« The Thatcher Primary | Main | Good Chart » Suns-Spurs Game 322 Jul 2007 07:28 pm A Phoenix fan puts together a decent case that corrupt ref Tim Donaghy may have fixed Game 3 of the Suns-Spurs playoff series in San Antonio's favor: The case would be stronger, however, if the fan had actually restricted himself to calls (or non-calls) Donaghy made, instead of throwing in the kitchen sink. That said, we're obviously going to need to know more about this. One hopes that the FBI investigation will produce a reasonably definitive account of which games Donaghy was bending. Comments (38)
ESPN-TV just said Donaghy might name other officials that were involved. 
I've been a bit curious when Rick Santorum changed his name to Donaghy.
MP: It all depends. The REAL evidence will be whether Donaghy bet on the Spurs in that game. In which case, we won't need any videotape. There is no doubt that NBA officiating is generally atrocious and was particularly atrocious in that series.
Armando, you'd also need to know: 1. what the actual bet was; This, of course, is a defense of the legitimacy of the Spurs win, not Donaghy's alleged corruption.
Suns fans: do yourselves a favor, and let go of the bitterness. Jeez.
Not necessarily Armando. He may not have bet on the game personally. He could simply have been 'asked' to do it by somebody who knew his history.
As we know from the Scooter Libby and Michael Vick indictments, the feds usually supply some pretty serious details in their criminal indictments. If Donaghy talks - or even if he doesn't - I imagine that the feds will include specific allegations regarding each and every game Donaghy bet on and threw for the mob. Hopefully the guessing game will be largely academic when the indictment comes down...the feds will simply tell us what happened. This would be ideal for the NBA. The worst kind of scandal is like MLB's steroid scandal, where everyone is a suspect and nothing is proven. It basically corrupts the entire era for a sport.
NBA reffing sucks, and that's a fact. That Donaghy could get away with this for so long shows that the system of post-game reviews of calls are not acting as a good check. See Bill Simmons article on this at espn.com for a good take: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/070722
This, of course, is a defense of the legitimacy of the Spurs win That went the way of Bonds' reputation as the greatest home run hitter of all time (though not to the same extent). Still officially open to doubt, but people haven't liked the processes that resulted in the Spurs' victory even prior to the Donaghy revelations. This isn't going to help them reconcile themselves to the result.
The worst kind of scandal is like MLB's steroid scandal, where everyone is a suspect and nothing is proven. See, this was already true of NBA officiating. Now something is proven.
I'm underwhelmed by the case. The first call, for Ginobilli, was pretty bad. That was by Doneghy. But it looked to meas though the others weren't even by Doneghy. Was Eddie F. Rush the official who was shaving points? It looked to me as though he had a worse game than Doneghy did. Meanwhile, could Doneghy have affected the outcome of the game? Perhaps, but SA won by 7 (ad was ahead by as many as 14 in the 4th), so it's not like it came down to the last shot.
I lost track a little which calls were Donaghy's fault, but man, that was some horrible officiating. The guys calling the game weren't even the Suns homer squad, they were network guys, and they still couldn't ignore how shitty it was. I would much rather see some enterprising fan put together a case against Donaghy, specifically.
Bethlehem Shoals speaks the truth here: To summarize for him: it's highly unlikely that Donaghy was fucking around with playoff games, because that's how you get caught, and Donaghy didn't get caught, until the FBI bumped into him in the course of another investigation. Apparently Donaghy wasn't going for the big playoff scores -- he was a pro gambler, betting on tons of games and taking his losses when they came. One of the freedarko commentors makes the excellent point that the smart thing for him to do would be to bet the over, and then call the game real tight -- if you weren't favoring one team or the other, nobody would ever notice.
Meanwhile, could Doneghy have affected the outcome of the game? Perhaps, but SA won by 7 (ad was ahead by as many as 14 in the 4th), so it's not like it came down to the last shot. I think that part of being a good point shaver is to make sure that it doesn't come down to the last shot. You can do a lot of damage by calling fouls at points to stop teams from getting any momentum going. I don't know if Donaghy actually tried to do anything during the Suns Spurs game, but the NBA is going to lose a bunch of fans over this. People were already pretty unhappy with the playoffs before the addition of a (accused) dirty ref.
I think you can apply a 'the thing speaks for itself' type analysis when the officiating is this atrocious and the ref was crooked. In otherwords, a fair presumption arises that the fix is in, and the win was illegitimate. The burden should then shift to anyone arguing that the games were legitimately won. Same goes for the Knicks game. Regarding Matt's comment about the case being more persuasive if it stuck to calls Donaghee personally made: While it's unclear whether Donaghe is cooperating with the feds about other crooked refs or about the underlying mob connection, there are probably ways a ref can impact the way his crewmates call the game even when he isn't blowing the whistle himself . Practically speaking, I'm sure a comment like "Nash is whining over every brush of contact", or "Oberto is really getting hacked out there" would have an effect on the way the other guys on his crew would make their calls.
What Mike said: that first call, made by the crooked ref from mid-court, where the baseline ref saw nothing, is so flagrantly phantom that it appears the game is fixed. We can't tell from this video how many of the calls were made by the crooked ref, but here we are in Phoenix, in a crucial game for the Suns, and their two-time MVP takes a shot in the nuts and can't get an obvious charge call...while Duncan is all over Stoudemire at the bucket and gets away with it. This looks worse than I feared. I'm not a gambler, but to me this appears to be exactly the kind of calls a ref would make to make sure he and his cohorts beat the spread.
If you look at the big picture, there might be a bright side to this. It may mark the end of pro basketball as we know it. (Actually, not really. Pro basketball will just become sportainment like pro wrestling and the Harlem Globetrotters, with its own special type of fan.)
It is more likely he was mostly involved in fixing the points. So if the 'preferred' team was winning you make sure they cover, if they are losing then you make sure the over/under is secured. In fact, the over/under may be the main betting line that was being manipulated. Donaghy couldn't control what games he officiated so the likelihood that he could make sure Knicks beat the Pistons could be difficult without being too obvious but making sure both teams scored enough to get the over by calling a lot of fouls in the fourth quarter to run the score a bit up would be much easier and less obvious.
Certainly, I felt like this was the worst officiated game of the post-season, and that was before this story broke. Bottom line for me is you can't tell much from this you-tube clip because it is intentionally leaning to one side. I was at the game as well, and my feeling being in the arena was that the officiating was exactly the opposite as usual: no contact was allowed down low, but the dribblers could be creamed on the wing. Stoudamire and Duncan were in foul trouble, if I remember correctly, and Nash, Ginobili, and Parker were creamed repeatedly for no-calls. I haven't reread Simmons article from then, but I remember it being pretty much what I thought being there.
Investigate Lakers-Kings a few years back.
I was rooting for the Spurs, but there is no question the Suns got completely hosed in that series. Who knows whether Donaghy fixed the game, or whether the Suns would have won in a fair fight, but it clearly was not fair. This is, however, conclusive evidence that Stern is not involved. No way they push out the Suns for the Spurs.
"the dribblers could be creamed on the wing ... Nash, Ginobili, and Parker were creamed repeatedly for no-calls." Yup. The disgrace of that game was the way they allowed constant heavy body contact on Nash without whistles. It totally went against the way the NBA has been calling games the past several years. ----- "This is, however, conclusive evidence that Stern is not involved. No way they push out the Suns for the Spurs." Um, Disney had some very strong financial incentives to want the Spurs to advance to the Finals. That certainly doesn't mean there was a Stern centered conspiracy, but you're dead wrong about the incentives. ----- The fascinating thing to me about the story has been the way that pretty much everyone who had any contact with Donaghy off the court thought he was an abominable human being.
I've been a bit curious when Rick Santorum changed his name to Donaghy. I'm pretty sure I saw that comment on Deadspin before, but the resemblance really is uncanny.
If this NY Daily News story is true, the NBA's problem just became absolutely massive. The NBA sicced a private investigator on disgraced referee Tim Donaghy more than a year ago, but then let him work games all season long anyway, friends and neighbors said yesterday.
It's way too early in the game to draw too many conclusions here, but one commentor hits on an under-discussed fact: If the NBA's review policy for refereeing performances can't catch point shaving (and we'd do well to remember that no point shaving has yet been proven), then it's impossible that it could catch subtler forms of bias. In other words, the NBA official review process is at best useless and at worst corrupt. Indeed, there could be a convergence of scandals here. The NBA is notorious for giving referee crews a "talking-to" when things aren't shaking out the way the execs would prefer from an entertainment standpoint. It's possible all Donaghy ever did was, for example, to bet the over in a game where he knew the league had instructed his crew to call the game extremely tight inside. In a way, that's a worse scandal for the league because in that case it's the league that's "fixing" the games, and Donaghy was just cashing in on inside information. APS
Did he ref in last year's Miami-Dallas series? I remember DWade getting a lot of phantom calls in that series. Pretty much any time he drove to the basket he got a foul call, whether touched or not.
No, he did not. He had never worked into the second round before last season. So, barring further revelations, it was simply bad officiating.
the miami comment shows the real problem with the nba -- assuming the calls for wade weren't the result of a corrupt ref, and the calls against the suns were, you can't really tell the difference between a corrupt ref and a bad one. i know that's what the corrupt ref is going for, but still.
pace Ape Man, i've long said that the NBA's achilles heel is inconsistent reffing, but i've been saying it long enough that the league should have paid a price by now (of course, maybe it has and attendance and popularity would be higher). but then again, there's never been a potentially galvanizing moment such as this to convince many fans at the margin that the game is too rigged to treat as a competitive sport....
"pace Ape Man, i've long said that the NBA's achilles heel is inconsistent reffing, but i've been saying it long enough that the league should have paid a price by now (of course, maybe it has and attendance and popularity would be higher)." Meh. I care as much about NBA refereeing as you do about tax threshold issues, howard. NBA refereeing actually seems pretty good to me. The nature of the game means that referees have a larger subjective role than in many other sports, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're doing a poor job. The only time I think NBA refereeing becomes a problem is in certain playoff series like Spurs/Suns where attention becomes focussed on calls, and perhaps the zebras become self-concsious and perhaps overcompensate. But at the end of the day, who cares? I find the Donaghy story fascinating as a story about a human failure, but beyond that, who cares? Mostly folks who don't like the NBA care, but I don't care about them.
NBA refereeing actually seems pretty good to me. Yes, but you're insane. If a league has many games in which large numbers of longstanding fans believe refs affected the outcome, there is a problem. Maybe the refs are good, but the NBA still must address those fans, if only to limit the effects of such mistrust when something obviously corrupt--like Donaghy--comes up. Put, for example, '06 Game Five on the Web with explanations of the most egregious calls/non-calls.
petey, truly i sympathize with the problems inherent in doing a good job reffing an action game like basketball (or soccer), but still... from my perspective, basketball at least needs to get to where ball-and-strike calling used to be, which is to say each home plate ump had "his" strike zone, but tended to call it consistently. in baseball, it was possible to clean that up quite a bit, and now we get much closer to a uniform rule-book strike, but i digress. i agree that a pure by-the-book set of calls has its own problems in basketball, but i want the same calls made whether home or visitor, star or rookie, early first quarter and late fourth quarter, and that's what concerns me about basketball reffing inconsistency. i don't dwell on it day-to-day, i almost never bitch about the reffing when my team loses, but in terms of team sport as competitive endeavor, i find the inconsistency maddening and (as ape man and dj superflat both suggest) almost as annoying as if the games were fixed. but hey, i agree: it obviously doesn't bother most fans unless there's some hidden increment of people who would watch basketball if they felt the reffing were better, so i can't really push my perspective too far....
we can't really tell the difference between a corrupt ref and a bad one Exactly. There is a larger problem with the reffing, and this is a symptom of it. If Donaghy was one bad apple within a generally good system, no problem. The officiating problem is so big because of the corrupting effect is has on the NBA style of play. Superstars heedlessly drive the lane, because they know the refs will bail them out on any kind of contact. Fourth quarters that should feature the highest levels of play become exercises in lobbying. Part of the issue here is that the court dimensions and game rules were not really designed for players this size, but part is because of really bad and inconsistent officiating.
Petey: It's fine if NBA officiating doesn't bother you, but it's objectively wrong to say that it only bothers people who don't like the NBA. I am a huge NBA fan; the only one I know, in fact. Bill Simmons is also a huge fan. We both feel strongly that bad officiating is screwing up the game. Whether it's impacting the game at a business level, I don't know and I don't really care. I do think it affects the quality of the games FROM MY POINT OF VIEW. That's really the only piece of this that I can competently weigh in on. I think there's a tendency among people who like the NBA to reflexively defend it, since people who don't understand basketball are constantly talking about how the college game is better and other absurdities. In this case, though, there is a problem. Fans don't trust the officiating, and now they have a very good, concrete reason for it. The question is the reverse of what one commentor said - it's not a question of whether a great number of people would watch the NBA if the officiating were better. It's whether there are a lot of people who are going to stop watching if the NBA doesn't find a way to reestablish the credibility of the officiating after this scandal. I'd wager there probably are. APS
Petey, you don't care if the games are fixed? Is this the time that you're finally just fucking with us?
i love, love the NBA playoffs. but every time i watch march madness i think, why can't the NBA have refs you don't really notice? i suspect there are a large number of folk who would watch more NBA if the officiating weren't so intrusive, inconsistent, bad. and college games are the counterexample that educate folks on how bad the NBA officiating is. i understand these are radically different games, but still think college officiating makes the NBA look bad.
Comments closed August 05, 2007. |
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Heads in the Sand
The case would be stronger? There might actually be a CASE if there were actual evidence.
That first call was Donaghy, the rest were by the other members of the crew. There were also some non-calls, but its hard to pin a non-call on one ref when all three don't make the call.
Also, you could do this sort of demonstrative with any NBA game. I don't have time or desire to do the same trick with the crap calls that went against the spurs in this game, but it would be just as prejudicial. I was at this game, and one non-call against Ginobili left him on his back with a black eye (and this was the actual turning point of the game, because Ginobili went nuclear afterwards. Yeah I said it).
I believe the Spurs beat the spread in this game. But there is no way of knowing that if the fix was in, it was for the Spurs. The officiating was just bad. And that really isn't unusual.
Posted by MP | July 22, 2007 8:05 PM