NBA fixing: biggest American sports story in recent memory?

[mason55]

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Last year Rick Tocchet a former hockey player and an active assistant coach with the Phoenix Coyotes got arrested for running an illegal sports gambling ring. Wayne Gretzkys wife Janet Jones placed bets with the ring.

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Ahahahah I was shooting craps with a Canadian who was friends with Tocchet at the Borgata at like 6am the night this was announced. We yelled "Rick Tocchet!" or "Janet Jones Gretzky!" before every roll.

Must have been good luck cause we both won a metric-fuckton of money.

[kidcolin]

Agreed on the Simmons column. His best in a long time.

[HajiShirazu]

This is a big deal for me, because instead of saying "this [censored] is rigged damn the nba again" being just a joke, now I'm actually going to believe that it is.

[AllinDan]

while reading the simmons column I clicked on his link to his '06 column about how disgraceful the the officiating was in the Finals and was sad about how he can't write anymore.

I think this story will probably be bigger and have more impact than Donaghy's actual actions. Bethlehem Shoals on Freedarko made an excellent point today: if it took this long to catch Donaghy, and if it only happened randomly because of some wiretaps, then his actions necessarily weren't all that egregious. He was smart enough to try to stay hidden and thus wasn't going and making sure the bobcats beat the mavericks, but applying much smaller edges to stay out of trouble. While I obviously don't condone his actions whatsoever, the effect of this story on public perception of the NBA will be much more serious than Donaghy's effect on games, and more importantly, on playoff races and playoff games. Who really cares about the regular season anyway? (besides gamblers and Mavs fans, obv)

[ThaSaltCracka]

this isn't a real big story yet. Maybe because people don't care much about basketball anymore.

Personally I think this is massive, especially since it could potentially involve playoff games. Simmons is right, this is the worst thing that could have happened to the NBA. It may even carry over to other sports. People see a [censored] officiated game, say Superbowl with Seattle and Pittsburgh, and they think, bought refs! Hahaha take that Steelers fans!

[Clarkmeister]

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this isn't a real big story yet. Maybe because people don't care much about basketball anymore.

Personally I think this is massive, especially since it could potentially involve playoff games. Simmons is right, this is the worst thing that could have happened to the NBA. It may even carry over to other sports. People see a [censored] officiated game, say Superbowl with Seattle and Pittsburgh, and they think, bought refs! Hahaha take that Steelers fans!

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Every team message board on RealGM has a thread that looks at every game he reffed against their team for the last 2-3 years. That is bad bad news. This is going to keep gaining steam, as well it should.

[ThaSaltCracka]

yeah this won't end well.

[tuq]

I am one naive mo fo, because I thought that a ref's attempt to fix a game would be so transparent as to cost him his job for incompetence. I guess if spread out far enough to go unnoticed he could get away with it.

One game comes to mind: the 1993 Finals between the Bulls and the Suns, game 3. Triple overtime yet the Bulls ended up shooting only like ten free throws or some incredibly low number (and this is with Jordan no less, who probably averaged 6-8 trips to the line per game himself). After the Suns won conspiracy theorists were moaning about the free throw disparity and how it was rigged to help the Suns win so the series would be extended.

At the time I didn't think it was possible, but obviously I'm rethinking that stuff now.

[owsley]

I am going to go ahead and bet that you haven't read the whole Simmons column yet.

[tuq]

owsley,

Was that written to me? Brah, I read it about 1/2 hour after it was posted, I was trolling ESPN for British Open coverage and saw it. As a Suns fan I want to be outraged about the possibilities but really the whole thing just exhausts me.