Just when David Stern thought it was safe to go back in the water.

In the midst of the dream matchup that will put the cherry on top of what has been one of the most successful NBA seasons in years, the Association once again has to deal with the specter of Tim Donaghy and game-fixing. (Our thoughts on the Donaghy scandal when it broke, here and here).

Former NBA ref, Tim Donaghy, who was convicted of betting on NBA games, alleges that other NBA referees manipulated games to better serve the NBA’s broader economic interests.

There is no other sport or league where the referees and the refereeing is more a prevalent topic than the NBA, in fact, its not even close. Refs will blow calls in the NFL and umpires may be criticized for an inconsistent strike zone or misjudging a foul pole home run but, invariably, these botches never carry the taint of conspiracy or “fix”. Indeed, the storyline in this very championship series has been the refereeing and specifically Game 2 where Boston enjoyed a 4 to 1 advantage over L.A. in going to the charity stripe.

And if you are a floundering Tim Donaghy, awaiting sentencing, what else is there to do but trot out one of the crown jewels of the conspiracy theorists: Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals where the Lakers prevailed over the Sacramento Kings on their way to a seven game series victory?

For their part, David Stern and the Association have dismissed these charges as the predictable actions of an untrustworthy and disgraced man who is willing to throw anything against the wall and anybody under the bus if it will possibly lessen his time in the can. Then again, David Stern is the same person who told us all the mechanisms to monitor and detect untoward behavior by their referees were in place and working just fine when the Donaghy scandal broke last summer… so why didn’t they catch Donaghy?

We’re always wary in taking to much from commenter reaction but the overwhelming majority from story here seems to be of the “Tell us something we don’t know” variety and therein lies the rub. The NBA and its refs could be completely 100% pure-as-the-driven-snow clean in all this but perception is reality and the perception among many, even some self-professed Laker fans, was that the Game 6 back in ’02 was rigged and that there was definitely something amiss in Game 2 of this series.

Too bad for David Stern because this season has been a lot of fun. He had a relatively incident free season for his players on and off the court, a rise in T.V. ratings and despite a horribly boring and mundane set of playoff series, he’s got the Association’s two flagship franchises back on top again and playing for the NBA championship. This conspiracy business, though, is a large factor in setting the NBA back as a second-class citizen to the NFL and it’s a problem Stern is stuck with and is a problem that will probably always dog the NBA thus keeping them in their current status in pro and college football’s rearview mirror.

Slipping into Irrelevancy

One of our Vegas research items we didn’t get to reporting-out on was whether or not the Sports Books offered betting lines on WNBA games. Can’t speak for other books but at least the South Point did not. And with the way things are going, no one may be offering lines for NBA games either next year.

On Wednesday, Tim Donaghy, the former NBA ref who has been accused of betting on NBA games admitted his guilt in a New York courtroom. In addition to betting on games, he advised professional gamblers on which teams to pick and provided information regarding referee game assignments, ref/player relationships and players’ health.

And just when things couldn’t get any worse, there was a report on 1050 ESPN Radio in New York on Thursday that Donaghy was about to give up to prosecutors the names of 20 colleagues that may have violated league rules. It was not disclosed what the nature of these violations were but the mind reels at the possibilities.

Now David Stern, the NBA commissioner, has been swearing up and down ever since this story broke that Donaghy is the only one, a rogue ref if you will and that the system the NBA has in place to police such illegal activity is in fine working order. This, of course, begs the question that if the system is operating as it should, why didn’t they pick up on what Donaghy was doing?

The NBA’s gambling scandal makes the NFL’s Mick Vick situation look like child’s play. The NFL and the Atlanta Falcons have essentially washed their hands of Vick and what he has been accused of doing, though reprehensible, does not strike at the very credibility and viability of professional football.

The Association and David Stern have a lot to answer for. For years, players, coaches and fans have grumbled, hinted and intimated towards the fact that certain refs had it in for certain players and/or coaches. Fans, in particular, have been openly suspicious that the league had a vested interest to make sure that certain teams advanced in the playoffs.

This was never more apparent than a few years back as the regular season was winding down, Commissioner Stern was asked in an interview what, from the league’s standpoint, would be the ideal Finals match-up. Without missing a beat and without a hint of irony, Stern responded with a big smile, “The Lakers vs. the Lakers.”

Of course, Stern and the league office would turn right around and dismiss charges of preferential treatment as essentially the rantings of conspiracy theorists.

Can it get worse? We shall see but no doubt these are dark, bleak and despondent times for a league struggling to maintain relevancy as the NFL (along with its complementary sidekick, college football) stands poised to swallow whole the entire American sports scene.

'08 Beijing Olympics Update

(One in an occasional series provided during the run-up to the ’08 Summer Games in Beijing, China. Archived posts in this series can be accessed by entering “Olympics” in the blog search box above).

ESPN ran an Outside the Lines segment last night featuring comments LeBron James made this past spring with respect to speaking out against China’s human rights abuses (segment can be found at the top of the queue on the right hand side of page, here). In May, James said that he would help raise awareness as to China’s involvement with the Sudanese government and that government’s de-facto sponsorship of genocide in Darfur.

But now that James and the rest of the team are in Beijing, putting the finishing touches on preparations for the Games that start this Friday, he and the rest of the team are singing another tune. To a person, including the coaches, the party line is “we’re just here to play hoops” and the “Olympics is not the venue for politics”.

It was suggested that David Stern eyeing China's 300+ million basketball fans (as many fans in China as people living here in the States) would not take kindly to any rhetoric that would chill potential customers.

What, if any, obligation do athletes, particularly those from the most high-visibility and freest nation on the planet have to speak out against China’s policies ranging from Darfur, Tibet, internal dissident groups, etc.?

Should the basketball players, for instance, just let their on-court excellence be a witness to freedom and liberty and just be gracious and humble guests by keeping their mouths shut or has China’s egregious behavior demanded that a bold stance and protest against these actions be displayed during the Games? Or is there some sort of middle ground where a subtle show of solidarity can be shown towards China’s oppressed without causing a scene?

Please feel free to comment and participate in out poll on the right-hand margin.

Coming to Ruin an AFC Championship Near You

Sorry, America. Apologies for the Chargers scuttling the AFC Championship game matchup you all wanted to see. In doing so, the Chargers displayed the heart, fortitude, savvy and smarts that were all found lacking by this very blog just a few months ago, overcoming a hostile crowd, injuries to their offensive stars and some absolutely brutal officiating to achieve perhaps the most improbable victory in franchise history.

Some thoughts:
- We hate to say it because it makes us look like ungracious winners but… Roger Goddell dodged a bullet yesterday. Had the Colts won, the league office would’ve spent the entirety of this week attempting to explain away some of the calls that were made against the Chargers, namely, the holding call on Eric Weddle that negated Antonio Cromartie’s (Cro!) interception return for a touchdown at the end of the half and the pass interference call in the 4th quarter on Clinton Hart. It also appeared that Merriman and Phillips were held about every time they got to the corner on their pass rushes. After being largely immune to the same, Goddell would’ve found out what David Stern, the NBA commish has had to deal with for years now: the open secret that the Association will do whatever it can to put big market teams (especially the L.A. Lakers) in the Finals.

- It was encouraging to see some emotion from Norv Turner. Though we don’t subscribe to the theory that a coach needs to be overly demonstrative on the sidelines to be effective, we feel that every once in a while a coach needs to let the refs know, in no uncertain terms, his opinion of the officiating if for nothing else to let the players know the coach has their back. We would’ve loved to have been in the Charger locker room at halftime… we imagine the Chargers are on the hook for some damaged lockers and furniture. They channeled that emotion effectively, though in the 2nd half – something that they had been incapable of doing prior to yesterday.

- The CBS acronym of Can’t Broadcast Sports was upheld in fine fashion yesterday. We never seemed to get replays in a timely fashion and because of sloppy camera work, we never saw the alleged offsides penalty against the Chargers in the 3rd quarter that kept a Colt’s drive alive and which ultimately resulted in a touchdown. And with Joe Theismann now out of the picture, Dan Dierdorf assumes the position…. of worst game analyst in football. Words cannot describe how much we detest this man. To add insult to injury, it seemed like the team of Greg Gumbel and the ‘Dorf were assigned to about half the Charger games this year.

- Billy Freaking Volek!

- The Charger’s defense successfully executed what the Jaguars defense tried the night before against the Patriots. The scheme was to sit back in the cover-2 zone, keep everything in front of the secondary, make the offense chip its way down field and…. pray for turnovers! If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know we are not fans of the cover-2, a defense of which the Chargers are ill-suited to play, but Ted Cottrell can successfully argue that the scheme helped produce a victory. We fully expect the Chargers to do the same thing next week, whereby Tom Brady will carve up the Chargers secondary like a Thanksgiving butterball.

- The Chargers may need to look for a placekicker in the off-season. Nate Kaeding continues to miss playoff field goals.

- Though he didn’t have the impact we were predicting because Antonio Gates did start, the one time Legedu Naanee got his hands on the ball, he acquitted himself quite nicely, rambling 27 yards on a tight end bubble screen during the Billy Volek-led game-winning scoring drive.

- In our minds, one of the most important plays of the game was Mike Scifres, with his back to the goal line, uncorking a 66 yard punt and forcing the Colts to start their last offensive series at their own 32 yard line. Aside from the obvious field position advantage gained, it’s simultaneously a psychological boost to the defense and a deflation to the Colt offense. Mike Scifres is the best punter in the game. End of discussion.

- And finally… are we going to eat some crow and admit we were wrong about Norv Turner? Nope. While we congratulate Turner and the rest of the coaching staff for taking the Bolts to the conference championship game, they could’ve saved everybody, including themselves a whole lot of grief by capitalizing on this team’s core competencies from Week 1. These Chargers are a big, physical team that is equipped to get after the quarterback on defense and run the ball to set up play-action downfield on offense. This current 8 game winning streak is not merely coincidental with the coaches playing to those strengths.

Great win. The Chargers open up as 14-1/2 pt. dogs to the Pats. Good. Let’s stay loose, go into New England, roll the bones and see what happens.

... and as Darren Spoles would say. "buh-bye".