JOHN MCGRATH; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Last updated: May 21st, 2008 01:21 AM (PDT)
Before Charles Barkley developed a love for two hobbies that don’t seem to love him back – golfing and gambling – he was a camera-friendly superstar who spiked television ratings during the NBA playoffs.
On June 5, 1993, Barkley’s Phoenix Suns faced the Seattle SuperSonics in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals.
The Suns were on their home court, an overwhelming advantage – 75 percent of home teams win the seventh game of an NBA playoff series – and, all things being equal, figured to prevail in the contest that would deliver the victors to the NBA Finals against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.
Except all things weren’t equal.
The Suns attempted 64 free throws, converting a playoff-record 57 of them. In the third quarter alone, Phoenix attempted a ridiculous 26 free throws, or only 10 fewer than the Sonics attempted the entire game.
The Suns won, of course, and all those basketball fans in America who weren’t loyal to the Sonics, or concerned about fair play and integrity, got the showdown they craved: Air Jordan versus Sir Charles.
More recently, the 2002 Sacramento Kings endured a crash course in the nuances of representing a small media market during the NBA playoffs. Threatening to clinch their Western Conference finals series against the Lakers in six games, the Kings watched their opponents march to the line 27 times during the fourth quarter.
Meanwhile, when Kobe Bryant threw an elbow that drew the blood of Kings guard Mike Bibby, the sound of a whistle was conspicuously absent. No fatality, no foul.
“The Kings and Lakers didn’t decide this series would be extended,” Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon wrote from press row. “Three referees did.”
Or were the three referees merely following orders to prevent a nightmare NBA Finals matchup between Sacramento and the New Jersey Nets? That never happened; Los Angeles, saved by the whistle in Game 6, went on to cut down the Nets, proving it possible to be recognized as the best team in the world while suspecting it was the second-best team in California.
I’d sort of forgotten about the 1993 officiating travesty in Phoenix – and its 2002 reprise in Los Angeles – until Tuesday, when news broke that defrocked official Tim Donaghy has been singing to prosecutors. Donaghy, whose gambling addiction almost certainly affected both the point spreads and outcomes of several NBA games, insists he’s not the lone ranger in the scandal.
According to a letter written to U.S. District Court in New York by Donaghy’s attorney, John F. Lauro, Donaghy told prosecutors about officials supplying “confidential information” to an unidentified coach.
Furthermore, Lauro alleged that the NBA pressured the FBI to shut down its investigation of gambling’s pervasiveness within the league “to avoid the disclosure of information unrelated to Tim’s conduct.”
Commissioner David Stern, speaking on Tuesday to reporters in New Jersey before the annual ping-pong ball lottery determining the draft order of the NBA’s Have-Nots, dismissed all talk of his league putting pressure on the government to curtail its investigation.
“Not accurate,” Stern said. “Untruthful.”
Joel Litvin, who oversees basketball operations for the NBA, was more expansive in a written rebuttal to Lauro’s letter. He called Donaghy’s revelations an “assortment of lies, unfounded allegations and facts that have been previously acknowledged.
“The letter,” Litvin continued, “is the desperate act of a convicted felon who is hoping to avoid prison time.”
Maybe so. Maybe Donaghy is pointing fingers in exchange for some mercy at his sentencing, scheduled in July.
But I don’t trust the NBA, either. I don’t trust the owners, and I don’t trust the commissioner.
That fiasco officially called a “Board of Governors meeting” last month underscored Stern’s ability to fib with a straight face.
Those incriminating e-mail messages Sonics owner Clay Bennett exchanged with his co-investors in Oklahoma City? They were published; they made headlines, and Stern insisted he wasn’t familiar with them.
Not accurate. Untruthful.
Once upon a time, when conspiracy theories about the NBA were hoisted like so many volleyballs on the Santa Monica beach, I used to shrug it all off as nonsense.
C’mon, I’d tell skeptical friends, a brilliant lawyer occupying the most high-profile office of a major North American sports league is not going to fix the lottery that, say, assured that the talents of Georgetown center Patrick Ewing would be spent reviving a struggling New York Knicks franchise in 1985.
Nor is Stern going to tell Michael Jordan to get lost for a few years, until the fog hovering over Jordan’s gambling issues clears.
Now I’m not sure what to think, except this: A commissioner unwilling to engage in straight talk about a simple e-mail is a commissioner that has lost any claim to credibility.
Originally published: May 21st, 2008 01:21 AM (PDT)
Last updated: May 21st, 2008 01:21 AM (PDT)
Before Charles Barkley developed a love for two hobbies that don’t seem to love him back – golfing and gambling – he was a camera-friendly superstar who spiked television ratings during the NBA playoffs.
On June 5, 1993, Barkley’s Phoenix Suns faced the Seattle SuperSonics in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals.
The Suns were on their home court, an overwhelming advantage – 75 percent of home teams win the seventh game of an NBA playoff series – and, all things being equal, figured to prevail in the contest that would deliver the victors to the NBA Finals against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.
Except all things weren’t equal.
The Suns attempted 64 free throws, converting a playoff-record 57 of them. In the third quarter alone, Phoenix attempted a ridiculous 26 free throws, or only 10 fewer than the Sonics attempted the entire game.
The Suns won, of course, and all those basketball fans in America who weren’t loyal to the Sonics, or concerned about fair play and integrity, got the showdown they craved: Air Jordan versus Sir Charles.
More recently, the 2002 Sacramento Kings endured a crash course in the nuances of representing a small media market during the NBA playoffs. Threatening to clinch their Western Conference finals series against the Lakers in six games, the Kings watched their opponents march to the line 27 times during the fourth quarter.
Meanwhile, when Kobe Bryant threw an elbow that drew the blood of Kings guard Mike Bibby, the sound of a whistle was conspicuously absent. No fatality, no foul.
“The Kings and Lakers didn’t decide this series would be extended,” Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon wrote from press row. “Three referees did.”
Or were the three referees merely following orders to prevent a nightmare NBA Finals matchup between Sacramento and the New Jersey Nets? That never happened; Los Angeles, saved by the whistle in Game 6, went on to cut down the Nets, proving it possible to be recognized as the best team in the world while suspecting it was the second-best team in California.
I’d sort of forgotten about the 1993 officiating travesty in Phoenix – and its 2002 reprise in Los Angeles – until Tuesday, when news broke that defrocked official Tim Donaghy has been singing to prosecutors. Donaghy, whose gambling addiction almost certainly affected both the point spreads and outcomes of several NBA games, insists he’s not the lone ranger in the scandal.
According to a letter written to U.S. District Court in New York by Donaghy’s attorney, John F. Lauro, Donaghy told prosecutors about officials supplying “confidential information” to an unidentified coach.
Furthermore, Lauro alleged that the NBA pressured the FBI to shut down its investigation of gambling’s pervasiveness within the league “to avoid the disclosure of information unrelated to Tim’s conduct.”
Commissioner David Stern, speaking on Tuesday to reporters in New Jersey before the annual ping-pong ball lottery determining the draft order of the NBA’s Have-Nots, dismissed all talk of his league putting pressure on the government to curtail its investigation.
“Not accurate,” Stern said. “Untruthful.”
Joel Litvin, who oversees basketball operations for the NBA, was more expansive in a written rebuttal to Lauro’s letter. He called Donaghy’s revelations an “assortment of lies, unfounded allegations and facts that have been previously acknowledged.
“The letter,” Litvin continued, “is the desperate act of a convicted felon who is hoping to avoid prison time.”
Maybe so. Maybe Donaghy is pointing fingers in exchange for some mercy at his sentencing, scheduled in July.
But I don’t trust the NBA, either. I don’t trust the owners, and I don’t trust the commissioner.
That fiasco officially called a “Board of Governors meeting” last month underscored Stern’s ability to fib with a straight face.
Those incriminating e-mail messages Sonics owner Clay Bennett exchanged with his co-investors in Oklahoma City? They were published; they made headlines, and Stern insisted he wasn’t familiar with them.
Not accurate. Untruthful.
Once upon a time, when conspiracy theories about the NBA were hoisted like so many volleyballs on the Santa Monica beach, I used to shrug it all off as nonsense.
C’mon, I’d tell skeptical friends, a brilliant lawyer occupying the most high-profile office of a major North American sports league is not going to fix the lottery that, say, assured that the talents of Georgetown center Patrick Ewing would be spent reviving a struggling New York Knicks franchise in 1985.
Nor is Stern going to tell Michael Jordan to get lost for a few years, until the fog hovering over Jordan’s gambling issues clears.
Now I’m not sure what to think, except this: A commissioner unwilling to engage in straight talk about a simple e-mail is a commissioner that has lost any claim to credibility.
Originally published: May 21st, 2008 01:21 AM (PDT)
