Given the fact that a vast majority of fans now believe that the NBA officials can not be trusted, we have decided to make it as easy as possible for you to contact your local congressman in order to urge them to call for congressional hearings into the matter. If you truly care about the game and want to feel secure in knowing that situations like the Donaghy case and his accusations are no longer part of professional basketball, we the fans need to take matters into our own hands and contact our congressional representatives for hearings into the matter. Remember. No matter how forthright the NBA claims it is being with us, it was the FBI who discovered the improprieties involving the refs- not the NBA! We can not trust that the league will objectively investigate and fix the problems we have all perceived all these years. And if congress can spend time and energy cleaning up baseball and steroids, then it should certainly look into the possibility of tampering by NBA officials. Below is a sample text that you can submit to your rep by clicking on the link below. Feel free to add your own thoughts. I am writing today first as a consumer and second as a fan of the NBA. I care about the sport, but am very concerned that league officials have lost their sense of impartiality and professionalism. It is important that you help us regain our trust in the commercial sports performances that have been severely broken recently. Frankly, the officiating has been broken a long time. In which other sport do fans worry that involvement by the referees will end up determining the outcome of key games more then they do in the NBA? It's time to launch an official investigation now, during a time when the public's confidence is shaken by headlines reporting the breach of trust by corporate executives. You must help us find a maintained a sense of impartiality and professionalism in commercial sports. I and other NBA fans urge you to order a review of the game's officiating, perceptions and suspicions, however presently absent any evidence, will abound. I look forward to your response and action on my behalf. Take a couple of minutes and submit your letter to your local representative here: https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml And don't forget to spread this message everywhere! Be it via e-mail, by posting it on other forums or voting for it on the social networks where it appears. The time is now to fix this league!
If you think the NBA deserves congressional hearings that would delay treating the enormous problems facing this nation, you deserve what's coming down the road. I am trying to restrain myself from really being ugly. This kind of thing is why our country is trillions of dollars in debt and without compass.
Dude, don't get me back into D&D mode! I'm supposed to be on leave from there. I guess my post kind of made the leap, huh? But seriously, I don't think Congress should delay talks on energy policy, all things international, healthcare, and education, etc, to take up a new dumb conversation on the NBA. It's a business and if it's reputation takes a hit, that's the NBA's problem. Congress doesn't take up the fact that Starbucks coffee spread too fast, is in every gas station, and lost its brand quality image. (not to mention it sucks.) I know there's the whole conspiracy angle, but it's not like Enron. It's still just entertainment. People who go to NBA games are not, like, investing money. They are paying for entertainment and being entertained. Why should congress care if there are strings elevating people for dunks, or referees rigging calls?
Calling for a congressional sub-committee to investigate this issue will not take away from all the other important issues people have mentioned here. That's why they have sub-committees!
It's the same people...we're using the same people's time for one issue as opposed to a myriad of others.
WTF?!?!? We have enough trouble in this country, what with poverty and crime and what not, and here you go wanting to save other people from starvi... oh, you meant the NBA... ok...ok... never mind...
I mostly agree with you, except that I think Congress has more business interfering with professional sports than other kinds of industries because they decided to allow monopolistic practices for these leagues. I think this sort of protection puts some responsibility on Congress to make sure these leagues are operating in good faith.
Congressional hearings on the NBA are a great idea and worth tax payer dollars! Yours truly, John McCain Congressional hearings on boxing Congressional hearings on steroids Congressional hearings on Roger Clemens I actually feel this is a much bigger deal than any of the other sports related issues the federal government has tampered with but it still isn't something to waste our money on. Then again, I would say our federal government is already in full failure mode so who cares?
The NBA is good entertainment only because it is supposed to be fair competition. The entertainment value resides mostly (though not entirely) in the level of competition. If the competition was not real, then it would lose most of its entertainment value. If the games were rigged, many fans (including me) would desert the league. It would be renegaded to something like pro-wrestling, which is a much less attractive, therefore less profitable, business. So claiming to be real competition while it is not, maybe not as bad as Enron, it would still be billion-dollar worth of fraud.
I could definitely swallow this over the steroid and the Patriots issue. Despite precedence, I would still rather them not bother.
Steroid and Spygate are players and coaches cheating. This, however, is the LEAGUE OFFICIALS cheating. That's a very different thing, IMO. It's one thing when some employees steal things from the company and the customers. It's a completely different thing when the company itself is cheating, selling fake products.
The last thing we need is government sticking there nose in more places where it doesn't belong. They have other more pressing issues to deal with like working under a balanced budget for the first time in a century or actually sealing off our borders; not poking their noses into the private sector. \
Easy, et al, here's a question: you make a good case that it's worth investigating, but why by Congress? Why can't the FBI get to the bottom of it (more effectively and efficiently), make some indictments, and the facts will come out. I just don't understand why Congress needs to get involved, though I understand the monopoly type argument from JuanV.
