You Cheating Referee III

As Howard Dean would say, "YEEEAHHHHAWWWWWWWWYEAAAAAAH!

Tim Donaghy has reappeared in the news in a most awesome manner. I guess he's been singing like a caged canary to the G-Men about the NBA and orchestrated cheating and it's just great stuff. Almost as great as Phil Jackson acting preturbed about the awful officiating in Game 2 of the Finals after the utter crap job of the officials in the Lakers-Utah series and the infamous "Derek Fisher mugging Brent Barry" at the end of game four against San Antonio. Sorry, Phil, but David J. Stern only wanted Lakers-Celtics in the Finals. He didn't dictate to the referees that you guys should actually win the Finals. (Although it will be interesting to see if the Lakers win game 5 to force a game 6 in Boston. This is one of the accusations of Donaghy, that the league would tell refs to extend a series to generate more interest in the NBA and more revenue.)

Go here to read all the neat allegations that Donaghy tossed at the NBA. They include: specifically not calling fouls or technicals on star players, and that the NBA would instruct officials to look for fouls against a certain player (Donaghy cites a playoff series with the Mavs and Rockets, but you can just as easily look at Utah-LA this season).

Now, it might be that he's just making stuff up to get a light sentence. I accept that point. I also think that there's always been something fishy going on with NBA referees. The problem is whether this will change anything. Most people will probably just say, "Bah, I've thought that for ten years. No big deal. I just like watching Kobe/AI/Lebron James so I don't care if refs are skewing the results." And that viewpoint is crushing to me as a small-market fan who cares more about the team than the players on the team.