An Excerpt From Tim D's Killed Book

I'd love to read the rest of this. God only knows what other dirt he could spill. He didn't even touch on Bennett Salvatore, for example, and that guy is arguably the biggest homer ref in the league. Need a home team to win Game 3 of a series to avoid falling behind 3-0? Time for the Bennett Bump!

(Quick aside: I drank with Salvatore in a hotel bar after he reffed Game 4 of the Cavs-Pistons series in 2006. Really nice guy. But yeah, if he's not flat-out crooked, then he's just easily influenced by home crowds.)

 

Anybody know what crew worked the Pistons-Pacers brawl game a few years ago?

 

Like I needed another reminder of why I don't watch the NBA anymore.

He pretty much confirms what anybody with a clue has known about the 2002 Western Conference Finals.

I'm not saying the refs are perfect in other sports, but I think the NBA and SEC football are the only places where it's consistently obvious that the fix is in.

 

A hundred times more explosive than the Canseco book.

 

Don't lose your aluminum foil hat.

 

Stang, you need to read a little closer. He didn't talk about the time a "ref" thought about calling travelling on Garnett. Instead, he was talking about the League's Director of Officials suggesting to them that they should have done something like that as a make up call. There's a big difference between the two, and I'd say it's fairly obvious why words like that would be more memorable coming from your boss.

 

It should be, but as we've seen since this story came out, ESPN and the NBA will do everything in its power to bury this story.

 

We've got an ex-ref whistleblowing and clearly claiming games are fixed in the NBA.

Whether the ref is lying or not, it is no longer the territory of tin-foiled hats to think the NBA is fixed.

 

And they didn't even run (unless Donaghy didn't write about) the Knick Bavetta call for Larry Johnson's four-point play in the 1999 Eastern Conference finals. Not that, as a Pacers fan, I'm still bitter.

Well, yes I am.

 

I was focused more on the second part of that quote. I've been around SEC football enough to know that the officials aren't good enough to fix a game. They're just bad. Bad calls go against one school one week and for them another. It wasn't long ago that the UF-Tennessee game was decided in favor of Tennessee on two ridiculously bad calls.

But as this is an NBA fixing thread, I'll end my discussion of that topic here. It seems the NBA would have an easier time "fixing" a game because of the foul outs. Basketball officials can change the flow of a game easier than any other sport, it seems to me.

 

Pitt at WVU a few years ago was awful, and that knocked (but with great resistance from the refs) the Eeers out of the BCS title game.

Think of how much BCS money the SEC would lose if Vandy knocked off Florida and South Carolina took out Alabama?

 

The 2002 series. Someone needs to explain how Games 2 and 5 played into the conspiracy to get the Lakers into the finals. Game 2 free throws, 38 to 25 in favor of the Kings. Game 5, Shaq shoots 1 free throw. Lakers take 23, Kings 33. And a no-call on a screen on Bibby's winning shot.

And people have done call-by-call analysis of that Game 6, but that doesn't help with the conspiracy theorists. Game 6 free throws were 34 to 25, until the Lakers shot 6 in the final minute on intentional fouls. Egregious!

And if they were so determined for a Lakers victory, why let the Kings have a shot in Game 7 for a victory? Peja instead air-balled a three from the corner and it went into OT, but how could the conspiracy even let them get that close to a Nets-Kings final?

http://www.82games.com/lakerskingsgame6.htm

And he talks about Game 7 in 2000. Yeah, the refs caused Portland to miss 13 straight shots in the fourth. The conspiracy was in, but the refs forgot about it the first three quarters, allowing the Blazers to go up 13.

And how did a pathetic goaltending call in the final three minutes against Shaq in that game, followed by a cheap, cheap bumping foul on Shaq in the lane with a minute left (Rasheed missed the two free throws with the Blazers down 2. Kobe came down and scored, followed by the Shaq alley-oop) play into the conspiracy?

And is it fixed for big-market teams to win titles? Yet somehow the Spurs are "the most successful franchise" in the NBA the last decade. The league wants to extend series for ratings, or other reasons. Yet in the last 15 years there's been one Finals that went seven.

And yeah refs in basketball can influence more, because there are so many gray areas and literally on every call someone's whining so we think someone got screwed. Is it a hand-check or no? Did he get bumped on the shot, and if so did it affect the shot and is it a foul? It's not black and white calls like baseball. But at the same time, that also means what people think is a crooked call could just be a judgment call that goes the other way. And it also lets conspiracy theorists see into calls anything they want, since they aren't always black and white.