Donaghy: I'm back!

Talk about bad timing! After a game 2 where the refs where very more than friendly to the home team Mr Donaghy dropped the bomb telling that his not the only crooked ref. He also said game 6 of the 2002 Western Finals between the LA Lakers and the Sacramento Kings was fixed. Not really a surprise there. He also testified the NBA protects superstars by "advicing" the refs to not call technical fouls on them. Not really a surprise neither.

The importantance of this matter is that this is a legal document in an US federal investigation, you can't get more serious than that. This allegations are not coming from the regular fan or the pissed off Kings' fanbase, this is coming from one of their own. This is coming from inside. If this is true how is David Stern and the NBA defend themselves when Suns fans present their case. When Spurs fans present their case. When any fan of any team that felt or had felft that his or her team is being targeted by the refs. They just can't. I don't know how are the going to control this or if they can control it at all!

I want to record something here: Being a basketball referee must be pretty damn hard. For any of you who had played basketball at any level you know there's going to be contact all over the place. Some of this contact might not affect what you are doing (shooting, dribbling, passing, running, whatever) and that type of contact is not a foul. All contact can't be called unless you want to made of basketball a 6 hour event with no flow at all. There's another type of contact which actually prevents your action to be executed in a proper manner or in the manner you meant to. That is a foul. BUT (yeah..big BUT) you as a player might understand why the ref didn't called it. Maybe it was a slight push, or just a little snake bite in your shooting arm or a moving screen that didn't moved that much. Should be foul but the referees are human and we know that.

And there are the totally-obvious-in-the-middle-of-the-action-in-front-of-the-referee type of foul. This are the type of fouls that enraged fans and teams. Refs are trained to execute their jobs as efficient as possible, some of them have been doing it for over 20 o 30 years and still they miss calls like that. There must be a reason and maybe Donaghy is giving us that reason. The league saids that don't want the refs to decided the output of the game but if a player lands on top of other player in tha act of shooting or try to grab him went attempting a shot that no-call is not deciding the result of the game. I don't see the point.

As I said, the timing sucks big time. Everybody was calling out on the refs for sending the Celtics 38 times to the line in Game 2 and then in Game 3- just after Donaghy allegations went public - the Lakers had their own free throw parade in the first half. Everybody, from the true NBA fan to the ex NBA fan, is going to have an eye on the refs for the rest of the finals. Another no call at the end of games or another huge disparaty in the free throws is going to trigger the notion that this entire postseason has been fixed. Am I being a little overdramatic? I don't think so. There were rumors 0n the street since the start of the playoffs that the league would love a Lakers- C's final (Stern said it outloud but at the time of those remarks nobody thought LA could get to the finals ) maybe a little too much. They got their finals. They are getting their big ratings. Let's just hope merchandising doesn't decide this year champion.


Update: He's not alone

Holy Crap!

So, Donaghy is singing like a bird, not really a surprise here, but the real surprise is that he's taking like 20 referees down with him. That's 20 effing referees, the last entire couple of seasons could have been fixed, you don’t think that’s bad, just ask the Suns. If that’s the case, I'm retiring as an NBA blogger and switching to cover naked people or something. So many things could happen if this is true, I mean, the NBA would have to fire “a third of the league's roster” of their referees. You think the referees union is going to allow this to happen, they will strike until the league gives something like a one time pardon. The integrity of the league, not only will be questioned, it will be shattered into pieces. With what right the NBA is going to said to Allen Iverson what to wear. Are they going to dare to fine a player for saying something wrong about the referees? This could be mayhem,... it could actually be fun.

Changing subjects here, I liked this piece from Steve Aschburner about free agency. I’d never see it like that, but he has a point. Restricted free agents are getting screw by their own teams. But I think this particular rule help teams hold on to their own players, the league is not about headlines and rumors come true. A team looking for stability and chemistry can “match the offer”, sign the player for a couple of years or whatever and after that the player is unrestricted, if the guy wants to leave, well, that’s a shame, but at least the team did want it could.

Linkin Friday

I'm creating a new "thing", well; I'm not creating anything new, just using something new for me. Since we haven't had any big news, we are using this post just for links, a little bit of everything not just gambling basketball. Enjoy

Some politician likes the spotlight and doesn't like the NBA, so wants to talk to our commissioner about it... somebody has been losing money. This is a quote from the politician guy:

"Unfortunately, fairly or not, the NBA, more than any other professional sport, has been consistently dogged with allegations that league referees needlessly affect the outcomes of games by making bad calls,"

Blazerlog found a cool link to find out players that have similarities between them (Game wise and production wise). Of course, they ran the thing using the Blazers rosters, check out the results

Alltalksports is teaching young sport stars how to ruin their careers. Good stuff

Chauncey Billups' Highlights at Need4Sheed

Darryl Morey is doing a good job for Houston lately, according to NBAsians at InsideHoops. I have to disagree; i hated that Francis signing.

Mike Tyson video before he goes insane... gotta love the music

Couple of online games, the first one it's a puzzle box thing, its really a "massively addictive game". For soccer fans this one is cool, although don't play it with sound, there's a oriental dude screaming in the background.

Some old stuff, but this is beyond funny, Triumph the insult dog at the Episode II premiere.

David Stern's still alive

David Stern addressed the media about the gambling little issue yesterday referring to it as the worst crisis in his reign. Here at the Basketball Olympus we disagree, we think the worst thing have to be either the DWade Free Throw Parade or allowing MJ to return for a second time. You may ask: Why , oh gods WHY are we allowing this things to happen and why are we leaving Stern on power. We can only tell you that we have a greater plan in motion here, be patient.

It's weird, now that we know Donaghy apparently was fixing games, people's starting to find anomalies in Donaghy's games. Go figure!

If you are not a betting person and you have a couple of extra bucks or you are tired of actually enjoying your money and buying nice things, and want to start betting on the NBA, this article may help you get a grasp of things. To understand what Donaghy might did, go here and read this

Stupidness 1.1

Easy money is so hard to say no to. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, when the opportunity comes you have (wherever you like it or not) to think about. People with a little common sense can say “thanks, but no thanks”, but you have to think about it. Drug dealing, extortions, gambling, they all are easy money. Specially gambling, if you are outside of the US probably is not an illegal activity, and you have an ego to feed, you want to probe how much sports knowledge the old rooftop is holding. Ì worked in the gambling industry and I’ve had a couple of bucks riding the result of some nearly impossible to predict parlay, it feels damn good when you got it right, but it doesn’t feel that bad when you got it wrong, after all it was nearly impossible to predict

The New Times reported yesterday that NBA referee Tim Donaghy, a 13-year veteran is being investigated for his involvement in gambling activities, apparently he has been fixing some games and that’s a no, no. This is bad, this is really, really bad for the league, as I’ve written in previous posts the league is not in that good of a shape to be able to sustain a scandal like this. But they will have to, it’s a reality, even though if something magical happen and the FBI comes out and said “Ups, wrong league”, now people is thinking about it, people had always thought about it, but know we have federal probes. Every time there's a no call or a controversial call we are thinking about it, and now things like the DWade Free Throw Parade (the NBA calls it NBA Finals 2006) are really going to be in the minds of fans (specially Mavs fans )

So, what’s going to happen here, I don’t know, Mark Cuban has some thoughts, he’s probably right being a millionaire and CEO and me being jealous of him. I do think we can trust David Stern, he’s a quite good commissioner, he’s had his miscues, but in general he’s been very solid. The one thing I’m sure of, Donaghy has called his last game and that’s apparently a good thing.