anyone who's watched the NBA over the last 10 - 15 years knows the outcome of the majority of the games have been decided by the refs. no calls...mystery calls...questionable calls. this guys confession should come to no surprise.

Great job by The Post, giving this guy any credibility at all. I think this is the same publication still hoping to identify the real killer of Nicole Brown Simpson and her lover.

Gibby

Actually, I'll take the integrity of the Post reporters over that of David Stern and his referees any day of the week.

Jack, this was not good reporting, at least in my humble opinion. The guy is looking for a deal and angry he got caught. He slanders the league, and then the Post headlines it like factual news. I agree the NBA is not above bad acts, but the source here is bad.

Gibby

How do you know? No one knows for sure, and I never said I did. But we all have our suspicions, and this is evidence in support of them. Next you'll tell me that Lee Harvey Oswald was a crazed gunman, acting alone. You're entitled to your opinion.

BTW, there's no sense nattering on about the Post. It's in every newspaper in the country, and it was discussed at length during the broadcast of the game tonight.

I have always suspected the NBA of leaning toward's large/glamour market teams. San Antonio is the exception, they have been just too good to keep out of the equation.

Since the 70's, or even earlier there have never been 2 small market teams in the finals....It has happened in every other sport....but not the NBA.

Milwaukee vs Sacramento, Portland vs Indiana....not gonna happen in the NBA.

The press swallowed the "Donaghy was a rogue" story a year ago and seemed to let things slide. Hopefully they're a little more diligent this time around. You saw, for example, who was on the game tonight. Crawford and Salvatore.

Delaney, one of the guys in the Kings-Lakers Game 6 mentioned in the article, did Game 2 of this series, which was also weirdly officiated. Bavetta, another of the "Game 6 Three", did Game 1.

Bob Delaney is beyond reproach--in his role as a New Jersey State Trooper working undercover to take down some big mob guys in the '70s.

It's not the Post you're agreeing with here--it's Tim Donaghy. You go with his credibility, and I'll go with Delaney's. I like my odds.

The larger point here--these fans looking at games and saying "I KNEW that game was rigged!"--is the bigger stick in my craw. I'm called crooked by someone at every game I work, from fourth grade up through high school. The fans KNOW that I'm out to get someone from the Blue team I've never seen or thought of before...and with no more evidence than a game they think is "weirdly officiated."

Don't believe me? Run the floor with me a game or two. Your integrity WILL be questioned.

Even paranoiacs have enemies.

I would bet my last dollar that Tim Donaghy is not the only crooked referee in the NBA.

The fans KNOW that I'm out to get someone from the Blue team I've never seen or thought of before

To a point, I think you are correct. I was a Little League umpire for a while.

But I think its a bit different when it comes to "professional" sports. There is a lot of money going around, and its not teams you "never heard of before."

Either there is something fishy going on in the NBA or the refs are that bad. Which is it?

There's been way to many times I've seen a star get away with murder on the court while the no named player doing the exact same thing gets called every single time. Don't get me wrong, I know there are fouls every single play that are not called but the way the ones that are called get done get very suspicous during some games.

Even if this guy is spouting off nonsense the NBA really needs to do something about their officiating. Also, some sort of instant replay wouldn't hurt at all.

the guy gave a long list of specific details that could be verified by investigation under oath. if it's fake, wouldn't he know it could easily be verified?

the Lakers this playoff season have gotten about 25% more foul calls than opponents. that's *huge*. Sunday's Boston game, curiously, was the lone exception--even though Boston got called for 21 fouls, LA for 28.

and refs challenging players to fights? taunting players? calling coaches names? sloughing off obvious and repeated common fouls, claiming to "just let them play"?

there's a long list of refs having a very public bias. why pretend that referees in a multi-billion dollar industry are somehow above all human biases?

given that, and the obvious use of make-up calls, inconsistent use of common fouls (charging, traveling, etc.), of course refs are biased and inconsistent, often publicly so.

someone should interview Chris Weber to get his opinon. Betcha he's got a lot to say.

Webber won't say anything if he wants to become a studio commentator for TNT's NBA coverage - Stern won't allow it.

Things have looked fishy to me since the 1993 Western Conference Finals when Charles Barkely's Suns *made* 57 free throws against the Seattle Sonics in the series' final game - tying a forty-year old record that was set in a quadruple overtime game!

The Suns' victory gave the NBA the Barkely-Jordan Finals series they'd been pushing for all season. Stern didn't leave anything to chance.

15 comments and I'm the first one to bring up the 2000 Western Conference Triple Finals between Portland and LA? I think Mike Dunleavy was the guy who got the big fat deposit in an offshore account on that one. Who calls a full time out late in the 4th quarter when you've got the opponent playing on their heals and your scoring end-to-end? Another 2 minutes of that and the Blazers would have gone to face the Pacers in the finals, but Dunleavy calls this absurd full time out. LA (Dunleavy's former team) makes substitutions, but he doesn't respond (it was his time out, right?). LA comes back to win.