Ex-referee Tim Donaghy blows whistle on NBA dirty secrets

madmax

honestly, you've been on this passive/aggressive baseball good basketball bad trip for a while.

at this point, this story is equivalent to jose cansenco befor anything was confirmed. you constantly harp on baseball's ratings being oh so great and the nba being on the brink of destruction and then you openly wonder why this story isn't a bigger issue.

what's your issue with the nba?

 

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Is it personal or passive aggressive to note that you act like an MLB PR guy/cheerleader? Because you do, and if its personal to note that then so be it.

mere allegation? It was a lot more than mere allegation that launched those hearings - by 2005 there were dozens if not hundreds of positive tests and actual admissions, not just allegations. The fact that you're soft-pedaling/selective memory-ing this validates the MLB cheerleader role that you have assumed.

But anwyay, yes baseball attracts more congressional attention - a lot of congressmen have the same artificial reverence for baseball that you frequently exhibit, based I guess on not growing up or not wanting to be cynical. In addition there is the matter of baseball's unwarranted antitrust exemption which lends congress additional oversight grounds.

 

Is it personal or passive aggressive to note that you act like an MLB PR guy/cheerleader? Because you do, and if its personal to note that then so be it.



mere allegation? It was a lot more than mere allegation that launched those hearings - by 2005 there were dozens if not hundreds of positive tests and actual admissions, not just allegations. The fact that you're soft-pedaling/selective memory-ing this validates the MLB cheerleader role that you have assumed.

But anwyay, yes baseball attracts more congressional attention - a lot of congressmen have the same artificial reverence for baseball that you frequently exhibit, based I guess on not growing up or not wanting to be cynical. In addition there is the matter of baseball's unwarranted antitrust exemption which lends congress additional oversight grounds.[/QUOTE]

Because I'm an MLB fan, I'm not grown up. Right.

I've said repeatedly that steroids were a huge issue in baseball. That they were prevalent and that we all knew it. Bringing one guy before Congress to determine whether he did steroids or not didn't seem wise to me. Those are the hearings I'm talking about. A trainer says one guy is using and we convene Congress to find out. It dominated the airwaves for a very long time. On an NBA message board, we talked about it at length. The scope of the allegations against the NBA right now blow that out of the water.

But cheating has always been prevalent in baseball, and I've never suggested otherwise.

I'm not the one who pointed it out first in this thread. It goes beyond MLB...Spygate was also getting a ton of attention. I'm interested to see how this will be handled in the media and by authorities.

 

Doesn't baseball have an anti trust exemption which is why it gets more attention from Congress?

Does the NBA have the same type of exemption?

DD

 

I've never said the NBA was bad. I've said the ratings for the Finals over the last 6 years or so are in the toilet, and that's not good. They have trouble drawing double-digts in ratings from game to game in their own championship series.

I've never said baseball's ratings were great. They're down significantly from the last 10 years or so. They're not as far down as the NBA's, however.

I love the Houston Rockets. I have issues with the NBA on things I suspect have gone on that seem to correlate with what this guy is saying. He's hardly a great witness by himself, though. Of course, neither was Brian McNamee.

 

I don't know if the NBA has an antitrust exemption..don't think so. But I don't just mean Congressional attention.

 

edit: wrong thread!! I'll leave the picture though

 

A trainer said one guy using in the context of a long, multi-year ongoing pattern of hundreds of other people using, which resulted in a congressional investigation after MLB issued its own report. It of course didn't help matters when the one guy supposedly using launched a disastrous PR campaign in his favor to hold himself out as a pillar of the community when in reality he has been a real jerk in his personal life, according to many of the reports we have heard since.

The scope blows it out of the water - however the degree of validation thus far is practically nothing. The first rumors and use of steroids in baseball happened back in the 1970's - it took 25-30 years for it to become an issue - and you're whining that baseball suffers from a rush to judgment where the NBA is treated way too favorably?

Well it's on the front of every sports page in the country. And like I said before, Stern is correct to note that the FBI has had an ongoing investigation on this for over a year and we haven't heard a thing.

 

When did the first rumors surface that perhaps things weren't on the up-and-up in the NBA?? When the Knicks won the Ewing lottery? When we could all see players treated differently with regard to fouls in the 80's?

 

That wasn't a legitimate rumor - that's a silly sour grapes conspiracy theory pushed by the tinfoil hat "9-11 was staged" crowd.

Come on, you are smarter than this.

Of course star treatment happens in the NBA - it's the nature of the sport. I mean it happens in baseball too - Greg Maddux is going to have a bigger strike zone than a rookie. Beernard Hopkins is going to be given a close round over his opponents. Can this be couched as a vast-multiyear conspiracy? I suppose it could be - I mean officials and players perpetuate it and it has happened for years. You're taking somethign very amorphous and drawing a disingenous parallel.

 

Ok, Sam. You win. It's all silly. I'll quit asking. I won't question your precious NBA ever again. I'm disingenous and frankly not very smart.

I'm not even calling anyone out. I'm not calling out Stern. I'm just noting a difference in the way this is treated. That's it. You freak out when I dare question why they might be treated differently. You presumed in the thread on ratings that I brought up a point about baseball, when I was answering someone else who brought it up to begin with. I'm not making positive statements of fact...I'm saying it appears to me the treatment of these "scandals" is very different among lawmakers and the press. And apparently I'm not the only one who noticed it, because my comments were in response to another.

 

Do you honestly think the NBA draft lottery is fixed? I don't think it's obnoxious to say that that kind of thinking is just plain idiotic.

You're noting the difference because you yourself are biased in favor of MLB.

- and you're proving my point with every post. You can't crow about how popular baseball is and then express outrage when baseball gets more media attention - aside from the fact that you are taking two very different things and making them out to be exact parallels - which they are not, at this stage.

 

We're only 2 days into this news story...the steroid allegations have building up over the years and it finally spread like wildfire in the news this past year. Give it time...if this thing has legs and Donaghy proves to have some credibility (which he obviously doesn't at the moment) then this thing will be just as big if not bigger.

IT'S ONLY BEEN 2 DAYS! Calm down.

 

1. it would not surprise me at all to think a pro sports league would fix a lottery. not at all.

2. let's forget MLB since you can't seem to past the idea of my bias for it. let's take NFL. let's see if this story gets the attention spygate got.

 

We'll see.

And why the calm down? Do you think I'm jumping around my desk? Did you read my posts before Sam came in? There was exactly one...and it was in response to someone else who stated it absolutely would not get the attention spygate or steroids got. I said I agreed and asked why. The end. I got a lecture from Sam in response.

 

Would it surprise you if you had a one in 14 chance of something happening in a certain way and a thing happend in a certain way, which was equally likely as to the other 13 possible outcomes? It would not surprise me.

OK. Let's. Let's see - Donaghy is on front of Times sportspage. Spygate was also on front of Times sportspage, IIRC.

Yeah the difference is palpable....how?

Are you honestly arguing that the NBA gets a soft-touch treatment from the media? The amount of negative press both openly and indirectly addressed to the NBA and its athletes over the years has been staggering. I mean in the middle of the NBA finals with the Rockets, the cover of SI is "Why the NHL is Hot and the NBA is Not" for god's sake. Every four years in the Olympics we are subjected to a "Tsk Tsk" morality play - hearkening back to Hickory High and Jimmy Driftwood about "Our streetballers care about bling bling and lack fundamentals!" - where is that when the US flamed out in international baseball contests?

Amazing that you consider the NBA to be a media darling. Do you read the media? It's been declared to be an enemy of morals and public decency and such for quite a while.

 

How can anyone think the lottery is fixed when Lebron James goes to Cleveland and we jump 5 spots to get Yao Ming. Houston and Cleveland?? There have been no bigger prizes in the last 10 yrs of lotteries than those two.

 

Not to mention Oden & Durant being shipped off to small markets.

 

The interesting thing here to me is the idea of a double standard, if it exists. Why can baseball get into regular brawls and we chuckle (at least I do), while in basketball a brawl changes the face of the franchise irreparably?

In Schilling's latest blog, he noticed the extreme physical nature of basketball. We understand that a guy can get too amped up and let emotion affect his judgement. A brawl can ensue and someone can be hit in a way that changes his life (Rudy).

They don't have pads on just like in baseball (why I'll exclude Hockey and football). No one charges the mound with their helmet on. They throw it down first thing. They're practically saying "you want to hurt me? come on and try maternal procreator!". How is it any different from basketball fights?

The idea of sportsmanship is nice because its antithetical to the tribalistic attitudes we encourage when we follow sports. Myself, I don't really care if guys want to pound eachother. Of course it's not a good example for kids. I have a job and have to behave professionally or I'll lose my job, so it's fun to live vicariously through these guys when they snap and do what I have sometimes wanted to to an a-hole coworker.

 

You don't have to believe it's perpetually fixed to consider that the fix could have been in on any given one.