that the players take seriously, what if the refs and the league were fixing all of it?\u00a0 <\/span>What if it turns out the NBA is only half a step above wrestling? The NBA faces a work stoppage and financial crisis\u2014but worrying about that would be like worrying about the New Orleans public school system while Katrina was happening.\u00a0 <\/span>The NBA is facing the single biggest problem that a league could face.\u00a0 <\/span>They don\u2019t just have an officiating problem, they are facing the possibility that the outcomes weren\u2019t real.\u00a0 <\/span>They are facing a whistle-blower and they are facing charges of a massive cover-up.\u00a0 <\/span>But the good news for the NBA and the bad news for us\u2014the cover-up is working. What cover-up?\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s a good question.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s the kind of question that answers itself.\u00a0 <\/span>If you have to ask if there is a cover-up, it means there was a cover-up. Which brings us back to Tim Donaghy and his book.\u00a0 <\/span>You remember him right?\u00a0 <\/span>NBA ref.\u00a0 <\/span>Officiated some, um, questionable games.\u00a0 <\/span>Went to jail.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s a rather unusual story.\u00a0 <\/span>I personally don\u2019t remember any other officials from any league that served jail time, certainly don\u2019t remember any that was caught betting on games.\u00a0 <\/span>Soccer had it happen.\u00a0 <\/span>But in Italy, where their scandal occurred, some teams were in on it.\u00a0 <\/span>And soccer refs had the fundamental advantage that there is one ref.\u00a0 <\/span>One pair of eyes, and it\u2019s easy to \u201cmiss\u201d a few key plays in soccer\u2014happens to the best of them\u2014and more often than not, those few key misses decide the game. But basketball\u2019s not like that.\u00a0 <\/span>Three refs, a hundred calls each per game, few of them ever really make the difference.\u00a0 <\/span>For a ref to \u2018fix\u2019 a basketball game it takes dozens of calls, some of them obviously wrong; it\u2019s tough to change the outcome of a basketball game without someone noticing.\u00a0 <\/span>And we did notice.\u00a0 <\/span>We noticed Game 6 of Lakers\/Kings, we noticed the Suns get screwed, we noticed the quick Ts and the long breaks between fouls.\u00a0 <\/span>We noticed the nights that we should have taken the Over.\u00a0 <\/span>And someone did take the Over.\u00a0 <\/span>Tim Donaghy did.\u00a0 <\/span>He didn\u2019t even need to be the ref that night to know what was going to happen. Interesting.\u00a0 <\/span>And yet the NBA says he acted alone.\u00a0 <\/span>Tim Donaghy.\u00a0 <\/span>On the grassy knoll.\u00a0 <\/span>With the whistle. But that doesn\u2019t really make sense does it?\u00a0 <\/span>Why would he bet on games he wasn\u2019t the referee on?\u00a0 <\/span>Or more precisely why could he win so much on games he wasn\u2019t the ref on?\u00a0 <\/span>He had inside knowledge.\u00a0 <\/span>Inside knowledge that Crawford wanted games to end quickly.\u00a0 <\/span>Inside knowledge like Bavetta favoring the home team.\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s inside knowledge that the league not only knew about all this, but they were orchestrating it.\u00a0 <\/span>Enter David Stern, the Jack Ruby of our story.\u00a0 <\/span>Tim Donaghy\u2019s book, a real interesting read, will not be read.\u00a0 <\/span>David Stern let the publisher know the kind of hell that he can rain down.\u00a0 <\/span>And all the whistle-blowing in the world doesn\u2019t change the fact that lawsuits are costly. \u00a0<\/span>More costly than a book is profitable.\u00a0 <\/span>And suddenly, Donaghy\u2019s story- his story of his own personal corruption and of the corruption of his employer- was silenced. Every sports league has its demons, has the fundamental problems that it wink, wink, nudge, nudge allowed for decades.\u00a0 <\/span>Concussions in football.\u00a0 <\/span>Steroids in baseball.\u00a0 <\/span>Ultimately everyone\u2014players and fans alike\u2014signed the permission slip and are fine with the cover-charge.\u00a0 <\/span>But the NFL\u2019s best attempts to sweep this agreement under the rug have been outed by Malcolm Gladwell and the New Yorker and their comparisons of football to dog-fighting.\u00a0 <\/span>Yet the New Yorker hasn\u2019t seemed to care too much about the NBA\u2019s demons- quite possibly because the Knicks killed New York\u2019s fighting spirit.\u00a0 <\/span>Or ask your local Congressman whether the NBA will steroid-style hearings.\u00a0 <\/span>I can guarantee they won\u2019t. Some of Donaghy\u2019s assertions (makeup calls do exist) seem obvious although previously unconfirmed.\u00a0 <\/span>Some of his stories (every a ref holding a grudge against Allen Iverson after he criticized a ref) seem gossipy but not unbelievable.\u00a0 <\/span>Other stories (making a bet with fellow refs before the game who could go the longest without calling a foul) seem like harmless pranks like a cop saying \u2018meow\u2019 ten times while writing you a ticket.\u00a0 <\/span> And that\u2019s when it should hit home\u2014imagine you\u2019re an NBA player, are they still harmless pranks?\u00a0 <\/span>I know they aren\u2019t the most sympathetic of characters but bottom line is they are just dudes trying to go to work.\u00a0 <\/span>Picture the refs are their supervisor.\u00a0 <\/span>What if your supervisor changed the rules on you constantly (that\u2019s not that hard to imagine for some of us)?\u00a0 <\/span>Like some real-like version of Trading Places<\/em> imagine these people arbitrarily deciding to mess with you and bet on the outcome.\u00a0 <\/span>Imagine that you\u2019ve dedicated your life, that you\u2019re entire life is based on winning, and then imagine that the league decided that you\u2019re not going to win tonight.\u00a0 <\/span>Well actually the league decided that they\u2019re going to set up more hurdles to you winning, they\u2019re going to make you play by a different set of rules. The unfairness of it all is what\u2019s most striking, and like I said I know that NBA players don\u2019t usually generate sympathy but think back over the last few years when players complained about the officiating, it turns out they weren\u2019t crying wolf.\u00a0 <\/span>How can we watch a game that isn\u2019t fair?\u00a0 <\/span>How can we care this much about something that is this scripted?\u00a0 <\/span>Suddenly the NBA is The Hills<\/em> to the NFL\u2019s Real World\/Road Rules Challenge<\/em>. In Lucky Number Sleven<\/em> there is a story of a horse race that was fixed.\u00a0 <\/span>A waiter overheard the fix, he told his brother, who told his neighbor, who told his friend, etc. etc. etc.\u00a0 <\/span>Until it makes its way to a low-level gambler.\u00a0 <\/span>Desperate, he bets on the guaranteed winner.\u00a0 <\/span>Except that the mob doesn\u2019t appreciate it when other people profit on something that only they should be profiting on.\u00a0 <\/span>The mob knows when the fix is in, and if you\u2019re not invited in on the fix, then you better not bet, because the mob will shut you up.\u00a0 <\/span>Tim Donaghy has been shut up. Maybe I\u2019m exaggerating.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe Donaghy is.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe the NBA isn\u2019t as bad as wrestling.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe it\u2019s closer to boxing.\u00a0 <\/span>In fact the NBA should study boxing\u2019s problems closely.\u00a0 <\/span>Corruption has knocked out boxing.\u00a0 <\/span> Can the NBA be knocked out?\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s a good question, and one that you probably didn\u2019t even think to ask.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ryan Theis is thinking about the new book from former NBA ref Tim Donaghy, and he has a question: What if it turns out the NBA is only half a step above wrestling?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2861"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2861"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}