The Sports Rumors

NBA Facing Slippery Slope

I feel for you David Stern. What a nightmare he is now facing. Not even in his wildest, worst case scenarios would he envision a ref shaving points off of games and being involved with the mob. At the very worst, he would have thought there would eventually be a player who would be in heavy debt and allegations of gambling on the game would come out, but not this. Players dressing too flashy? That’s fixable. Games becoming too low scoring earlier in the decade? That’s fixable. Joey Crawford challenging Tim Duncan to a fight? Weird, but fixable. The sanctity of the game being thrown into jeopardy by an in-debt referee involved with bookies and the mafia? That’s a tough one.

We all jokingly say, or even angrily when it happens with our team, “That ref is being paid” or “That ref’s in someone’s pocket”. But do we really believe it? I know I’ve said it. I said it during the Dallas vs. Miami finals of a couple of years ago when Dwayne Wade was getting every call. I thought the ballboy was going to get hit with a technical for looking at Wade the wrong way. I was watching with friends and I was so frustrated by some of the blatantly bad calls that I said things out of anger or frustration like, “David Stern wants Wade and Shaq to win this. These refs are dancing like puppets hanging from Stern’s shoe.”

But the mob??? Of course after my frustrations wore off and I came back down to reality, I didn’t truly think that refs were blowing games either way for Stern, or anyone for that matter. I do know that certain refs have it out for certain players or coaches. That’s going to happen in any sport. That’s the human element. Some umpires in baseball have wider strike zones for some teams, and smaller ones for others. Some refs in the NFL call pass interference on one team, but won’t make the same call for the other for whatever reasons. They’re human, they have history, they have grudges, they have emotions, it happens.

However, shaving points, which is what Tim Donaghy was allegedly doing, is a whole different ball game. To get down to facts, you have to realize that shaving points does not determine the outcome of a game. People tend to mix shaving points up with fixing games. Donaghy wasn’t, as far as we know, costing any teams games or making bogus calls to keep a team from winning. He was simply keeping the points over or under the certain line, for the benefit of whoever he was getting paid by.

So for example, the Rockets are beating the Grizzlies by 11, and the line for that game was Rockets by 9.5. The guy who is paying Donaghy to do what he did would want the Grizzlies to lose by less than 9.5. Donaghy would in turn make a few foul calls on Houston and give Memphis a chance to hit a few free throws and pull the game below the fixed line. Half the fans would be gone by that point anyway, the game is over. That is point shaving and that is what Donaghy is accused of doing.

That is not AS bad as fixing games which is outright costing a team a win. That would be more of a disaster than shaving points. But still, from a P.R. standpoint, this is a very serious problem facing the NBA. To catch any of the refs, coaches or players with a hidden agenda that involves money and the game is something that fans don’t take to kindly. From here on out, every poorly officiated game will be questioned and magnified beyond belief by the fans and the media.

(Can you imagine how buck wild Skip Bayless is going to get with his conspiracy theories? He was probably hyperventilating from excitement when this news broke because now he has something to base his ridiculous theories on. Ugh.)

People will immediately accuse refs of shaving points or fixing games. It’s going to take a long time for this to go away. I don’t believe all of the refs are bad. I actually believe that the refs, given the difficulty of the sport, do a good job overall. We as fans only notice the bad calls. We never notice the good ones. We’re fans, it’s what we do.

One thing I had no idea about but learned recently was that there is no specific restriction that keeps referees or players from gambling in the NBA. Of course, they can’t gamble on their own sport but there are no parameters for restricting gambling outside of their own league. If I were David Stern, or the NBA, as an employer I would make gambling on ANY sport against league policy. This would apply to anyone who works for the league, whether you’re a player, a coach, a ref, or a senior executive. I think allowing gambling without major restriction is like telling your girlfriend who is 500 miles away from you at college that it’s okay for her to go get drunk at a frat party. Chances are, nothing good is going to come out of it. If the players or the referees can’t accept the restriction on gambling, they can play or referee somewhere else. It’s that simple. Yeah this may be a really tough stance but at least you avoid situations like the one the league is in now.

My biggest fear is for more names to come out of this whole scandal. God, I hope Steve Javie and Dick Bavetta weren’t storing G-Stacks in an offshore account while hanging in Sandro Pe (St.Tropez). I hope, for the sake of the game that I have loved since childhood, that no one else is involved in any shape, way or form. Recovering from one bad apple is fixable. But when an entire tree is has gone bad, you have to chop it down. I don’t think any of us want this tree to fall.

(The Sternie has his hands full this offseason)