Bolding mine.
I wonder if there has ever been a formal study on home court advantage and fouls called. Wouldn’t be tough to get statistics.
Except you would have to factor in the ref fixing.
These allegations make no sense to me. The NBA is not interested in the ratings for an individual year, but in the overall popularity of the sport. And they would much rather have one year of bad ratings for a final than risk getting court fixing games that would utterly destroy ratings long term for the sport.
Gamblers, on the other hand, have different agenda, such as the profitability of individual bets. And the way US sports betting is structured, it makes, I believe, involving players in gambling scams easier. Rather than requiring people to bet on a particular result, the point spread facilitates “fixes.” It is a lot less of a step for an athlete to win a game by 10 points rather than 12 than it is for that athlete to participate in deliberately losing a game. And basketball is, I think, particularly open to this because first games are decided by multiple scores significantly more often (a small minority of games are won by one score, as opposed to hockey and football where I would think it is a much higher percentage) and second that it is such an “individual” team sport, where one player has more chance of swinging the game in a noticeable manner.
All in all, I have little doubt that points have been shaved by pro and college players, and referees, on a reasonably regular basis. I would imagine games have been decided by the same, though probably less often. What I just don’t buy is that the NBA itself has fixed games. The risk of killing the golden goose is way too high for that.
It should be fairly easy to cull out the games Donaghy reffed. Unless you mean the unsubstantiated, biased opinion that is clearly intended to muddy the waters of prosecution in the hopes of getting the guilty party off of the legal counsel of the one person involved in this. Because that would be silly. And sort of contrary to the motto of this site. You know, the one in the red bar at the top of this page. Live it, love it, learn it.
He was not the only one. The league will have to make reffing a priority next year.
And that statement is based on…?
I think you are thinking more long term than the people that make these decisions. Hocky and Baseball strikes have shown that the fans are willing to come back after a bad year.
But a Sacramento-Denver championchip series? Not gonna be watched, not by the numbers they want. Since viewer share is what helps determine advertising rates, they don’t want a Finals that has a drastically lower viewership. That costs them money the following year.
So, maybe, a bit of pressure is put on. Maybe a few more calls are made against the team the league doesn’t want to win. Maybe the refs are given hints that fouls should maybe be overlooked.
I’m not saying that’s what happens, but I could see it.
Especially since Denver and Sacramento can’t meet in a championship series.
Let’s look at the finals matchups since the Lakers dynasty ended, shall we?
San Antonio over Cleveland: LeBron is a big deal, but both teams are from small markets and as the years go by, more and more people bitch that the Spurs are boring.
Miami over Dallas: Miami has two stars.
San Antonio over Detroit: both teams play grind-it-out basketball, and some basketball writers were horrified at the prospect of the ratings of this series. Somehow the NBA failed to rig this one.
Detroit over L.A.: Los Angeles was overflowing with starpower and lost.
San Antonio over New Jersey: the Nets don’t have that many fans in New York, so you would think the NBA would want to avoid this. Nope.
The same thing fits with this year’s playoffs which are setting record TV numbers. It’s not because the Lakers and Celtics are still alive. The offsetting boring teams of San Antonio and Detroit are still around.
The high TV ratings are due to an improved style of overall league play and some really interesting series. Whodathunk Hawks-Celtics in round 1 would be appointment TV? 8 really good Western Conference teams which theoretically limits the potential of lopsided games. Lots of interesting young players that seem more appealing to a mass audience. Getting a star power team to play longer is a good thing ratings wise, but the strength of the league as a whole is much more important and I think David Stern is plenty smart enough to understand that short term gains of a good Finals rating is not worth the long term ruination of backroom dealings driving who wins.
Betting the spread or winners and losers is way too risky. Too many crazy things can happen in the last few minutes of a game. The league reviews ref’s performances at the end of the year, so I would think it would be easy to get caught if a ref is making ridiculous calls to ensure an outcome.
It’s been mentioned before that it’s more likely that Donaghy was betting the over-under. In that case, it doesn’t matter who wins or who gets the calls, and it’s something the referee has a lot more control over.
The NBA has shown itself to be all about long term. And you think fans would go back if the league was shown to be rigging games? It would KILL the sport. Fans will come back after a boring series. They sure as hell won’t come back if it is proven they are watching Professional Wrestling under the guise of basketball.
I think the NBA is trying to make this right.
“James popped Blatche as retaliation for a non-call earlier in the game, when James drove to the basket and Blatche hit him in the mouth. James rolled around on the ground after the hit. The next time they ran into each other, Blatche fouled James and as James lifted his arms to separate himself from Blatche, he added an extra blow to the chin.” link
Wizards fan - I admit it - but the James retaliation hit was the most blatant non-call that maybe I have ever seen. They went and made it a flagrant foul afterward made me feel that there is no Conspiracy but a star treatment that finds its way into High Schools and colleges in every sport - including NBA officiating. But no conspiracy
The original stories and what Donaghy said when first questioned. Then the league said others were involved. Then a little later said all the others were merely going to casinos. I am always skeptical but when the NBA has had so much notoriety with loose rules ,I wonder where respecting fairness should come from if the league itself sanctions favoritism.
You linked to this story in the first thread about this, and it says no such thing. Here’s another ESPN story from the day the news broke. It doesn’t mention any other referees either and certainly doesn’t say the the NBA said there were others.
http://www.fannation.com/blogs/post/52941 Heres a story about 20 or so gambling. That is a violation of their contracts.
Note; Refs ref in teams. Do you really thing he was alone?
By that rationale, every San Francisco Giant used the cream and the clear. Every Detroit Tiger in 1910 was a racist jerk. Every New York Yankee in the early 90’s was a cokehead, repeatedly. Every Dallas Maverick in 1991 was a druggie.
Multiple refs broke the rule against gambling, I remember that. But that’s not what you’ve been saying. You’ve suggested multiple referees were named as conspirators who threw games, which is not true.
I’m fine with the NBA having a policy against refs gambling, but saying they broke that rule is not the same as saying they helped throw games. Donaghy knows some of the others who gambled because they did work together. They broke some rules, but nothing indicates they broke those rules. If there was something more serious going on I think that would be coming out rather than the very general accusations Donaghy is putting out there to try to avoid jail. I don’t think the NBA would be able to cover up a federal investigation.
Donaghy to share info about other refs with feds - ESPN Do you think if it came out that many refs were involved, the league would not suffer serious harm. They do not want it out.The game may not be able to survive.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080520/sp_afp/basketnbascandaldonaghy This article says what I did,that the NBA sat on the ref scandal to keep it from harming the league. It also says others are involved. When the league “investigated” they found a couple who went to casinos.
Let me emphasize two parts of that lede:
“Former NBA official Tim Donaghy will reportedly give federal prosecutors information that will implicate other referees in some forms of gambling activity…”
Nothing about game fixing is mentioned. This is getting silly. Yes, there’s evidence that some other refs broke the rules by gambling. There is no evidence any of them were involved in what Donaghy did. You know, I don’t do any more than read the occasional newspaper article and watch Law and Order once in a while, but it’s clear to me how these things work: when someone gets arrested and is obviously screwed, they give up all the information they have in the hope that the government finds something, ANYthing, useful so they will get a lighter sentence. Most of the time, the defendants are just grasping at straws and don’t have anything of value to offer. Unless the other refs tried to fix games like Donaghy did, the government won’t care. So his attorney is now trying to claim there was other stuff going on and that Donaghy is being set up as the fall guy. It’s just bargaining. If Donaghy really had anything of value the government would be using it. They’re trying to make his inside info about gambling sound more important.
If prosecutors did have reason to think that happened, we would know very quickly. We’ve heard nothing about it since he was busted almost a year ago.
And how would the league suppress a federal investigation? Baseball and football and pro wrestling haven’t been able to keep steroid investigations quiet and college sports have had damaging scandals involving point shaving and boosters. From what I can tell prosecutors love talking to the press. If there were other refs breaking the law by fixing games, why have we heard nothing about it for the last year?