NBA dirty ref scandal

Every media outlet in the sports world is reporting today that the FBI is investigating a NBA referee who for the past two years has bet on games, has made calls to shave points in those games and who has helped determine the results of those games. In other words, he has fixed NBA games. The name of the ref has not been released.

The NBA has seen its rise to the third most popular professional sport behind only football and baseball. The league has made rich men out of its owners and many of its millioniare players. They only recently signed a new longterm agreement with ABC. Now this.

Nothing can destroy a sport as fast as allegations that games are fixed. This could be the biggest scandal to ever hit the NBA and one of the biggest to hit any American sports league in many decades.

I am sure that every serious NBA fan can point to a game or two in which a refs call cost them the game. We may soon find out that the conspiracy nuts were not so crazy after all.

I read about this.. Ironically I have noticed that the NBA officiating has been SO poor the last 2 seasons.. I would watch these games and wonder what games the officials are watching.. It will be interesting to see his name revealed..

They say he has even been in contact w/ the mob.. Crazy **** man..

yeah i heard that on the radio this morning...this is a HUGE deal...not just for basketball but all sports to be questioned.

Nothing surprises me about the NBA anymore.

I used to LOVE it in the mid 80s and early 90s.

Now it's one thing after another....

NBA Refs have to be the worst in all of sports, this just makes me hate them more.

biggest scandal since the white sox fix. this is a big deal. in asport where one bs foul can change the whole game and impact the spread. it makes you wonder what impact this had on the last few years. anyone think its joey crawford??

This is no where near that serious (that was a team throwing the World Series) but it certainly is another huge black eye that the NBA can't afford right now.

This kind of thing always concerned me more than steriods and drugs in sports.

its def. that serious. this is a ref who could quite possibly have thrown many many major games. think about the impact a ref has in basketball. all he has to do is blow that whistle and get a few points to move and boom . instant black eye. who knows if he was throwing playoff games and finals games. its much easier for him to throw games and sneak away than it was for the sox. the sox still had to play against another team with a ton of variables. having an nba ref on your side makes those variables that much less. a ref has the most power on the court so i do think this is a big deal and has the potential to tarnish the sport for a while.

on second thought,
a pro team throwing games is pretty damn dirty. this is dirty in its own right.

devlinboy said:

its def. that serious. this is a ref who could quite possibly have thrown many many major games. think about the impact a ref has in basketball. all he has to do is blow that whistle and get a few points to move and boom . instant black eye. who knows if he was throwing playoff games and finals games. its much easier for him to throw games and sneak away than it was for the sox. the sox still had to play against another team with a ton of variables. having an nba ref on your side makes those variables that much less. a ref has the most power on the court so i do think this is a big deal and has the potential to tarnish the sport for a while.

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i heard it was point-spreads.

i figure it was manipulating spreads, but that still may result in a game being won or lost in the long run . like i said , the white sox was a bigger deal than this but this is a big deal in its own right. think of how much money he made for others. and think of how many games he changed the dynamic of ...crazy ****

Man, now the Spurs are screwed. Who will be on their side now?

Bannister said:

Man, now the Spurs are screwed. Who will be on their side now?

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Bannister said:

Man, now the Spurs are screwed. Who will be on their side now?

Click to expand...

Bannister said:

Man, now the Spurs are screwed. Who will be on their side now?

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Nice. :emperor

they announced who the ref was. i think it was tim/or john donaghy. they say that he just had influence in games that were more or less over so its not throwing games like i originally thought. so i am wrong..this is a bad thing but nowhere near as bad as the sox scandal.

It HAS to be one of the refs from the Finals from two years ago.

Mavs vs. Heat.

The refs literally gave the Heat a couple of those games. Ridiculus.

Gruson said:

It HAS to be one of the refs from the Finals from two years ago.

Mavs vs. Heat.

The refs literally gave the Heat a couple of those games. Ridiculus.

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devlinboy... don't be so quick to admit you were wrong. Its too soon to say if this bozo actually determined the result of games. Like somebody else already brought out - once you make a call or two to shave points its easy to then have the game be decided differently even if that was not your goal.

This is a HUGE scandal that should rock the NBA. It also has implications for legalized gambling on sporting events. If I worked in the Vegas betting parlors i would be interviewing every single employee I had that could have had a swarmy hand in this. The only way everybody can survive this is to find out anyone who has participated and throw them underthe bus with vigor and enthusiasm.

One disturbing thing is that the NBA's own internal monitoring system failed badly to stop such a thing. The NBA is suppose to review a refs performance and calls and in this case there were two years of crap that was not caught by the NBA. So much for policing yourself.