Give Stern some credit

Did you understand that statement when he said "I think I was asked when I stopped beating my wife."....Was this supposed to be a joke? No one laughed.

 

I felt like he was in a battle to find the right words to say. Granted, he needed to pick words very carefully but his inability to say the appropriate responses in a quick and fluid manner just made him look like he lacked confidence and was unprepared. Overall he just seems fazed by this whole ordeal and I could understand why because youre talking about TV rights, corporate sponsorships etc all pulling the plug because of the person(s) that are involved in this thing...

 

It was all NBA spin.

The feds are on the NBA like white on rice. Stern was studdering and didn't seem himself at all. Trouble in the land.

 

Eh, I think w/ all legalities of an FBI investigation Stern knows he has to be careful how he picks his words and not overstep what the FBI allows as public or not. I felt he showed he was concerned, but also thoughtful about addressing the public's concerns. He didn't have to have an open press conference for an hour plus. Goodell and Selig always hide in their offices and address these problems through their press releases.

 

It's a famous way to express that you've just been asked a loaded question that already makes the supposition of wrongdoing and is trying to goad you into admitting it. i.e. if someone asks "when did you stop beating your wife?" their already making the assupmption that you beat your wife. Any way you answer this question (other than "i never started") leads to an admission of guilt or the appearance of evasiveness.

 

"Like when I stop beating my wife"?!!

 

Thanks, never heard of that expression before.

 

Cuban, Cuban, where art thou

 

Yeah, to be fair, you have to consider that he's up there publicly talking about key elements of an ongoing Federal investigation. The Feds were no doubt watching what he said very intently and if he says too much, he could open himself up to a charge of obstruction of justice. You could see that he clearly knew more than what he could talk about. Espn was really stroking this for all it's worth because I saw a graphic where a this referee called a late foul in a Dallas Mavericks game that allowed Devean George to hit 2 free throws that covered the point spread. That is real deep sh*t if this can be shown to have happened in his other games. When asked about whether they (NBA) had gone back and looked at the games this guy had officiated, Stern was deliberately vague - you just KNOW that's what they've been doing ever since this mess exploded in their faces.

I believe that Stern was sincere - he looked like he'd just walked in on his mother & father while they were having sex. The only thing I found strange was that they knew in 2005 that this guy had a gambling problem and did not terminate him. At the very least, he should have been under extra scrutiny and there no way in hell he should have been officiating any playoff games this year.

 

Up here, Dallas stations are tripping over themselves to get Cuban to open his mouth and make a fool of himself. So far he's resisted the bait. Must be a league wide gag order in effect.

 

David Stern is the man!
Enemies and haters are trying to bring him down,
but I stand with you leader,
you are the best and basketball itself is a pure sport.
eliminate the traitors and protect this house!

 

Stern rode the wave of Magic, Bird, and MJ well, but at least he deserves credit for reading this situation right. It might seem obvious to the rest of us, but I can't see Bud Selig doing the same. Basically, he treated it with the seriousness it deserved. He realizes what this scandal does and that is the first step to fixing the problem. The steroids scandal in baseball is the closest in scope to this scandal and baseball has played that wrong from the get go. Notice that baseball is still fighting the battle a decade in (loud whispers first came in 1998). Hopefully, the NBA won't be fighting this ten years from now.

Personally, I've always felt that the level of play is a bigger issue than officiating. Basketball is number three in my heart because the level of play has slipped overall. However, teams like the Suns and Mavs (now hopefully the Rockets with Adelman) have made basketball more fun to watch. The NBDL and age requirements are also helping. Stern is certainly not perfect, but he is at least treating the illness.

 

accounatability, he took none. Didnt apologize. This happened underneath his radar, own up to it. He was quite ignorant about the possibility of this happening.

 

Yeah and afterward on ESPN, Skip Bayless was making that exact point as well. Stern's position is a reasonable one - that no system can fully protect against a lone guy determined to commit a crime. While that is empirically true given what we've seen over the years with traitors in the CIA and FBI, it alone does not entirely absolve him of all blame. They knew this guy had a problem 2 years ago and did not dismiss him. I'm sure there are/were legal issues at play here but gambling has to be treated like selling one's soul to Satan especially amongst your referees because they can influence the outcome of a game by making or not making a call in a critical situation. This guy should have been removed from officiating live games once his problem was discovered. Had that been done, we wouldn't be discussing this issue today.

 

in hindsight, they definitely would have saved themselves a lot of trouble by just firing him. and maybe they just should have, if so much was known about his habits. however, it says there is a referees union, so i wonder if they even could have. they apparently investigated something about him going to atlantic city one time and checked every casino they could and found nothing. so with no proof, i'm wondering if their hands were somewhat tied with regards to firing him. i don't know how their union works, but maybe it wouldn't have been allowed so they needed something concrete, which obviously didn't come until now.

 

I'm not giving him credit for anything. This is the same guy who will punish players, coaches, organizations and owners but will NOT touch referees. So he is perceived, and righfully so, as being heavily biased towards referees and now it's coming back to bite him in the ass.

 

Didn't the referee who made the bad call(s) on Drexler never referee again? Wasn't Crawford suspended indefinitely? Weren't a number of referees fired/suspended for income tax issues?

 

I think given that the FBI probably told him exactly what he could and could not say, and given the fact that if he deviated at all from this script it would probably lead to some sort of obstruction of justice charge or something, I think he pretty much said what was expected. He didn't back down from the questions, nor did he accept responsibility because basically, all the facts aren't known yet. Why should he accept blame now, before the investigation is complete? Let everything play out, and let us find out the exact extents of this before we point fingers as to who is to blame. I'm not saying he should be absolved from anything, I'm just saying that to completely place the blame on Stern this soon wouldn't be prudent. What is interesting is how adamant he was about the fact that Donaghy was the only one involved, and that there were no other refs or players being investigated. Obviously he was trying to downplay the fact that this is a league-wide scandal, and emphasize that the ref was acting alone. I just didn't expect that to be stated with such vigor today.

 

actually, referees DO get fined. its just not made public, because the public doesnt need to know that they are getting fined, because that would just cause people to b**** even more, and people do love to b****, as we are seeing now with all this 'death of the nba' junk.

if anything, this scandal is a good thing--next season will be played straighter than ever.