Ref fixing NBA games? Feds investigating...

[TroyMcClure]

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Baseball........Umpire Eric Gregg

Anyone remember about 10 years ago, at the 1997 NLCS

between the Braves and the Marlins?

He gave Levon Hernadez the biggest strikezone ever.

Anything between the batter and the dugout was called a

strike.

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There was an interview that fat POS gave a year after that game IIRC where he admitted he called the game completely onesided and it was because quote "I hate the Braves and wanted someone else to make it in the NL".

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I really enjoyed hearing about him losing everything and having to tend bar in the old Veterans Stadium.

[AHF]

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Baseball........Umpire Eric Gregg

Anyone remember about 10 years ago, at the 1997 NLCS

between the Braves and the Marlins?

He gave Levon Hernadez the biggest strikezone ever.

Anything between the batter and the dugout was called a

strike.

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There was an interview that fat POS gave a year after that game IIRC where he admitted he called the game completely onesided and it was because quote "I hate the Braves and wanted someone else to make it in the NL".

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I would LOVE to read that if you or anyone else can track that down. Would loove to read that. Gregg deserves to be locked in a room with Barry Bonds after Bonds has gone 10 games without a homer and is still trying break the HR record after someone tells Barry that eating Gregg's liver will boost his testosterone.

[Spiral]

I don't ever remember reading anything like that. I do remember reading that if he had it to do over again, he wouldn't have called that last pitch a strike.

By the way... He's dead now.

[TroyMcClure]

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ESPN says they think they know who it is...Tim D-something...I guess it won't be long until somebody backtracks the games and figures out which ones he could have affected.

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Tim Donaghy. I could swear he was a ref at the Bucks game we got screwed in early last year. I went. It sucked the way the game seemed to have been stolen from us. It culminated with a game winning phantom call for Redd against Joe. I know Joey Crawford was one of the guys.

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Can anyone track down when this guy did Hawks games? I just know he did the Bucks game. Early reg. season game Hawks-Bucks... who cares, right?

[TexasPete]

That horrible phantom call against the Bucks was not Donaghy. It was that slicked back hair greaseball that worked a ton in the finals. I can't remember his name but that call is an example of how a ref could easily decide a game. We were up two in the last seconds and Redd makes a nice move and scores to tie the game...then, the call from nowhere against JJ who just got out of Redds way because he did not want to foul. Free throw and Bucks win.

I've played over 10,000 games and watched 10,000 more in my life and you would never see that call even in a church league with volunteer refs. How does an NBA official make a call that is so clearly not there? That literally gives the game to one team?

I do not believe in the conspiracy that says refs are crooked. I just think most NBA refs suck donkey balls. They are bad. I know officating is not easy, but these NBA clowns just mutilate it. Look at all the flopping, these dumb SOB's can't even notice a flop.

David Stern has allowed traveling ad nauseum for years. The Superstars get all the calls, D-Wade literally won a ring on the line based on terrible calls, and it goes on and on.

The NBA really needs a whole new work force because the current guys are too entrenched and stupid to ever call a game right.

Why can't an NBA game just be called straight up without regard to "who" the call is for or against? I saw Lebron take 5 steps and lay a ball in last year. Sorry, but that doesn't impress me. That dude travels about half the time he has the ball. But, Lebron is allowed to travel, cause...he is THE KING!

Stern is not a basketball player and has little feel for the actual game itself. The game is not in his DNA like some people. He is a smart businessman who you want negotiating your TV contract, he is not somebody who has an instinctive feel for the game. He can watch 50,000 games and he still doesn't get it.

How to fix the NBA? Easy. Just call the damn games right. If Lebron travels, call it every time. If Kobe charges and has 5 fouls, its OK to call his 6th and foul him out. If D-Wade falls when he shoots, it may be because he is acting and wants a foul. You don't have to call a foul when he falls. STOP THE SUPERSTAR RULES! Just call it like it is without regard to the teams or players involved. It would be an honest product that the public would appreciate. This should not be that hard to grasp but in Sterns world you cater to the stars because the stars sell the shoes and make the money. In his warped view they are supposed to be almost mythical and infallible. Not only are the stars better, they get plenty of cover from the refs. It has just killed the product. Go back and watch a game on the NBA channel from the early 80's and you will see how the game was meant to be played.

NBA officating is the absolute biggest farce in sports. If this situation leads to change then I hope it blows sky high.

[Seano]

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Gregg deserves to be locked in a room with Barry Bonds after Bonds has gone 10 games without a homer and is still trying break the HR record after someone tells Barry that eating Gregg's liver will boost his testosterone.

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Well, they'd have to dig up his corpse- as Eric Gregg passed away in June 2006 of a massive stroke. I've found it's generally not a good thing to speak ill of the dead, so RIP Eric Gregg I guess.

[MikeWilksBooth]

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Gregg deserves to be locked in a room with Barry Bonds after Bonds has gone 10 games without a homer and is still trying break the HR record after someone tells Barry that eating Gregg's liver will boost his testosterone.

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Well, they'd have to dig up his corpse- as Eric Gregg passed away in June 2006 of a massive stroke. I've found it's generally not a good thing to speak ill of the dead, so RIP Eric Gregg I guess.

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You beat me too it Seano...I bet Livan attended the funeral

[sturt]

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AHF's question proposes to learn more exacting information

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No it doesn't. He merely repeated your accusation, asking for a yes or no response for clarification.

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I went back and analyzed it, and see now what you're saying... and that I need to apologize for the lazy writing... I should have been more precise to say "...as opposed to a CEO, who by his own admission, had the opportunity to regularly dictate the degree to which refs should be blowing whistles and even for particular players."

(...this corroborates that with everything else I've written here, so it's not a new element to the discussion, but again, I apologize for clicking the send button to quickly and reading over AHF's question w/o recognizing the point he may have been trying to delineate.)

Fwiw... if you really think what I wrote and re-wrote, Ex, had "no relevance," you also are reading over things too quickly and failing to see the big picture of things... you're down here whining about a particular weakness in how a single player slings up a shot... I'm addressing the bigger point of how a GM would evaluate his options for a draft, given that player's grade and others.

I'm confident you're a more intelligent person than that. Perhaps like me, you just need to slow down and be a little less defensive as if everything YOU write is sacred scripture.

Others, on occasion, CAN make sense, if you just slow down, as my own experience just now attests.

[exodus]

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I'm

addressing the bigger point

of how a GM would evaluate his options for a draft, given that player's grade and others.

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In other words you were addressing a point which is completely different from the one i was making.

[exodus]

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Look at all the flopping, these dumb SOB's can't even notice a flop.

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I amazes me that they fall so often for that crap.

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How to fix the NBA? Easy. Just call the damn games right. If Lebron travels, call it every time. If Kobe charges and has 5 fouls, its OK to call his 6th and foul him out. If D-Wade falls when he shoots, it may be because he is acting and wants a foul. You don't have to call a foul when he falls. STOP THE SUPERSTAR RULES! Just call it like it is without regard to the teams or players involved. It would be an honest product that the public would appreciate.

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Exactly

[Lascar78]

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I should have been more precise to say "...as opposed to a CEO, who by his own admission,

had the opportunity to

regularly dictate the degree to which refs should be blowing whistles and even for particular players."

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Ok, so I'll take that as a no then. The truth shall set you free!

As for your new point, they have made it perfectly clear any time it's come up that they issue general guidelines on the enforcement of the rules, NEVER guidelines that would single out teams or players. So unless you know something that your boy Mark Cuban does not, this is also a false statement. Not to mention that these directives come from the league office and are decided on by a number of people, not just Stern himself.

[Lascar78]

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How to fix the NBA? Easy. Just call the damn games right. If Lebron travels, call it every time. If Kobe charges and has 5 fouls, its OK to call his 6th and foul him out. If D-Wade falls when he shoots, it may be because he is acting and wants a foul. You don't have to call a foul when he falls. STOP THE SUPERSTAR RULES! Just call it like it is without regard to the teams or players involved.

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I think everyone agrees on this, the problem is how do you do this? There are really two scenarios here: either the league instructs refs to give the superstars/home team some favorable calls, or they don't. Anybody with any involvement in the league will tell you that they try their very best to make the same call every time regardless of who it is etc...

Now if you think they're lying and there really are directives to protect superstars and home teams, then sure, the easy solution is for them to stop that and issue directives to stop. Done deal.

However, I highly doubt that's the case. I think that the refs are humans who consciously or not tend to give the stars the benefit of the doubt when there's a questionable play occurring at lightning fast speed. I don't think they mean to, it just happens. I certainly don't think they ever make the wrong call on purpose. However, in the case of a rookie vs a superstar, at some level of consciousness they know that if they incorrectly call a foul on the rookie, people will roll their eyes and kind of laugh it off as a star gets another call. But if they incorrectly call a foul on the superstar vs the rookie, the crowd will be outraged. Same thing with home/away calls. At least subconsciously, it's easier to make the call that doesn't result in 20,000 booing you when you're unsure. I do agree that it's a big problem, but I don't think there's an easy solution. They can put it out there as a point of emphasis for the new season, but it's extremely hard to control.

As for the travel, I think it's supposed to be one of the points of emphasis for the new season (as is flopping I believe), but anyhow the biggest problem is the way the rules are written. People usually see a play and think of it in terms of college / FIBA rules of two steps or a pivot. But NBA traveling rules are horrible and need to be re-written. You can catch the ball, land on both feet, jump in the air, land on both feet, then pivot at will, then jump again and shoot or pass. That's insane. They really need to re-write the rules. Of course there are still plenty of plays where guys flat out take 4-step layups and don't get called, but the rules are a big part of the problem.

[DJlaysitup]

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...I do not believe in the conspiracy that says refs are crooked. I just think most NBA refs suck donkey balls. They are bad. I know officating is not easy, but these NBA clowns just mutilate it....

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I'm not claiming a conspiracy either...and the whole thread was knocked off-kilter by the "Stern" allegation. Stern knows where his bread is buttered and would never be involved in game fixing.

That said...the Feds don't do 2-year investigations just to go to ball games. They've likely got this TD guy and his accomplices and are going to put them in jail. The legal betting lobby (read Las Vegas mostly) has serious clout and pays taxes. They cannot afford to have the NBA compromised.

BTW...it was also said on ESPNTV that it would be VERY difficult for one referee to influence the point spread since other refs tend to do "make-up" calls on the other end instead of calling out their compatriots in front of the camera. It may be that there is more to come on this deal....but please....Stern's an idiot sometimes but he wouldn't kill the golden goose.

He wouldn't want to wake up with a horses head in his bed.

[sturt]

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I'm

addressing the bigger point

of how a GM would evaluate his options for a draft, given that player's grade and others.

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In other words you were addressing a point which is completely different from the one i was making.

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"Completely different."

You are NOT that dense.

[TexasPete]

When I watched the 2006 finals I finally lost all respect for the lousy product. I TIVO'ed a bunch of phantom calls on D-Wade and I have never seen anything like it in any sport. I had zero rooting interest so its not sour grapes.

I saw guys not even within two feet of Wade when he got a call and went to the line. I know the games were not fixed but you could make an easy case that they were when you watched all the phantom calls. Some of them clearly kept the Heat in games when the Mavs were threatening a run. Wade was falling and flopping and getting calls that simply never happened. Why? A ref could not have seen anything because nothing was there to call. So, the refs called things that never happened which proves they were not watching anything but Wade's flopping antics.

I would TIVO a play, watch it, and then think "how in the hell could he call a foul there when nobody remotely touched him?" And this happened 15 times during the series.

Again, I do not think its fixed. I think it is just lousy officiating. One solution is to require all officials to have played at least at some level of college ball, even D3. I'm telling you it is damn hard to know the game unless you have played it. As a player, you know what needs to be called and what can slide. You know the game and can then call it right. Going to "Ref School" is a damn joke.

The star rules should not exist. Call the game straight up without regard to "who" is involved. It isn't hard. My son plays HS ball now and that's how they call it. I hate NBA officials, they are all cut from lousy cloth and Stern presides over this crap.

[sturt]

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When I watched the 2006 finals I finally lost all respect for the lousy product. I TIVO'ed a bunch of phantom calls on D-Wade and I have never seen anything like it in any sport. I had zero rooting interest so its not sour grapes.

I saw guys not even within two feet of Wade when he got a call and went to the line. I know the games were not fixed but you could make an easy case that they were when you watched all the phantom calls. Some of them clearly kept the Heat in games when the Mavs were threatening a run. Wade was falling and flopping and getting calls that simply never happened. Why? A ref could not have seen anything because nothing was there to call. So, the refs called things that never happened which proves they were not watching anything but Wade's flopping antics.

I would TIVO a play, watch it, and then think "how in the hell could he call a foul there when nobody remotely touched him?" And this happened 15 times during the series.

Again, I do not think its fixed. I think it is just lousy officiating. One solution is to require all officials to have played at least at some level of college ball, even D3. I'm telling you it is damn hard to know the game unless you have played it. As a player, you know what needs to be called and what can slide. You know the game and can then call it right. Going to "Ref School" is a damn joke.

The star rules should not exist. Call the game straight up without regard to "who" is involved. It isn't hard. My son plays HS ball now and that's how they call it. I hate NBA officials, they are all cut from lousy cloth and Stern presides over this crap.

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I've written a lot on this topic in the past, TXPete, but I'm not sure whether or not it might have been before you were around...

Look at the classic Celts/Lakers series of the 80s... imo, that was the last time we saw great team professional basketball...

The proverbial straw breaking camels back for me was a playoff game b/t Blazers and Lakers. Smitty fouled Shaq hard (and I mean slammed his arms over Shaq's arms so he couldn't even take the ball up off his dribble to try to begin to dunk) on a 4th quarter cherry-pick in order to send Shaq to the line, as was routine then.

No call.

Put that into context that the Blazers had been playing so well that they were threatening to prevent the LA team from reaching the finals.

This wasn't disputable... this wasn't the difference between a nudge and a hack... it was the difference between a hack and, rather, a flagrant foul.

It was unmistakable from that moment that there must be a better way of making sense of this pattern of wildly inconsistent officiating in the NBA that I'd thought I'd noticed since, even, the Bad Boys days.

Even if my theory is all wet, that would only mean that there was an even-better way of making sense of this wildly inconsistent officiating in the NBA.

I truly have better things to do with my time than to invest energy again in this debate, but fwiw, my theory can be summed up this way:

- Stern is widely regarded as an NBA Jesus on the basis of the marketing perspective he brought to bear on the league's downturn.

- A large part of that marketing perspective is linked to what we now commonly call the Jordan rules

- It was about that time that, it is my opinion but I believe many have written that they agree, that we began to see basketbrawl.

- Did NBA refs suddenly lose their ability to call games properly? Was there a large turnover in the NBA officiating profession?... I could be wrong, but I don't believe either of those occurred.

Rather, the plausible theory I see is that the marketing guru, aka David Stern, had the brainstorm that if one enlarge the gray area between a nudge and a push, between a half-step and a travel, and generally between physical baseketball and a foul fest, then one can effectively put in place an environment where superstar rules can be invoked with minimal notice by the audience.

And... if one can do that, then one can -- NOT FIX games in the way we ordinarily define that term -- but rather, produce an ever-so-slightly tilted floor... thus, it is my opinion that it never was so overt that an untalented team with a star could trump a talented team with no real stars, but just that, if you can give star-power-teams a 51%-or-so chance at winning, that's likely enough in the end for the interests of the overall league to be advanced

...And the brilliance of it, intended or not, was its subtlety... that there was hardly any risk of it being interpreted as a "scandal"... it hadn't the necessary components of a full-fledged "conspiracy," after all, since it was simply, as I've said, enlarging the gray areas to allow for less certainty as to when a foul or a violation IS/WAS a foul or a violation... no "factual" crime committed... just a kind-of "change in policy."

(Related but an aside: Reminiscent of a recent president who claimed to have reduced poverty... when all he'd really done was alter the rules of what is called poverty by reformulating the calculation for poverty thresholds.)

- But the theory I put forward lacks a mechanism by which Stern could influence officiating to that end... after all, as I've stated repeatedly, in any other major league sport it is a committee of franchise owners that gives guidance to what the rules are and how they are to be enforced. They are the "congress," and then there is a league office person who essentially works directly with them as a sort of "attorney general."

- What we've found out since the public Cuban/VanGundy dispute, though, is that Stern has that mechanism after all... in Stern's NBA, he is, in fact, "congress" AND "attorney general," and he HAS ADMITTED casually that he is involved in reviewing refs and communicating with them how he wants things done.

(If there was any doubt about that, he evidently gained confidence that the media wouldn't press him about it, since he announced relatively recently--I'm forgetting whether it was last off-season or the previous one--that he'd instructed the refs that he felt the game, now, needed to return to its former self and less of the Wrestlemania with a roundball event, and thus they needed to begin calling the game tighter.)

That makes David Stern more like Vince McMahon than like Bud Selig or Roger Goodell... to have his hand DIRECTLY on buttons and levers that control the marketing/promotion of the game AND on those that control how actual games are policed by his referees is, I argue, a conflict of interest...

But only so if one thinks the game should, above all, be a sport of integrity... there are those who think it should, above all, be a sport of prosperity (ie, "it's a business first" mentality)... and it's true, no one buys a professional sports franchise out of the goodness of their heart, but rather on the prospect of making money... no argument here, nor do I disrespect that in the least.

Some might try to respond "well, it's gotta be both integrous and prosperous."

It's both, indeed... except that there are circumstances--like this that we're talking about--where ONE or the other has to be THE priority because the two maxims are in competition with one another.

And when that happens, I believe the evidence supports that Stern chooses the prosperity, even as he attempts to cloak that choice.

That's my position. I think the facts coalesce around the theory pretty convincingly, but that's me, and I leave it to others to judge for themselves its coherence.

[exodus]

Bigger is different by definition.

All of your posts are about misdirection. When you don't like an argument you simply change the subject and pretend it has relevance.

BK has had higher picks then any active GM but somehow that fact never shows up in your posts. Why? First of all because it is a fact and you don't like facts. They are harder to manipulate. You are much more comfortable with hypothetical scenarios that you can manipulate to show whatever you want, whether it is relevant or not.

The second reason that you don't mention it is because you are very biased. Therefore any fact that paints BK in a bad light which you aren't able to misdirect you simply ignore.

Like Childress' shot. It is a fact that his low release hinders his game. it is also a fact that very few wing players in the NBA have been successful with such a low release. Since you can't misdirect that fact you simply ignore it.

At the end of the day results matter. At the end of a game there is a winner and a loser. it doesn't matter if the loser played better or the winner got lucky.

No matter how much ordinal data nonsense you come up with it doesn't change the fact that BK has had higher picks than any current GM and that he has very little to show for them.

I am hopeful that Acie can change some of that. I won't go out on a limb and say he will be as good as Deron but i am hopeful he can be close. And if Marvin becomes as good as Deng, which i think is possible (not necesarily probable), then that will take some of the sting out of BK's blunders in the 04 and 05 drafts.

[TexasPete]

The "superstar rules" have eroded the sport in a variety of ways that have all been to the detriment of the NBA product. I agree that a team with one great star usually trumps a team of just 5 good players because the superstar will get a lot of calls down the stretch and many games are close until the end and the teams that get to the line the most usually win.

The refs almost always side with the LBJ's, the Jordans, the Wades, the Kobes, the Duncans', on and on. I have been in the stands too many times watching a nice Hawk effort get destroyed by a rotten call or two down the stretch. We all know what time it is you know? The coaches just can't talk about it because The Czar will slap them down until they shut up. They all know that you can't fight Stern and win. Ask Van Gundy, he almost got thrown out of the league. The players and coaches all know you can't fight city hall.

The other terrible result of the "superstar rules" is that the game itself suffers from one on one disease. We no longer beat the Euros because they play team ball and care zero about who scores. They are all just as thrilled to make the great pass as to score the bucket. That's why 5 inferior individuals whip are 5 superstars asses in international play now. I heard Coach K was trying to get the team concept back last summer but when I watched Carmelo just jacking up shots I knew we were in deep crap and that Carmelo had decided he was going to be the man...meanwhile we lost to a better "team".

The one on one superstar culture is hardly basketball at its best but it is the American Way. It is also a lousy product that most people don't like watching as it turns out. Basketball in its best form is team basketball where our 5 work together to beat their 5. It is all guys equal and working together for the good of the team, not the star. ESPN loved Kobes 81 point game but a basketball purist should vomit because that should never happen in a team sport like basketball.

Stern has presided over some very good things but has done some terrible things as well. He is extremely overrated in his job and has far too much power. The refs are a reflection of his leadership because Stern is over everything, a micro-manager that makes all important decisions. He wanted a superstar culture, and now he has it. The ratings on his "creation" would suggest strongly that his vision is a big pile of crap.

[sturt]

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Bigger is different by definition....

....some of the sting out of BK's blunders in the 04 and 05 drafts.

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ex:

What drives a person to follow another from post to post to doggedly pursue an argument from another thread, and even re-pick it in a completely different one? Desperation? Feeling of inferiority? Rage that the other person decided the horse was well-beaten and left the party before you were ready to let them leave? All of the above? None of the above? I don't know. But you do.

But here's my final retort to you. Period.

This conduct is childish, and I consider myself a friend to you for telling you that straight up.

You're now crossing a line, and the resentment is saying a lot more about you than any foolishness you want people to assign to me.

If my argument didn't make sense the first time to you, I've already said, "so be it."

You may consider me a fool, that's your right... but I'm not foolish enough to think you can be convinced about anything when you have so much ego invested in a position...

I'm not so foolish to think it's worth investing any additional time in playing the game you want to play.

You've had the last word on this topic several times now... let it go and salvage some dignity for yourself, or at least, keep it in the appropriate thread, or better, just PM me and wage your vendetta that way.

[sturt]

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The "superstar rules" have eroded the sport in a variety of ways that have all been to the detriment of the NBA product. I agree that a team with one great star usually trumps a team of just 5 good players because the superstar will get a lot of calls down the stretch and many games are close until the end and the teams that get to the line the most usually win.

The refs almost always side with the LBJ's, the Jordans, the Wades, the Kobes, the Duncans', on and on. I have been in the stands too many times watching a nice Hawk effort get destroyed by a rotten call or two down the stretch. We all know what time it is you know? The coaches just can't talk about it because The Czar will slap them down until they shut up. They all know that you can't fight Stern and win. Ask Van Gundy, he almost got thrown out of the league. The players and coaches all know you can't fight city hall.

The other terrible result of the "superstar rules" is that the game itself suffers from one on one disease. We no longer beat the Euros because they play team ball and care zero about who scores. They are all just as thrilled to make the great pass as to score the bucket. That's why 5 inferior individuals whip are 5 superstars asses in international play now. I heard Coach K was trying to get the team concept back last summer but when I watched Carmelo just jacking up shots I knew we were in deep crap and that Carmelo had decided he was going to be the man...meanwhile we lost to a better "team".

The one on one superstar culture is hardly basketball at its best but it is the American Way. It is also a lousy product that most people don't like watching as it turns out. Basketball in its best form is team basketball where our 5 work together to beat their 5. It is all guys equal and working together for the good of the team, not the star. ESPN loved Kobes 81 point game but a basketball purist should vomit because that should never happen in a team sport like basketball.

Stern has presided over some very good things but has done some terrible things as well. He is extremely overrated in his job and has far too much power. The refs are a reflection of his leadership because Stern is over everything, a micro-manager that makes all important decisions. He wanted a superstar culture, and now he has it. The ratings on his "creation" would suggest strongly that his vision is a big pile of crap.

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...couldn't say it any better than you have.