Life after Donaghy
07/27/2007 07:55 AM
By: Chance Harper
While steroids continue to dog baseball commissioner Bud Selig and the indictment of Michael Vick in a dog-fighting ring sits on NFL commissioner Roger Goodell's front burner, NBA boss David Stern faces the toughest scandal of them all as the league battles the the charges of game fixing by referee Tim Donaghy. The very survival of the NBA could be at stake.
Maybe they should just fire all the referees and play H-O-R-S-E.
Life after Donaghy
The NBA is understandably up in arms over its latest crisis. Referee Tim Donaghy has been accused of betting on basketball games, including games in which he was working. Organized crime may be involved, and the FBI is investigating whether Donaghy did anything to fix those matches he officiated.
Without a confession it won’t be an easy investigation. Basketball is a fluid sport with rules that are open to interpretation. Mixed opinions about Donaghy’s refereeing acumen have been voiced by NBA players, coaches and officials alike. But the consensus is that nobody on the floor suspected foul play.
Now that suspicion has been raised, people are looking back at Donaghy’s referee statistics and trying to reverse engineer what scenarios may have taken place. Fingers are being pointed at the total. During the past two seasons, the Over has gone 79-59-2 in games that Donaghy worked. But Leon Wood’s over/under record since the start of the 2005-06 campaign is 77-59. Handicappers made good money off both.
The red herring is the argument that Donaghy’s over/under record is abnormal. According to gambling expert R.J. Bell, the chances of Donaghy cashing in the over at a 57-percent clip in a league where 49-51 percent is the norm are just 19-1. But Donaghy is just one man; 74 different officials worked games two years ago, and 60 last season. There will always be outliers at either end of the over/under spectrum.
NBA fans and bettors alike want a clean game. Handicappers, though, can be coldly rationalize when the chips are down. Donaghy and Wood had virtually the same impact on the total the past two years, whatever motivations lay underneath.
The same is true in the way athletes are assessed. What motivates Tim Duncan to perform? How about Kobe Bryant? Two entirely different mindsets, but the MVP-quality results have always been there.
Every sport that requires officiating is prone to some level of subjectivity. The NFL is the only league out of the four major North American pro sports where referee statistics are not part of a sharp handicapper’s toolbox. This, despite the fact that penalties like holding and pass interference are also up for interpretation. It helps to have nearly four times as many eyes watching every move the officials make; a 2006 article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal states that 78 percent of sports bettors place wagers on the NFL, compared to 22 percent for baseball and 20 percent for the NBA.
This level of scrutiny is the key argument for the full legalization of sports gaming. Some commentators have responded to the Donaghy scandal by calling for the opposite, that betting on the NBA should be banned. But a refreshingly growing number of analysts from the conventional sports media are pointing their moral outrage not on the gambling element, but the criminal element. They recognize the value of transparency.
Not that NBA handicappers don’t have legitimate concerns about what may have taken place, especially if Donaghy is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to match-fixing. But casual fans are more likely to abandon ship. While European soccer has had its share of scandals over the past decade, most recently in Italy’s Serie A, that sport’s fan base is truly passionate...and resilient.
Not so much in the NBA. Attendance figures have dwindled in the post-Michael Jordan era. If advertising revenue follows suit as corporations bail on a tainted product, the league could be staring into the abyss.
What happens next is of even more importance. Commissioner David Stern has already talked about being "transparent" with league officials; the NBA might take a page from the NFL and allow referees to be interviewed about the calls they make. That would be a good start.
But if Stern really wants to emulate the NFL, he needs to avoid biting the gambling hand that feeds him.
07/27/2007 07:55 AM
By: Chance Harper
While steroids continue to dog baseball commissioner Bud Selig and the indictment of Michael Vick in a dog-fighting ring sits on NFL commissioner Roger Goodell's front burner, NBA boss David Stern faces the toughest scandal of them all as the league battles the the charges of game fixing by referee Tim Donaghy. The very survival of the NBA could be at stake.
Maybe they should just fire all the referees and play H-O-R-S-E.
Life after Donaghy
The NBA is understandably up in arms over its latest crisis. Referee Tim Donaghy has been accused of betting on basketball games, including games in which he was working. Organized crime may be involved, and the FBI is investigating whether Donaghy did anything to fix those matches he officiated.
Without a confession it won’t be an easy investigation. Basketball is a fluid sport with rules that are open to interpretation. Mixed opinions about Donaghy’s refereeing acumen have been voiced by NBA players, coaches and officials alike. But the consensus is that nobody on the floor suspected foul play.
Now that suspicion has been raised, people are looking back at Donaghy’s referee statistics and trying to reverse engineer what scenarios may have taken place. Fingers are being pointed at the total. During the past two seasons, the Over has gone 79-59-2 in games that Donaghy worked. But Leon Wood’s over/under record since the start of the 2005-06 campaign is 77-59. Handicappers made good money off both.
The red herring is the argument that Donaghy’s over/under record is abnormal. According to gambling expert R.J. Bell, the chances of Donaghy cashing in the over at a 57-percent clip in a league where 49-51 percent is the norm are just 19-1. But Donaghy is just one man; 74 different officials worked games two years ago, and 60 last season. There will always be outliers at either end of the over/under spectrum.
NBA fans and bettors alike want a clean game. Handicappers, though, can be coldly rationalize when the chips are down. Donaghy and Wood had virtually the same impact on the total the past two years, whatever motivations lay underneath.
The same is true in the way athletes are assessed. What motivates Tim Duncan to perform? How about Kobe Bryant? Two entirely different mindsets, but the MVP-quality results have always been there.
Every sport that requires officiating is prone to some level of subjectivity. The NFL is the only league out of the four major North American pro sports where referee statistics are not part of a sharp handicapper’s toolbox. This, despite the fact that penalties like holding and pass interference are also up for interpretation. It helps to have nearly four times as many eyes watching every move the officials make; a 2006 article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal states that 78 percent of sports bettors place wagers on the NFL, compared to 22 percent for baseball and 20 percent for the NBA.
This level of scrutiny is the key argument for the full legalization of sports gaming. Some commentators have responded to the Donaghy scandal by calling for the opposite, that betting on the NBA should be banned. But a refreshingly growing number of analysts from the conventional sports media are pointing their moral outrage not on the gambling element, but the criminal element. They recognize the value of transparency.
Not that NBA handicappers don’t have legitimate concerns about what may have taken place, especially if Donaghy is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to match-fixing. But casual fans are more likely to abandon ship. While European soccer has had its share of scandals over the past decade, most recently in Italy’s Serie A, that sport’s fan base is truly passionate...and resilient.
Not so much in the NBA. Attendance figures have dwindled in the post-Michael Jordan era. If advertising revenue follows suit as corporations bail on a tainted product, the league could be staring into the abyss.
What happens next is of even more importance. Commissioner David Stern has already talked about being "transparent" with league officials; the NBA might take a page from the NFL and allow referees to be interviewed about the calls they make. That would be a good start.
But if Stern really wants to emulate the NFL, he needs to avoid biting the gambling hand that feeds him.