The NBA, Point Fixing, And You

In lieu of David Stern's big live press conference in about 20 minutes, bloggers weigh in on the Tim Donaghy officiating investigation ... including Mark Cuban!:

• Tim Donaghy Gave Florida To George Bush In 2000. If Steve Nash and co. want to use the Donaghy thing as an excuse for losing, that's fine with me. Excuses are for losers. I watched every minute of that series and as I remember it, the Spurs prevailed mainly because Amare still sucks on defense, Shawn Marion always comes up small when it counts, Tony dominated Barbosa on both ends of the court, and Raja Bell couldn't guard Manu at all in Games 5 or 6. Oh, and Mike D'Antoni killed them the whole series. Anyone here remember it differently? (Bill) Simmons made excuse after excuse for the Suns, covering up for all their failures and conveniently ignoring all the tiny details that hurt his argument. [ Pounding The Rock]

• Now What?. In the past few days, the Suns have traded away their best (only) Tim Duncan defender, and their fans have learned that maybe all those crazy conspiracy theories surrounding the Suns-Spurs series weren't so crazy after all. But even if I knew for sure that Donaghy changed the outcome of Game 3, my biggest beef with that series would still be that the rules of basketball weren't applied as stringently as the "off the bench" rule was applied to Amare and Boris Diaw. [ Bright Side Of The Sun]

• FBI Investigates NBA Ref In Point-Shaving Scandal. Update: Okay, just got this email from DBB reader John, who pointed out that Donaghy officiated the St. Patrick's Day game against the Knicks in the 2005-06 season: St.Patricks Day Fix - your account of this game really raises some eyebrows. I'm wondering what you think in retrospect; especially since it was during March madness where the ref probably lost a bundle. At first I thought, how bad could it be? But I looked it up, and my title for the game recap was, "Refs steal scene, Pistons make cameo appearance in Knicks soap opera" [ Detroit Bad Boys]

• Calamity As Catalyst; My Vote Of Confidence In The NBA. Shit happens. Bad Shit happens. When it does, there are two options. Cry over it and do nothing or recognize the problem and do the best you possibly can to not only fix it, but make the entire organization stronger. As bad as the allegations facing the NBA today are, its also an opportunity to face every allegation that has ever been directed towards the NBA and its officials and pre empt them from ever occuring in the future. Calamity can be a catalyst for significant change. [ Blog Maverick]

• Gambling. Corruption. Scandal. The NBA. The funniest sad thing about this whole disaster is that Tim was reffing the night of the Malice at the Palace. On a night when the NBA was branded as the league of rampant gangsterism that needed an image overhaul, it was a ref caught up (or who would later get involved) with real gangsters, not a bunch of emotional millionaires with tattoos. Hey everybody's wearing a suit to games now! Yaaaaaay! There is no dress code or new ball to hide behind now. [ Slam Online]