Also what's interesting is Courtney Kirkland's name among the Ls this year and in that one crazyass game against the Raptors at home recently.
So the league office issued an official statement regarding ESPN's article about Donaghy and game-fixing: "The Tim Donaghy matter concluded over a decade ago with a full investigation by the federal government, Donaghy's termination from the NBA, and his conviction for criminal acts. At the same time, at the request of the NBA, former prosecutor Larry Pedowitz conducted an independent investigation of Donaghy's misconduct and issued publicly a 133-page report. This report was based on an extensive review of game data and video as well as approximately 200 interviews, thousands of pages of documents, and consultation with various gambling and data experts. "The ESPN Article attempts to revive this old story. Unfortunately, it is replete with errors, beginning with its statement that the Pedowitz Report 'concluded that Donaghy, in fact, did not fix games.' The Pedowitz Report made no such conclusion. Rather, the investigation found no basis to disagree with the finding of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office that '[t]here is no evidence that Donaghy ever intentionally made a particular ruling during a game in order to increase the likelihood that his gambling pick would be correct.' ESPN ignores this important distinction. "The new material that ESPN has assembled to support its own conclusion that Donaghy manipulated games is not strong and adds little to the existing record." Because of course.
If they want to be technical then, yes, Donaghy cannot FIX a game. Influencing the game, however, is highly possible. Even a small offensive foul call against a team that is going on a 8-0, 10-0 run zaps most of the momentum that team was getting. The NBA doesn't give two sh*ts about this. Did they ever release a statement about the BLATANT out of bounds on Durant in that January game? I guess since Harden hit that game winner (and thereby saved Silver, the NBA and the refs from a humiliating event) no statement is needed?
By the way, among the 24 losses this year by the Rockets, the same names have shown up in the officiating crew: Mike Callahan x 5 Courtney Kirkland x 4 (he was part of the crew last night) Mitchell Ervin x 4 Curtis Blair x 3 Matt Boland x 3 3 officials x 24 games that 72 officials. 19 instances feature one of the 5 refs above for a 26% occurrence rate. By my count there are 69 active officials this season. You can't tell me there aren't personal bias when it comes to officiating. If you see Callahan's name as the crew chief you better expect Houston to take an L as he's never officiated a game this year for the Rockets where Houston has won. I would hate to see a team of Callahan, Kirkland and Blair for one game.
So true. According to ESPN's article, Donaghy didn't really care which team won; his job was to make sure the underdog (usually the visiting team) covered the spread. So while occasionally his calls were obvious, they were generally less so, and meant just to nudge the score a little one way or another. When the game was already shaping up to be a blowout either way, he would lay off the bogus calls because he couldn't make up that big a gap without making some really obvious calls. But crucially: Those calls meant to nudge the score can help a team rally from behind, or artificially protect a lead. The league itself, though, doesn't give a **** about the point spreads. They have a vested interest in certain franchises and certain star players showing up in the playoffs every year, and especially the conference finals and finals.
This is the most convoluted statement by the NBA. The Pedowitz Report they so "graciously" called for themselves was to prove that this statement is true. But this statement ignores the possibility that Donaghy intentionally missed calls to help his bets. It also ignores the possibility that Donaghy made rulings before a game to help his bets (like hinting at and influencing reffing crews before the game). It also ignores the possibility that Donaghy made rulings to increase the likelihood that others' gambling picks would be correct (for which he'd be compensated for). I hope fans don't ignore these "important distinctions". I've never been so convinced that the NBA is rigged as I am today.
Those crude stats comparing team fouls and opponent fouls are close to useless. It's scumbag Foster's habit to call heavy-weight bullshit calls against Houston and then make it up with innocuous and inconsequential feel-better calls with non-game changing nature shortly after. How do you measure that? How to you quantify that? The implicit but powerful game-changing capacity these refs, especially rotten ones like Foster are endowed.
I would add the scumbags Mauer and Foster to that list that are outside of the data so far. Brothers has been less reliably bad and maybe because he has been chided.
