My take on the NBA Referee scandal

If you haven’t heard yet, an NBA officiator is under investigation for at least betting on NBA games and possibly even point shaving in games that he officiated. In order to present my viewpoint of this news, I am going to present a point - counterpoint type argument against myself. Trust me, I am schizophrenic enough to pull this off.

Why this IS a huge blow to the NBA:

• Perhaps the most shocking news is that the NBA more or less turned a blind eye to this. This quote from Sports Illustrated is perhaps the most damaging:
  

  Said one league source with ties to Philadelphia… “When I heard that a referee was in trouble with gambling, I knew right away it was Donaghy.”

  So, a league source was aware that Donaghy had a gambling problem? Shouldn’t this raise a red flag or two with the league? Beyond the league, I have seen quotes from neighbors and acquaintances, who were not that shocked to find out that Donaghy was involved in this. It is my understanding that the NBA has an extensive review of every officiated game. But, while the on-court performance of referees is scrutinized, the off-court dealings are all but ignored? Should the officials not be held under the same microscope as the players? I would think that the scrutiny of officials would be more intense by the league than that of the players. It is quite easy for the league to distance itself from a player, but I think it is going to be near impossible to distance themselves from an official.

  The NBA is going to have a very black eye over this no matter what. But it is crucial for the league to implement a thorough, complete and continual scanning of the personal lives of its officials. Any suspicious bank activity should be looked at closely by the league. Officiating at this level is a very sought after profession. I don’t think that the league would have any problem in implementing more strict background checks and continuing these checks throughout the referees career. I would think that most of the other professional sporting leagues would want to implement something similar now.

• The NBA has struggled with its image both on and off the court for some time. No professional sporting league takes as much heat as the NBA for supposedly fixing games. There are far more conspiracy theories floating about the NBA then the other 3 big sports combined. Many of the calls made in Basketball could a lot of times not be called, while on the other hand, an infraction could arguably be called on every play. Couple this with the fact, that there seems to be an unwritten league directive that superstars should not foul out, and it seems as if officiating is way too involved in determining the outcome of a game.Talk about adding fuel to the fire. Not only are the conspiracy theorists going to have fodder, but the general NBA fan is really going to start questioning the integrity of a game. For some reason, the NBA still seems to have the bad-boy reputation off the court as well. This year, the NFL players have done their absolute best to become the league full of bad-asses, but for some strange reason the NBA still is viewed as the thug league. This definitely is not going to help that perception.

Why this is NOT a huge blow to the NBA:

• The same reason that the officiating in basketball is questionable, gives the league some vindication. Since calls are judgement oriented in many cases, it would be hard to catch a referee making dubious calls even under scrutiny. In fact, it would have been funner if they would not have released his name so soon. I guarantee that people would have been pouring over tape trying to determine who the gambler was. Journalists would have been objective, but I would assume there would have been numerous examples of suspect calls from all the officials. I bet there would have been at least a dozen suspects brought to light. Even funnier would have been the fans pouring over footage and pulling up examples of how their favorite team had been a victim. It was funnier than hell to listen to the local talk shows after the news broke, but before the official was announced. Everyone was calling in saying that they knew that such and such a game was fixed and finally here was the definitive proof!Bottom line, there is no way that the NBA could have found out that a fix was on by their referee by monitoring the games any closer. Most calls in the NBA are subjective. In addition, the league has to be very careful about getting too far into the head of their officials. All sporting officials should be making as clear and as uninfluenced calls on the field as possible. The leagues are very careful to not influence these calls. So, the NBA can not be blamed for their monitoring of the on-court actions of their officials. However, as mentioned previously, their off-court monitoring is dreadful.
• This one is for all you NBA Conspiracy theorists out there. This is NOT an indication that the entire league is fixed. It is a very winnable argument that the NBA is the least of the major sports that could be potentially fixed. The league is currently languishing in the big markets. In fact the worse teams populate these markets currently. The finals were flush with new and apparently not so interesting teams this year. I put forth the argument that not only is the NBA not fixed, but perhaps it does need to be fixed. This league is in desperate need of an exciting team and superstar to win. I personally like the way that San Antonio plays basketball and it is obvious that it wins championships. However, based on the finals ratings, I would assume that most people want to see a flashier team with flashier players in the finals.Maybe with this latest PR blow, the league should seriously consider fixing the games to make it more palatable to the viewing public? It needs to be carefully done though. Make sure that you have a small market team that falls just short that the common people can get behind. Obviously, a mega-star must win in the finals, but that mega-star must play for a big market team. Which reminds me, all the mega-stars need to move to the power house teams. The NBA should arrange an immediate trade that lands Lebron James on the Knicks or Celtics.Sorry, I got carried away with my sarcasm. My point is that the league is not fixed, just a little boring at times.

There you go. No matter which side of the argument you want to take, I have provided two good points for each. I would welcome any thoughts on the subject. In my honest opinion, the NBA is already suffering in the view of the general public and this can not help. It will be interesting to see if they can overcome it.