Donaghy the crooked refereeee

My friends, let us all pause and reflect. A few days ago the basketball world shook with the news that one of the NBA's own referee's was being investigated by the FBI on suspicion of betting on NBA games... including ones he ref'd himself.





i present to you, the face of evil...


This is the man that has put the integrity of the NBA to question. He has just justified every person who has ever suspected the NBA of cheating to create more lucrative storylines. By doing this he has thrown the reputation of the NBA down the drain.. Unfortunately, this isn't even the worst of it.

This may be hard for most to understand, but if you have ever refereed a basketball game, whether at a high level or just for fun during sports class, you will appreciate that in terms of pressure, expectation and abuse the job of referee(basketball or otherwise) is an unthanking one that is bound to induce a large amount of stress.


First, i shall start of by 'mythbusting' a few common misconceptions about referees;


1. Usually, the referee actually DOES know more than you about the rules of the game. There are many aspects to different calls that you neither know or understand.. The casual observer/players grasp on the rules is shaky at best, especially with respect to difficult calls such as charges/blocks etc..



2. I can't speak for every referee. But i can honestly say i'v NEVER tried to screw a team over. despit being accused of it several times. Some calls go your way, and some dont. get over it.



Which brings me nicely to 3. Whilst you have the luxury of a courtside seat/lounge to watch(and rewatch) certain plays to determine wether a referees call was correct or not, you must consider that EVERY CALL IS SPLIT-SECOND. Refereeing becomes second nature and you call what you see. alas, the problem with humanity is our inherent tendency to fail, or at least to not get 100%. Not every shot you put up scores, just like not every call i make is correct, however, i bet my percentage is better than yours :)



4. If you are constantly complaining to refs, pulling faces or whinging in general after calls and then you get a tech, dont complain. dont say, "but i did nothing wrong", because you did- your a jerk and i dont want to listen to your voice any more, and since im referee i can make it happen. shut up and play the game.



5. Lastly, a referee will NEVER EVER EVER change their call because a player whinges about it. If a call ever gets changed it is because a player has politely asked a referee why they made the said call, and the referee realises that they were in fact incorrect. However, i would advice against even doing this, as it not only pisses the referee off in the sense that you are telling them they are wrong, but you open yourself to getting a technical for "crying like a bitch"(see point 4).




Now that we have that out of the way let us deal with the issue at hand. Tim "the snake" Donaghy.

I have found some clips that may be of interest to you, particularly clip 1, as it is concerning a playoff series that has already received so much scrutiny this year...



Clip 1- did he do it? i dont know. there is certainly some questionable calls highlighted by this clip, but to assume it was the byproduct of matchfixing is going too far. at best this is a poorly
refereed game, at worst... i dont want to think about it...


Here is some others; Clip 2, Clip 3 I would also like to direct you to some excellent commentary on this situation by yahoo! sports.



As you can see my style of writting is somewhat different. This is because i feel as though many of you will have already read plenty about all the issues/situations that i plan to blog about, so in order to keep your(and my own) interest i have adopted a style of writting that allows my to go off on a tangent and rant about any particular NBA-related issue i feel deserves the attention..

cheers