Donaghy

I know Donaghy is a punk and bet on games, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if he was telling the truth about the league offices telling the refs to help extend the Kings-Lakers series and were told to call the game a certain way to get more money and call lopsided calls. It's hard to tell cause the NBA refs are so bad anyway

 

That was the series where Kobe swung an elbow into Mike Bibby's face and the ref called the foul on Bibby.

 

Who were the other two refs that Donaghy implicated in that game? Stern sounded way too much like Roger Clemens talking about Mcnamee when he was interviewed about Donaghy, calling him a felon repeatedly trying to discredit him as a person instead of addressing the allegations. If Stern or other NBA officials are guilty of what Donaghy alleged, they might be looking at felony fraud charges.

 

It's no big surprise that the league office tells refs to focus on certain infractions they feel "aren't being called properly." They aren't stupid enough to just outright script the outcomes of games, but that's one way they can semi-legitimately influence who wins. Probably the worst thing to come out of this is that for ten years every fan who gripes about a loss will bring up Donaghy and insist that the game was fixed.

 

The NBA sucks almost as bad as CBS.

 

Make the refs independent from the league. I think that's what Phil mentioned. Sounds good to me.

 

Wouldn't that possibly lead to an "agenda" as well? Maybe there would be multiple 'refs' companies that pop up and the NBA could bring in bids to see who can do the best job the cheapest.

It'll never happen.

 

The NCAA does it.

 

Independent contractors in the NCAA is a bit different than my idea above of "ref'ing companies".

There should be a house of representatives to their senate. That way nothing would ever get done.

 

yeah, there's just too much at stake for the nba to be so short sighted as to explicitly tell refs to throw a game.

i don't doubt that refs go into games with a "game plan" like everybody else. they know the players and they generally know what their tendencies are. i've always considered the refs to be part of the game -- that you need to lobby them to get calls, or even complain to the media about stuff that goes on (whether it's accurate or not). getting the refs to call the game you want called is huge.