An Excerpt From Tim D's Killed Book

I have no interest in basketball but I read every word of this. Question: do NBA crews work together for a season or stretch of games like baseball and football (I'm assuming here) do or do they work with different guys every night?

I wouldn't be surprised if NHL refs have the same kind of discussions about what to call, what not to call, who to target, who to leave alone. Reffing the score and handing out makeup calls is an art form in the NHL.

 

The discussion on the Lakers-Kings series wasn't that they were trying to fix so the Lakers would win the series. They were trying to fix it so the series would go seven games.

 

Baseball and football crews work together for the entire season. Baseball does use "vacation" umpires who sub for guys when they take time off during the season.

 

At least from the quotes from the book, it seems less refs are fixing less in the traditional sense -- to assure gamblers of a certain result -- and more in the their-own-whims sense. But a fix is a fix, whether you're betting amongst yourselves on who calls the first foul, doing favors for someone you like, or, worse yet for the league's credibility, making the equivalent of debris-on-the-track calls to steer the outcome.

Of course, this assumes all of what Donaghy wrote was true. But as we learned with Canseco, the bitter ex with nothing to lose often is correct, if skeevy.

As for your point, STG, there has to be some art to this. The Knicks aren't getting to the finals if you call the fouls 135-0 in their favor, and the fouls aren't going to be called in their favor unless they have a hope of getting to the finals. A good team should be able to overcome any vagaries of the refs, but it just makes it that much harder.

 

I covered that series. I don't think it was fixed for the Lakers to win. I think it was fixed to go seven games and that happened to favor the Lakers.

That Game 6 was a travesty. You should have seen the looks the writers were giving each other. There were writers who had covered the NBA for 30 years who said it was the worst-officiated games they'd ever seen and the word "fixed" was thrown around very loosely in the press room.

I've never seen a sporting event where the refs were so obviously favoring one team.

 

The officiating is one of big reasons I'm not a fan of the NBA.
I don't pay attention until the NFL is over, and even then, once the playoffs get rolling, it's fairly easy to predict how series will go. I usually wait until the conference finals before I tune in regularly.
And I've got to think the bookies have had a "book" on NBA refs, wouldn't be surprised if some teams keep track of stuff and look at a team's winning percentage change depending on which refs are working.

 

I don't the think SEC refs fix games, but those guys aren't officiating as a full-time gig.
Most have jobs and family and friends and other people who have a vested interest in their particular team's game.
That pressure is put on the officials and they feel it. That doesn't include the notes they get from the league or press critics.
Now, the NBA, I thought the fix has been in since the Knicks won the lottery draft and got Patrick Ewing. To hear that officials influenced games is about the least surprising news ever.

 

I'm calling bullshit, because if this were true, Rasheed Abdul Wallace would never make it 30 seconds into a game without being teed up. He'd get ejected in pregame warmups 80% of the time.

 

That's what I thought too.

And really...Donaghy is a scumbag of the highest (or lowest) order, but if he wasn't on to something, would the NBA have flexed its muscle and forced Triumph to bag the book? Wouldn't it just be easier to embark on a smear campaign and allow the book to have its two weeks in the sun before it finds its way to the remainder bin? Why give it more attention?

This is, as TSP points out, not only a thousand times more explosive than Canseco's books, but maybe the most explosive thing anyone's ever written about American professional sports. The NBA is fixed. And Donaghy wrote a book about it. I imagine he'll "kill himself" pretty soon.

 

The reason it's so explosive is because it isn't explosive. Meaning, he's only saying what every fan believed, not anything that seems outside the realm of possibility.

 

But then they don't flex legal muscle and people say, "Well, if it was false, the NBA and the individual referees would sue him. So why haven't they?"

Another part of the impossible situation, trying to prove something didn't happen. Prove a fix didn't happen.