Tim Donaghy the former NBA referee, who was banned for gambling on NBA games, recently appeared on 60 minutes, and has oddly enough written a tell all book.
I have no argument with Mr. Donaghy being banned from NBA or his writing a book.
What concerns me is the credibility or lack there of of the NBA.
It seems that after being in financial turmoil, NBA executives deceive that they should encourage officials to call games in such a way as to promote certain high market teams to advance in the playoffs at the experience of lower market teams, and at the expense of the integrity of the game.
This means that the outcome of games and indeed series and championships were pre determined. so, we have been watching great athletes play their hearts out with no chance of winning the prize. While entertaining this is not athletics but theater. Good theater since the athletes themselves did not know what was going on, but theater non the less.
Now that we know this we can watch the NBA or not, but at least we understand what it really is. Games and championships are decided not on the best play, but according to the profit to be made by the champions being in the largest media market.
I for one have no interest in this. I like athletics and I ;like theater, I don't necessarily like them mixed, I mean I enjoy the Harlem globe trotters, but I certainly don't take the scores seriously. The globe trotters like the NBA simply are a show case for a certain type of skills, but to be caught up in the scores and the outcomes and the standings as I do with baseball, would be foolish now.
So unless their is some honest and credible effort by a third party to expose and ban those responsible for this illegitimacy of athletics, I will watch the LA Lakers whenever I want the same kind of basketball showcase I get from watching the Harlem globe trotters, heck they might be able to increase income by letting the globe trotters into the league.
I am disgusted. I know many people who were making the same pint that Tim Donaghy made with regard to a Lakers Kings series a few years ago. I dutifully defended the integrety of the game, saying no the officials were not biased and they simply made the calls as they saw them. that after all the NBA represented legitimate athletics contests just as Major league baseball, the steroids controversy not withstanding. As it turns out I was wrong that championships and all others was decided not on play and ability but predetermined in favor of a bias toward the higher market team.
So, I and others were duped.
The NBA needs a complete overhaul. Something similar to what happened in Major League Baseball after the black sox scandal.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
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