Fix not in for game, player or NBA officiating policy

[The Judge]

By RICHARD JUSTICE
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

NEVER mind that David Stern may not have fixed a game. Perception is reality in an industry dependent on the public trust.

That's what makes the NBA commissioner's challenge so difficult. There may not be a paper trail proving games have been fixed, but there's unlikely to be one clearing the league either.

That said, Stern should act. Boldly. Quickly. Indeed, some of these problems speak to his arrogance.

Coaches and a few former referees have long been critical of the way the NBA hires and evaluates referees. Now the time has come to remove the refs from the umbrella of the league office.

Will this fix everything? Of course not. No amount of oversight is going to fix everything that's wrong with NBA officiating.

The players are so large and quick and the court is so small that NBA basketball is by far the toughest game to ref.

Even the league's best officials — Dan Crawford, Joe Crawford, Steve Javie — are going to miss calls because of positioning on the floor or the sheer athleticism of players.

Now, about the Rockets and Mavericks in 2005. It makes no sense that the NBA would favor the Mavericks.

The Rockets have two players — Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady — more popular and more marketable than anyone on the Dallas roster. If Stern were going to put the fix in, he'd fix it for the Rockets. Do you think he'd love to have Yao going deep in the playoffs? Sure, he would.

Yes, Mavs owner Mark Cuban complained about the screens Yao was setting. There was nothing wrong with his complaining, and there was nothing wrong with the NBA's telling refs to watch those screens more closely.

No favors for Cuban
But the NBA should have announced it to the world. Jeff Van Gundy ended up hearing it on the sly from a league official and was fined $100,000 after blowing up that one owner would have such influence.

Why not make it all public? What are we talking about? Illegal screens? It's not like the future of the free world is riding on a couple of calls.

To think Stern fixed a game as a favor to Cuban is ridiculous. Their relationship has ranged from antagonistic to icy. If Stern decides to fix a game for an owner, it won't be Cuban.

But the matter was handled badly. Rockets fans are still suspicious. They're overlooking the small point that their team choked like dogs in Game 7.

That Kings-Lakers playoff game in 2002 was worked by three of the NBA's best referees — Bob Delaney, Dick Bavetta and Ted Bernhardt. It's hard to imagine they were part of a conspiracy to fix a game, so maybe they simply had a bad night at the office.

The officiating was so bad that night that it was mentioned the next morning in newspapers around the country. If you were ever going to be suspicious, this was the game to make you suspicious.

Wouldn't you love to inject current Rockets coach Rick Adelman with truth serum and get him to discuss that game? The Kings' coach at the time, he watched the Lakers shoot 27 foul shots in the fourth quarter. The Kings were whistled for 16 fouls in the fourth quarter, the Lakers eight.

NBA fans have long believed certain teams and players get preferential treatment from referees. Coaches have whispered some of the same things.

Now we have a disgraced former referee saying it. Tim Donaghy has offered no proof, no corroboration of any kind. There's no reason to believe a single word out of his mouth.

But because he reinforces our worst beliefs about the NBA, because he's saying what we already believe to be true, his words are being taken as gospel by some.

If the shoe fits ...
Stern has issued the usual emphatic denials, complete with a trashing of Donaghy. That's not nearly enough.

Lakers coach Phil Jackson didn't exactly clear the issue up when he used words like stolen and suspicious to describe calls in that 2002 series.

The problem is that issues of integrity can eat away at a sport's foundation. If fans begin to believe the games aren't called honestly, their cynicism can turn to apathy. Apathy is a killer.

Through the years, every NBA reporter has heard amazing things about officials. There are NBA refs who don't like certain players, refs who don't like particular coaches.

The human element will never be removed from sports. Nor should it be. That said, listen to a couple of stories.

"Michael Jordan is cursing an official right in front of our bench," an NBA coach once told me. "I'm hearing every word of it, and I promise you very few players could get away with the things he's saying. When Michael is finished, the referee asks, 'Can I have your shoes for my charity auction?' "

Just thinking about the conversation, the coach is getting worked up.

"Now I'm ticked off. Are you telling me this guy is going to make tough calls on Michael Jordan when he's hoping to get a pair of his shoes? So I bring it up when the coaches meet with the league that summer. You know what the league guy asks? He wants me to give him the name of the referee. It's like I'm making up the story. No way I'm naming the ref. If the ref doesn't get back at me, one of his buddies will.
"I'm trying to get out of giving up the guy's name when Jerry Sloan speaks up, saying, 'Of course, stuff like that goes on. We've all heard it.' God bless Jerry Sloan."

Wait, it gets better.

"Another time, we're playing a big game late in the regular season, a playoff seeding on the line. Late in the first overtime, a ref makes an amazing call right in front of our bench that basically decides the game. I'm so ticked off I can't see straight.

"And then 15 minutes later, as I'm talking to the media in the hallway, here comes the ref that made the call being hustled out of the arena with a police escort. He had a flight to catch! He made that call to get the game over with."

Stern needs new view
Coaches are paranoid to begin with. These complaints are small potatoes compared to charges of fixing a playoff series or picking on a particular player.

In the end, it's likely the perception is far worse than the reality. But the perception is absolutely terrible, and that's what Stern must deal with. He must first be willing to look at NBA officiating the way the outside world does.

If he's willing to take that difficult step, everything else might be relatively easy.

[The Judge]

Former coach says NBA had no financial motive in '05 playoff series

By JONATHAN FEIGEN
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Former Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy did not back off his comments during the 2005 playoff series against the Dallas Mavericks, but Wednesday he disputed the claims of disgraced former NBA official Tim Donaghy that the league manipulated results of games for financial reasons.

In a public filing by his lawyer, Donaghy alleged the officials in that series were told to watch for Yao Ming setting illegal screens as a way to help the Mavericks extend the series.

Van Gundy was fined a record $100,000 in 2005 for saying he was told by an NBA executive the complaints of Dallas owner Mark Cuban had led to extra scrutiny on Yao in Games 3 and 4 of that series and for refusing to reveal the source of his information.

Cuban said at the time he had demonstrated nine examples of illegal screens set by Yao and Dikembe Mutombo in the series' first two games. Yao was called for a crucial offensive foul for an illegal screen late in Game 4 of that series, won by the Mavericks in seven games.

Donaghy's attorney cited that scrutiny of Yao as an example of the NBA's manipulating the results of a playoff series to increase revenue, a conclusion Van Gundy disputed.

"I don't think for an instant games were manipulated to extend the series or for financial reasons," Van Gundy said. "I told the truth then, so to me this has no impact. I certainly don't want to give any credibility to Tim Donaghy, because he lost his credibility the moment he started sharing inside information about the NBA game with people who could profit from it."

Donaghy pleaded guilty to providing privileged information to gamblers and to gambling on games himself. He faces up to 33 months in prison. He will be sentenced July 14, with the letter filed by his attorney designed to demonstrate his cooperation with the investigation.

NBA commissioner David Stern called the claims that the league influenced the results of games "baseless" and said Donaghy is desperately angling for a shorter sentence.

"Our understanding is that the investigation is just about wrapped up waiting for the sentencing of Mr. Donaghy, and as he continues desperately to somehow get out of the fact that he is subject to a longer sentence possibly than his co-conspirators, there is this continuing flow of allegations from, don't forget, an admitted felon," Stern said. "So they're baseless, and the calendar moves, and Mr. Donaghy is going to be sentenced.

"This guy is dancing as fast as he can to throw as much against the wall so his sentence won't be as hard. He turned on basically all of his colleagues in an attempt to demonstrate that he was not the only one who engaged in criminal activity.

"The U.S. attorney's office and the FBI have fully investigated it, and Mr. Donaghy is the only one that's guilty of a crime, and he's going to be sentenced for that crime, regardless of his desperate attempts to implicate as many people as he can."

Still won't share name
Stern fined Van Gundy when he was unwilling to disclose the NBA executive he said told him the league would be watching Yao more closely.

Van Gundy does not believe the Mavericks were wrong to send tape to the league or for the league to alert officials to calls that had been improper, but that the information should be shared by both teams.
He would not discuss the source of his information or the second league executive who Donaghy's lawyer said informed Van Gundy.

"Let's face it, how I went about it, that wasn't the right thing," Van Gundy said. "But I don't regret for an instant ... not sharing who told me. I still won't do it today.

"Dallas had every right to voice complaints to the league office. Every team does that. To me, what a better system would be, if you get complaints and you look into complaints, for the league to immediately contact the team complained about and tell them what the complaint was and whether it was right or wrong.

"To me, the transparency of the process could be much greater so both teams know the outcome of their decision about whatever plays were in question.

"I believe (the fine) was unjust then, and I believe it was unjust now."

Jackson: '02 series was fair
Donaghy's attorney also alleged officials were directed to help extend the 2002 Western Conference finals series between the Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings.

Rockets coach Rick Adelman, then the Kings' coach, was out of the country and unavailable for comment. Lakers coach Phil Jackson said he did not believe the officials had an agenda.

"It's as fair as they can make it," Jackson said. "These guys come with an open mind."

Jackson, however, said that officials could do better and that the NBA would not be as defensive about officiating issues if it did not handle the oversight of league officiating.

[GFootsXtreme]

The attempts to use logic to explain why the refs would not want to influence or fix a paraticular game for a certain team misses the point. The fact that they CAN influence or fix a game...or even more to the point, the fact that THEY HAVE influenced and fixed a game is the real problem.

There is no uniformity in the referees...steve jaffe calls T's for nothing, others don't call T's for pretty much anything. Some call more fouls, some call less. A referee is caught challenging a player to a fight during a game...he's given a suspension that is meaningless (mostly the summer). Another referee is caught cheating. Instead of saying, WOW, this could happen over and over what do we do?

The response is to relax the gambling policy so that....referees can go into a casino during the regular season and bet on anything EXCEPT the NBA. Is that the proper response? Or is that the NBA doing whatever they are told by the casinos...for fear of losing their huge advertising revenues.

Did anyone here know that in the visitors lockerroom at the United Center, there are advertisements all throughout the locker room for casinos? Or that the separator between the shower area and locker room has a big casino advertisement?

I agree completely with the premise of the first article that THE APPEARANCE of impropriety is just about as bad as the actual acts. By choosing not to address the problems, they are pretending they don't exist.

But attempts to argue that it doesn't "make sense" to help a certain team or player versus another miss the point. We may not know the motivations of a particular influence or fix. It's besides the point. it can happen. It has happened. That is a serious problem, iimo.