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July 26, 2007

Why the NBA Gambling Scandal Isn't Actually A Big Deal

As a season-ticket holder/ paying customer, I feel entitled to an opinion on this

So all the sports blathermonkeys have climbed atop their respective high-horsies to tell us that the NBA referee scandal is really really bad. Terrible. The league won't recover. All that. David Stern held a press conference as serious and grave as anything Boosh has mustered up since he decided to explode Iraq. The polls on ESPN reflect the will and whims of the people -- and the people seem to think that the point-shaving by an NBA ref is more damaging to the NBA than the Michael Vick situation is to the NFL.

Or something like that. Mostly people are all screechy and uptight about this.

I gottatellya: as an NBA season-ticket holder, I actually don't think it's such a big deal. Three reasons why:

(1) The NBA is more show that sport: so some ref might have shaved points in a regular-season game. We don't have proof that any outcomes have actually been compromised, but it's safe to say that yeah, maybe some of the games were unduly influenced. Uh huh. That actually sounds encouraging to me; it would demonstrate that at least one person on the floor was interested in influencing the outcome of the games. I like going to the Sonics games for the show. You get to see the stars (look at Bron-Bron!), they do some cool stuff, and if you get a competitive game (which happens about 30 percent of the time), well all the better. But a lot of those games are rather loosely contested (see photo of Chicago Bulls staring at the Sonics Dance Team during a timeout at Key Arena). It's a problem with the product (82 games is perhaps more than is required to determine which 14 teams don't make the playoffs), sure, but it also means that most people understand (and even expect) a certain half-assedness from the action. And if a freakin ref we've never heard of might have cheated, so what? Will Bron-Bron still do some crazy dunking tricks? Cool. People will still want to see Bron-Bron. Enough with all the sanctimonious the-ICBMs-are-in-the-air-over-Canada nonsense. It's half-pro-wrestling anyway.

(2) It's an "isolated incident"/ This Thing Of Ours: The spin machine is already humming. This isn't about the integrity of the NBA. This is about an everyday guy who got in over his head with some scary, scary criminals, and did a terrible, terrible thing because he had no choice. Trust me, by the end of this, not only will we completely absolve the NBA of any blame, but we'll all start to feel sorry for Donaghy. He'll get spun as a brash guy with a gambling problem, who lived on the edge -- and paid dearly for it. I believe this very strongly. They're going to blame it on the mob! Remember them! It's the Gambino family behind this whole thing! And they're bad! David Stern is a Jedi Master -- he's totally going to pull this off. I would hardly be shocked if this somehow turned into the real ending to the Sopranos.

(3) Look at what happened in Italy (which is what we all thought was actually happening in the NBA): we all thought the fix was in in the NBA; we just thought David Stern was behind it. Which is sort of what happened in Italy last year. The top teams in the league (including 27-time champion Juventus and the team that's owned by Berlusconi, A. C. Milan) got caught by the Italian feds for paying off refs to fix matches. Puh-retty bad. There was much consternation among mid-level Italian magistrates, a media sh*tstorm, the whole shebang. And this was like a week before the World Cup. And then Italy won the World Cup, Juve spent a single season in Serie B before getting promoted back to Serie A, Milan won the Champions League, and everything is cool. No kidding.

The thing is, there had been Juve conspiracy theory sites for years. The rest of Italy were convinced that Juve cheated, and had assembled evidence (videos of dodgy injury-time penalties, stuff like that) to that effect. And then everyone's worst fears came true! And even in that scenario, everything was totally chill in a single year.

Obviously, calcio is a bigger deal in Italy than basketball is here, but still. This might alienate some potential NBA fans, but I don't think it will really hurt the League (any more than the lousy state of the regular season product). This isn't the NHL going dark for a year when they were on the fringe of the market to start with. It also isn't baseball thriving even in the wake of the steroids scandal. It's soemwhere in the middle. And they'll be fine. They'll blame it on the mob, push Oden/ Durant on us, and stress that no animals were harmed during their point-shaving scandal.

Done and done.

Posted by thatkid at July 26, 2007 8:46 AM under Sonics , Sports , The Papers

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