NY Post: NBA ref to be arrested for fixing games

If the NBA has it, I'm guessing every major sport could have it as well.

What is funny is that basketball is the worst sport to gamble on. Too many times scrubs jacking threes will cover spreads or over/unders.

 

Who the hell bets on basketball (asks the former classmate of Hot Rod Williams)?

 

This could be a HUGE scandal, and have a devastating impact on the NBA's credibility, which already is hounded by a legion of conspiracy minded folk believing games are fixed--now those people are gonna have some actual FBI hard evidence to back it up? Oh my.

And many will quickly spin this into "only the tip of the iceberg" talk that there're plenty of other crooked refs out there who haven't been caught. Would not wanna be working in Stern's office today.

 

That's true, but I think basketball might be a bit easier for a ref to control. As they say, fouls technically occur on nearly every possesion in NBA basketball games, its the ref who decides which will be called and which won't. That's a lot of subjective control over how the game will be played and its outcome.

 

The German Bundesliga had a referee gambling scandal that peaked right around World Cup time — maximum embarrassment — but the league weathered it. Something similar happened in Italy, but that didn't stop the Azzurri from winning the Cup.

However, nothing like this has ever happened in U.S. sport. Looks like Cuban's going to get his way and there's gonna be a top-down vetting of the ref ranks.

 

Serious question: Will ESPN be able to cover this story objectively? Will the network be as aggressive following other organization's reporting as it would if this were a sport that the network didn't have a financial interest in?

I see a huge, huge potential conflict of interest here the bigger this story gets.

 

Exactly. I would think that the NBA would be the first place I would look in pro sports for this sort of shenanigans.

 

Hell no.

Baseball. Strike zone.

Home-plate umpire could EASILY control the outcome of a game.

 

Able to? Yes. Will they? Probably not.

Good point, though, further exposes the inherent problem with the most powerful sports journalism organization being in bed financially with a league it covers.

 

I would love to see Vegas give odds on which NBA ref is under investigation.

 

this situation is already explosive by the mere fact that someone in the league is being investigated. This could get ugly quickly.