David Stern and the NBA are acting guilty

David Stern and the NBA are wishing referee Tim Donaghy didn’t have a gambling problem.  

 

Will the betting scandal involving NBA referee Tim Donaghy wind up revealing a bigger scandal involving NBA referees and league officials?   The way the league is acting, it looks like there is more going on that they don’t want us to know.

 

Donaghy has made some seemingly bold statements in papers filed in US Federal Court – a playoff game fixed by two referees and NBA execs manipulating games via referees. NBA Commissioner David Stern denied the accusations, and has stooped to calling Donaghy a “singing, cooperating witness”. 

Granted, Donaghy did some real bad stuff and was involved with some real bad people. It wouldn’t make sense for him to make up stories to file in US Federal Court. And what Donaghy is saying really isn’t that far fetched. The NBA’s response of attacking the messenger and not addressing the message heavily implies that Donaghy’s message is valid.   

Jose Canseco was initially attacked personally for his message of juiced-up baseball players, and it wound up that a long list of baseball players were found to be on the juice.     

Could it wind up being that there are more shady deals going on in the NBA, under the direction of the league, just as bad or even worse than Donaghy’s gambling problem? 

I’ll bet we won’t be seeing any replays of Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference finals on ESPN Classic anytime soon.