Indeed, if a RESPECTED NBA ref who wasn’t a convicted criminal suddenly came out and said these things I’d be inclined to believe him.
Donaghy’s been a liar and thief for a long time; why should I trust him now?
These criticisms sound like a Canseco replay. Jim Bouton went through the same thing when he dared tell a little in “Ball Four”. Those who tell get this treatment. But every single time, it has been proven they were right. Every single time.
Basketball has been tainted on the college for decades. It is the easiest game to fix.It only takes one player or an official or two.
So, gonzomax, what happened to those examples of emphasizing rules in the playoffs that you were going to post? And did you realize that TNT announcers don’t work for the NBA?
If this IS true, then why are you and Omniscient alleging the league fixes games, rather than individual refs? If the NBA office is sending out orders, that would seem to make things more complicated.
The claim is the owners,through the league officers, in order to max out profits, will pressure refs to get series to 7 games. How much farther it goes, will come from Donaghy. I have seen many games reffed so ugly that they can not be ignored as just refs seeing something different.
I remember how the league loved offensive shows and decided to call playoff games much tighter of defense. That appeals to those who love basketball to be a series of uncontested dunks. A lot of fans hate tight defensive games. So the league does what it can to eliminate those.
There has been one seven game NBA Finals in the last 15 years. So I’m thinking that if the NBA is trying to manipulate series to extend them, they are doing a terrible job of it. Since 1994-95, there have been three sweeps, four five-game series, seven series that went to six games and only one that went all seven. That was Spurs-Pistons, and that was a defense-heavy series that was decried for being boring - so you would think that if the NBA ever wanted a series to be less than seven games, that was it. Michael Jordan never played a seventh game in the NBA Finals. Why didn’t the league arrange that?
Isn’t scoring-per-team much lower than it was, say, 20 years ago? What happened?
Still waiting on that example of a rule that got emphasized to favor one team in the playoffs.
Excerpts From The Book The NBA Doesn't Want You To Read Here are excerpts from the book. I have no reason not to believe him.
Judging from the excerpts, it looks like there’s some fodder for an enterprising stathead or several to check Donaghy on his stories. eg:
Shouldn’t be too hard to work out Iverson’s stats in Javie-officiated games vs. his stats in Crawford games.
(Not too hard for the type of person who has a giant database of all NBA games etc etc, that is)