08-26-2020, 11:08 AM
(08-26-2020, 10:32 AM)Kammrath Wrote: Welcome to the board! And great first post with lots of info and data!
To me, there is just too much anecdotal evidence from my decades of watching AND there is too much financial incentive to think the NBA doesn't nudge things toward a desired outcome.
I think the word "nudge" is correct though because for the most part the players STILL have most of the control in the outcome of the game. But I think the NBA greases the skids for certain teams because they have the "bottom line" to worry about. Making money is their primary interest, nothing else is even close.
In the game last night it truly felt like the reffing decisions helped pile on the momentum against the Mavs. Just stack two or three calls toward one team and you can potentially tip the momentum in a massive way.
And what makes it so sneaky is that you can have a bunch of calls go toward one team and throw in the occasional call blatantly going the other way and it throws people off the scent. AND you can also call things really tight against one team (where technically it isn't "Wrong", like Luka's travel last night) but then not hold the other team to that tight standard.
As Tim Donaghy said:
Quote:"They just kind of tell us how to call the games. And when you tell somebody how to call a game, at times it puts one team at an advantage or a disadvantage....I think the biggest lie is that they try to say that everybody plays by the same set of rules and that there’s not star treatment. But whether it’s LeBron James in the NBA or Peyton Manning in the NFL, these guys are getting star treatment because they’re the ones that generate the revenue for the league. It’s just a situation where they should come out and say that there is star treatment so that there’s nothing that’s hidden from the fans."
However, beyond the NBA, I also think there are outside forces that can work their way in to the equation as well. Once again, Tim Donaghy:
Quote:"Any time that you have a sporting event with a Vegas line to it, there’s always going to be somebody involved in organized crime trying to make a dollar off of it. So I think that they constantly are trying to get to that referee, to get to a player, to get to somebody, a trainer, or a coach who can give them inside information to where they can take advantage of it. So, I think it’s always going to be there, and it is there.....they did an internal investigation and found that 50 out of 60 officials bet, in the casinos, on the golf course, pro football or whatever, and he knew he couldn’t fire 50 out of 60 people, so what they wanted to do was just put this whole thing on me and act like I was the one bad apple in the bunch, and that’s how they dealt with it."
One final quote:
Quote:"Oh definitely. The referees hated Mark Cuban. When he came into the league, he wanted our work load to increase. He made sure we all had laptop computers, we all were responsible to review games afterwards. And he constantly called and complained to the league office about the officiating....He made Ed Rush’s job a lot harder and Rush hated Mark Cuban. And dictated to the referees what to call and how to officiate a lot of games.”
Thank you for you reply and these interesting quotes. For more than twenty years my main sports focus has been on European football so I can tell you from this experience and point of view: Referees in European football are not allowed to bet and I think NBA refs definitely shouldn't be allowed to bet, as well! There have even been several scandals which hit European football hard involving betting refs and rigged games. In Germany one of those refs had been sent to prison because of what he did if I remember correctly. Additionally, even the FBI was involved in investigating into the FIFA and their corrupt functionaries like president Sepp Blatter.
This is not a way the NBA can go forward imho. Something has to change and I think the only way is that the team owners get together and force the NBA to do something about officiating. Everything the refs do has to be transparent - from their training to their ingame decisions. There is no way to have a pro sport like that without pro officials and without having a fair competition. It's ridiculous and absurd.
By the way: I counted Luka's travel call as one of the five 100 % wrong calls. I even rewinded the replay twice and found out that he definitely didn't lift his pivot foot. On the other hand, Boban did on his travel call. But the funny thing is: Those calls only go against the Mavs. The Clippers travels probably just get "overlooked". Travel calls tend to get "overlooked" anyway in the NBA - just not so much on non title contenders.