Yesterday defendant Tim Donaghy (and former NBA ref) submitted a letter to the federal judge who will sentence him shortly for various federal offenses involving match fixing. While one "bad apple" can exist among referees in any sport, Donaghy's letter makes some allegations that go to the very core of the integrity of the NBA.
For example, Donaghy alleges that certain referees were known as "company men" who always acted in the business interest of the NBA. Accordingly, these referees acted to extend a playoff series because that would be good for the NBA. Similarly, Donaghy stated:
league officials would tell referees that they should withhold calling technical fouls on certain star players because doing so hurt ticket sales and television ratings. . . [T]here were times when a referee supervisor would tell referees that NBA Executive X did not want them to call technical fouls on star players or remove them from the game. In January 2000, Referee D went against these insturctions and ejected a star player in the first quarter of the game. Refereee D later was reprimanded privately by the league for that ejection.
[i]n other instances . . . the manipulation was more subtle. If the NBA wanted a team to succeed, league officials would inform referees that opposing players were getting away with violations. Refreees then would call fouls on certain players, frequently resulting in victory for the opposing teams.
The full text of Donaghy's letter can be found here.
I am frequently skeptical of claims made by defendants to save their own skin shortly before sentencing. But here Donaghy through his attorney is describing what "cooperation" he provided to the FBI (under penalty of perjury) after his indictment.
As someone who lives in small market NBA town (Salt Lake City), I have always wondered whether the Utah Jazz are disfavored when they play a big market team (i.e., the L.A. Lakers). NBA basketball turns so heavily on foul calls, that even a slight emphasis for one team or another can easily make or break a team. In fact, I find it hard to watch NBA basketball any more, because its level of subjectivity approaches that of figuring skating (Was that a charge on Carlos Boozer? Or a blocking foul on Kobe? Do you like Sasha Cohen? Or Michele Kwan?)
One interesting thing about Donaghy's claim is that he lists several specific games in which the NBA favored one team or another. Will anyone go back and watch the videotapes of those games and see whether his claims seem true?
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Why this is a matter of concern to the federal government, I don't know. They seem to be the professional sports police. Waste of taxpayers money.
That is a heavy fine for a comment that couldn't possibly be true?
Try Boston....and the regular season is not the finals.
Why does San Antonio have so many championships? How about those San Antonio-Cleveland ratings?
Why did the so-called "company men" refs allow the Lakers to get swept by Detroit in 1989? And that was after the Lakers swept the first three rounds, also not very good for ratings. Why did the "company men" allow a lopsided finals in 2004?
I remember that Sacramento-Lakers game 6 from '02 very well. It's hard to forget the whining from the Laker haters. And why couldn't cow-town close it out in game 7? Next thing you know, Donaghy will claim Paul Pierce hurt his knee in game 1 last week.... whatever.
Because they have Isaiah Thomas.
Because they have Tim Duncan.
Nobody's saying you don't need talent to win, but even the most casual fan of basketball knows the effect a thumb on the scale can have. It's not dispositive, but it helps.
I would only add this. Once Donaghy's legal troubles became public knowledge, his cooperation as described in the letter is practically useless. Assuming Donaghy was aware he was under investigation and had been interviewed by the FBI prior to his indictment, the time for his information to be of value from a law enforcement perspective would be before anyone else knew. Donaghy could have then been a position to make controlled calls or controlled &recorded conversations that could have corroborated his allegations.
Donaghy decided to tough it out, and see the government's case before deciding to cooperate. All that talk after the fact is hardly material assistance. Donaghy is trying to weasel out of his responsibilities by smearing others, but offering no evidence other than his own statements.
Once his indictment was announced, no one - especially anyone who thought Donaghy might know of criminal acts - would get within a mile of Donaghy. So I'd have to say that Donaghy's proffer could easily contain exaggerations or outright falsehoods, since any person with the same knowledge is going to deny it all. It would be very difficult to prove Donaghy is lying in his proffers.
As others have pointed out, calling fouls in an NBA game is a subjective thing. Without someone on the inside willing to testify, the allegation that referees and league officials conspired to change game outcomes or points spreads remain speculation.
I personally hope the sentencing judge disregards this supposed cooperation. There may very well be truth to Donaghy's allegations. But, by waiting, his actions have guaranteed that we will never know.
The 25 years the knicks have gone w/o a champ has been painful for many a fan like myself, but it isn't proof their might not be rigging. There's already substantial speculation that the Ewing lottery was rigged. After he was on the knicks though, they were a perennial contender beginning in the 90's right as the celtics/lakers rivalry was dying out. With Jordan there in a major market and the knicks making it to the playoffs just about every year until ewing's trade there was nothing about the knick that was necessarily less marketable than if they had won a championship. As for the current knicks, match fixing won't help a team that is so far over the cap that they don't even have the players to make some games close.
Again, there's only so much you can influence a particular game or team. However, I think your heavily discounting a marketing advantage san antonio does have--they're dominated by great foreign players who essentially give the nba leverage into those markets (ginobli, parker, oberto, etc) Cleveland has the next great superstar in Lebron who is nationally marketable--a set of poor tv ratings is irrelevant is promoting his brand and the nba's along with it. If you go simply by a star strategy, the past group of championships have worked out very well to promote a new savior time and time again (wade, lebron, and now kobe).
Again, you're concentrating too much on a particular finals. You also have LA myopia. Detroit isn't a tiny market, and traditionally it has a lot of street cred. You're also missing what is the suggested scope of these accusations. Have you ever heard of a line or o/u? Many of the 'rigged games' don't even necessarily need to favor a particular team to win to be effective.
It's good to see you retaining your credibility by call sac a 'cow town' and refusing to actually discuss the merits of the game in question. Ad homs are a great tactic of those bankrupt of a real argument. And I'm sure you didn't complain once during the call you saw in boston (I think both teams have gotten huge home town advantages). In any event, your post was mostly illogical, and certainly doesn't make any headway in defending the nba.
Also, though, it's pretty well known that some "superstars" get calls (are allowed to travel, the player guarding them will be called for minor fouls) that other players don't. See Jordan, M. and Wade, D. That's problematic, but not quite the same thing as "rigging" (although it gives an advantage to teams with a "superstar").
The next level would be individual officials that might try to influence a game because they are gambling. That's what Donnaghy did, and that's bad. But one could hope it's relatively isolated.
The next level would be refs understanding that some sorts of outcomes are better for "the business" than others, and subtly trying to push things in that direction. That would be quite bad, especially for fans of small-market teams and/or teams without big superstars.
The next level would be some sort of orders from on-high in the league to influence games. That would be really, really bad.
If there was ever a game where the fix seemed to be in, it would be game 6 of the LA-Kings series. I'm a Pistons fan and thus was relatively neutral in that, and I still remember thinking that the Kings were hosed in that game by the refs more than I've ever seen any team in any sport at any level get hosed by the refs.
Getting an extra game or two in the western conf. finals between L.A. and Sacramento, that's a conspiracy to drive up TV ratings.
But what happened next, Agents Mulder and Scully? A 4-0 sweep in the finals. Wouldn't it have made the NBA a lot of money to get Jason Kidd and the Nets at least one extra game?
Yes, I did complain about some of the calls in Boston but no, I do not believe there is a grand conspiracy to make the NBA Finals last any longer than is necessary for the Lakers to beat Boston. And it would be ridiculous to suggest the refs call fouls to fine-tune an over-under point spread scheme.
Donaghy may not have much credibility. But the league has less.
Keeping crucial players in foul trouble (without even necessarily fouling them out) or conversely looking past obvious fouls can also definitely effect the outcome of a game.
There existed refs (still exist? Haven't been in NorCal for too long to know) that consistently called games against the Kings; it seemed having one ref. on the floor, for instance, would be the equivalent of an extra 10 points for the other team. How close you call fouls makes a big difference, as a previous poster pointed out with Dallas/Miami. These things add up, and with closely matched teams, make a *huge* difference.
Oh, and who makes it to a series has a huge impact on the ratings. LA is a bigger market than Sacramento. More importantly, Kobe and the Lakers are far more recognizable to the rest of the country than the Kings. The Anaheim/San Francisco World Series a few years back got lousy ratings, iirc, since nobody outside of California seemed to care (Bonds being oh so popular outside the Bay Area).
Historically, officials making calls (or players making plays) to influence the points spread is the most common abuse when referring to illegal gambling and sports. This is what every professional and college sports organization worries about. In the NBA, a floor official would only have to run the high scoring players off with high foul counts, or add and/or subtract to the spread by calling (penalty) fouls until the spread was where he wanted it.
Whether one suspects the player or the official, the only statistic that matters to most gamblers is the point spread, not the win/loss. And before someone points this out, yes, there is wagering on a series outcome in addition to individual games - but much less frequently.
I do not remember anyone else ever alleging that pro sports league officials asked referees to throw entire games, presumably to up the total gate and TV revenue. Donaghy is breaking new ground here.
There have always been allegations of preferential treatment of star athletes. Wayne Gretsky in his glory days springs to mind. Most people who watched him play at that time suspected he had a referee-induced force field protecting him from hard hits, because he was literally not just a franchise player, but an NHL-making player. It may change the nature and the outcome of specific contests, but I'm not sure it is correct to call it corrupt, at least not in the sense of players or ref's throwing or influencing games for the purpose of fixing wagers.
Now I have.
Several years ago I was one of the team physicians for an NBA team (NOT the Knicks). I got the job because I was friends with one of the owners. One day during a conversation I mentioned the Knicks, the lottery and my suspicions.
I couldn't believe his reaction. This generally mild mannered man blew up and said if I ever said anything like that again our relationship and my job was over. Of course, that ended any comments I would ever make in the future but me thinks the lady...
Van Gundy was actually asked about this at halftime on Tuesday night, and basically took the NBA line, with a slippery "I said what I believed to be true at that time" type of statement. Donaghy is slime, but I believe these allegations - the NBA is thoroughly corrupt all the way up to Stern.
And NBA officiating remains awful. Inconsistent, allowing football-type contact one play and ticky-tack calls the next, calling traveling if they feel a turnover is needed, overly subject to the game's momentum instead of calling plays as they stand on their own, special treatment for superstars, etc., etc.
Also, I've watched the video of the Ewing draft, and it sure looks fishy.
serious penalties (86 and 30 game suspensions, respectively) for their
involvement in the brawl in Detroit. But I believe Jermaine O'Neal's
25-game suspension after he was attacked on the court by a Pistons fan
was excessive. And the penalties given to the Pistons were
outrageously minimal: 6 games to Ben Wallace, who not only began
things by shoving Artest but instigated the cup-throwing by hurling a
piece of his clothing at Artest; 1 game each to a couple of other
players; and no penalty to the team beyond those individuals.
The effect was to deprive one of the two leading Eastern Conference
teams of the opportunity to be competitive that season, while leaving
the other team -- whose players and fans (several of which came out
onto the court) triggered the brawl -- essentially unscathed.
Naturally, it was the small-market team that paid the higher price.