Report: NBA ref at center of scandal expected to cooperate with probe - ESPN A 13 year NBA ref was caught fixing games. Rumor is that he will name other refs .
. How devastating is this for the game . ?
Will it change the way you see basketball?
Congratulations, you’ve just libeled someone.
He is accused of fixing games.
Sorry. you may be right.
It’s hard to think of a sport that hasn’t had a match fixing scandal. I believe baseball survived the black sox scandal.
I don’t think that it will be devastating. Sports history is littered with betting scandals. Yet, all those sports have survived. If this turns out to be true, it would be the act of one bad ref. I am actually suprised it doesn’t happen more often. I would imagine it would be much easier to get to a ref than a rich athlete.
You just allegedly libeled gonzomax.
I’ve got little invested in the NBA since Kobe went batshit asshole. Christ, I actually like the Warriors these days. Obviously, the jury is still out, but I’ve seen tons of games where the ref seemed to be making obviously blatant calls against a particular team. Sure, it’s just a game, but if the guy is truly guilty, let him rot in prison as millions are won or lost on a point difference. This is obviously why I always get crushed in Vegas (not counting my second place finish in my March Madness pool this year).
Bolding mine.
How is your failure to win at gambling ‘obviously’ the fault of ‘this’? I assume you are talking about the officiating.
The story as a whole is as good a demonstration as any why I refuse to gamble beyond a friendly wager (who buys the next doghnut for examble–although I have pretty much given up on this as well). A stupid, deadend pastime playing against pros who have been shown to pull underhanded trick after underhanded trick to gain an unfair advantage.
This is fairly problematic, I think. Pro sports often have stuff like this come up but I can’t offhand think of a recent case where an official was accused of actually point shaving and throwing games, and where there is in fact some significant direct and physical evidence that the officiating was questionable in games he had a stake in. The Black Sox scandal was 87 years ago, and anyway, baseball’s response to that had to be swift and deadly to restore the game’s integrity.
This comes on top of the fact that NBA officiating is already considered to be of, shall we say, dubious quality, and the NBA’s response to date has been largely to say “Everything is fine, and we’ll fine anyone who says anything.” People have been saying for a long time that refs were either inept or carried remarkable biases, or got carried away with the crowd, or something, and as an NBA fan I can tell you I’ve seen games where the refereeing was so ridiculously lopsided you started to wonder if therre wasn’t at least something personal going on.
Mark Cuban’s attempts to get the NBA to track ref trends fell on deaf ears; Cuban can be a big time asshole, but his complaints were valid and his suggestions perfectly logical.
So frankly, I think this is a big problem. It’s not going to destroy the NBA, but it has the potential to really blow up into something bad and hurt the league at the box office. It certainly makes me wonder. My team, Toronto, was eliminated on May 4 in a playoff game this ref worked in. They lost the game by one point. Was my favourite team robbed of a playoff series because of this guy? Before, I figured, well, they lost; now I’m thinking shit, maybe they were robbed, and if he’s convicted I’ll think, hey, they probably WERE robbed. And that fucking pisses me off.
This is not rare in world soccer, and it hasn’t changed its popularity. This will just give conspiracy theorists something to moan about every time their team loses, but I doubt it keeps anybody from watching. It will get bigger though, if this is true and it turns out players were involved, which is doubtful, sinces scrubs making the minumum can’t really change a game, and big name players are too well paid to do it- unless they had gambling problems and were in a bind.
See, this is why I only watch boxing.
Donaghy did work the extremely poorly called game 3 of the Suns & Spurs series. That game may have been enough to turn off of basketball just due to the general incompetence of the refs, but to now see that some of those calls were tainted by more than bad reffing is troubling.
And like RickJay pointed out, all of a sudden Mark Cuban doesn’t look like a raving conspiracy theorist anymore.
A New York paper said he will turn in other refs. That is what I heard on a late sports talk show. If there are more refs involved ,the NBA will have to broom them all and start over.
Part of the problem ,to me ,is that they league does not see reffing as holy. Every Bball fan knows of Jordan rules. Superstars get the calls. It is well known that the league sanctions it. They are willing to distort the game to enhance what they assume is the next superstar. They are willing to let the refs make calls to stifle defensive teams.
The league believes that TV fans want offense to rule. When they tell the refs to call games to make it happen ,I think they overstep.
I don’t see that in any of the major papers.
No, it’s widely believed. It may very well be true, but that’s not the same thing.
I heard the same thing on WFAN in NY. This may be the tip of the iceberg.
I think I found what they’re referring to in the Post.
We’ll see how it plays out. I’m pretty sure the Post broke this story, but on the other hand, it’s the Post.
Now he is getting death threats. I do not know if it is the mafia type organization or people who lost money on games he fixed. For every fix there is someone who is getting screwed. Gamblers do not take this stuff quietly.
My guess is the death threats are from obsessive idiot fans of any team who lost a game he worked in the last 10 years.
My dad swears that the following story is true:
He was staying at the same hotel as an NBA team. He walks into the lobby late at night and casually asks one of players sitting there (who is half-asleep) who would win tomorrow night’s game. The player mumbled, “We will, by 2”. Well dontcha know they won by exactly two the next night. Yes it is about a player/team and not a ref, and is certainly apocryphal, but that’s the story I heard.