Stern Press Conference 11AM EDT Tuesday

[Jay Edgar]

This should be GREAT theater, if nothing else.

Can the Commish keep the snarkiness and self-righteousness to a minimum? Does he have any kind of plan to seize the moment as Cuban suggests, or will it be 100% damage control/"we await the evidence"?

Will the NBA "news media" -- equally split between self-promoters and sycophants -- be able to articulate and sustain the obvious lines of questioning, almost like real journalists would? Will real journalists -- if there are any left in America -- be allowed near a microphone to ask questions?

[moses millsap]

He will say nothing of real importance. I have ZERO confidence in Mr. Stern.

[JBC77]

Yeah, I'm waiting for what the Feds have to say. It will get good when the duck starts quacking.

[jjgold]

Too early to tell how big this is, we have to wait and see what this guy has to say and who else is involved.

[Tchocky]

He should resign. The NBA needs a change of guards. Stern has been in power too long.

[LargeMouthBass]

Just in... Stern gets whacked!!!!

[bigboydan]

I'm interested about hearing what he has to say about possible other referee's doing the same thing that Donaghy did.

[tblues2005]

bigboydan,

I for sure agree with you, I want to see if there was anyone else involved too.

[Jay Edgar]

Finally the NY Times is getting its legs under it on this story.

Two interesting pieces this morning, for anyone trying to figure things out.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/sports/basketball/24play.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/sports/basketball/24referees.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1185286214-Fq7Res7UkSNO2omdx8tzgQ

Now it seems fairly clear that it was the NBA asking questions of Donaghy's neighbors, though that was back in 2005 -- perhaps before any funny business by him. Still, the league has a crystal-clear policy and he was violating it by being in AC. But they couldn't get "proof" and threw their hands up.

Best case for the NBA: NBA Security is the Keystone Cops. After that the possibilities only get worse.

[MBENZ]

Can anybody provide a link to hear this live?

[Jay Edgar]

espn.com and nba.com on the web, plus espn and nba tv as far as I know

[MBENZ]

Thanks J

[JBC77]

Yeah, I'm waiting for what the Feds have to say. It will get good when the duck starts quacking.

Stern says nothing new.

[bigboydan]

He said something about this only happening one time before, and it happened 20 years ago. However, the dumbass reporter didn't follow up and ask who it was.

Another thing I found rather interesting was the fact that the only time you ever get a pass if your gambling is at the race track. Now if thats the case how come we see NBA players playing blackjack in casinos.

[LargeMouthBass]

Stern says nothing new.

Of course...

[MBENZ]

According to Dan,every major crime fighting organization in the USA works for the NBA,but yet they could'nt catch this rouge official.He even mentioned homeland security was involved,does that make anybody a bit scared?All this money in taxes and we have the keystone cops looking out for us

[Jay Edgar]

Another thing I found rather interesting was the fact that the only time you ever get a pass if your gambling is at the race track. Now if thats the case how come we see NBA players playing blackjack in casinos.

The policy for officials is no-gambling-on-anything-except-a-day-at-the-track-in-the-offseason. Stern said the racetrack exception was a concession to the officials' union.

The policy for players is looser -- probably something like "no illegal sports betting and no NBA betting, even where legal." Surely again anything short of a total prohibition was something the players' union bargained for.

Sure to be a different environment next time around.

[Jay Edgar]

I don't own stock in the NY Times or anything, but I'm reading and viewing everything on this story that I can. After a slow start, the Times is kicking its ass.

As I'm listening to ex-refs like Mike Mathis and Hue Hollins and others interviewed, there's a bitching, bullheaded, sense of entitlement there that's galling. Selana Roberts in her Times column for tomorrow really nails it. (The Times stupidly charges money for this content, so I'll cut and paste it below.)

Second, the old timers here may remember Richie Powers, one of the all-time great NBA refs, and a hothead to make Joey Crawford look like Gandhi. Did anyone know that he was homeless and penniless in his last years, and died in 1998? I didn't.

To me his story matters in a way I can't put my finger on. It's Exhibit B to support the thought that there's something really wrong in the culture of NBA refs.

(1) ROBERTS COLUMN
July 25, 2007
Sports of The Times
N.B.A. Put Referees Above the Law
By SELENA ROBERTS
In a black suit and blue tie, wearing the colors of bruises, the typically grand David Stern arrived at a mic yesterday with the reduced look of an image viewed through binocular bottoms.

He was not haughty and pithy, but haunted and meek. He was not himself. Stern spoke softly — often with awkward pauses — as he explained what the N.B.A. knew of the F.B.I.’s investigation into whether the referee Tim Donaghy fixed games over the past two seasons.

Yes, the league’s internal security network of former “Dragnet” types and ex-spooks and retired spies missed detecting this scoundrel with a shady whistle.

No, he didn’t know Donaghy was at the center of an investigation into point shaving — the great taboo of sports — until the F.B.I. called the league June 20.

“My reaction was, ‘I can’t believe it’s happening to us,’ ” Stern said.

What’s not to fathom, though? Stern’s league has been rendered vulnerable by its longtime system of ref protectionism and false empowerment.

This goes beyond the unconditional defenses Stern has offered on behalf of referees who muss Pat Riley’s hair gel or rattle Phil Jackson’s Zen with a dubious call.

This is about ethical compromises the league has made over the years that have cultivated the God complexes of referees and provided a petri dish perfect to develop a rogue official.

Donaghy isn’t known to be among the nearly 20 N.B.A. referees in the late ’90s who caught the attention of I.R.S. investigators by exchanging first-class tickets for coach and pocketing a tax-free difference.

He was a witness to Stern’s response, though. In a sign of how deficient the N.B.A. officiating pool is, the league reinstated about a half-dozen of the tax cheats.

Why wouldn’t referees feel above the law if the league offered them loopholes in integrity?

The N.B.A. would go on to be hoodwinked by its blind faith in a flawed ref. In January 2005, Donaghy was questioned by the league for his part in a legal dispute with a neighbor near his home outside Philadelphia. A private eye from the league’s security department was directed to nose around Donaghy, to check out rumors of gambling and poke into the anger problems at issue.

The snooping came up dry. And Donaghy delivered a denial.

“He informed us that the allegations against him were untrue,” Stern said. “And that he was the person that was being harassed by his neighbor, not as alleged by the neighbor, that he was harassing the neighbor.”

The league believed Donaghy, its unimpeachable ref.

Stern has never conceded a human element in officiating. To him, the referees are always above reproach and suspicion. And yet the relationship between coaches, players and officials has become increasingly antagonistic in recent years.

Some players and coaches quietly point to a class differential that has grown exponentially over the last decade. As Stern noted, Donaghy pulled in a solid salary of $260,000 last year — or a week’s pay for a coach or player. Does anger or envy ever figure into a call?

The league’s officiating monitors are numbers freaks — how many calls are made, rate of technical fouls, etc. — but they do not measure each referee’s conscience.

For years, coaches have complained about referees who ask players for autographed shoes or request a star’s attendance at a charity golf event or pal around with a team after hours. In 2002, through court documents filed by Karla Knafel, a former mistress of Michael Jordan’s, the referee Eddie F. Rush was portrayed as the cupid for the secret lovers.

“I feel comfortable with his explanation,” Stu Jackson, the N.B.A.’s vice president, said at the time. “Do I feel there is a problem? Absolutely not.”

Or maybe there was an issue. In 2004, there was an official codification of fraternization rules. Yet a year later, the policy was waived when the referee Bob Delaney enlisted N.B.A. stars for scrimmages to attract paying customers to his basketball camp at IMG Academies in Bradenton, Fla.

This ref-player relationship may seem too cozy to be cool, but the league always offers its refs the benefit of the doubt. Many of them are good citizens and good people.

But here, in his worst hour as commissioner yesterday, with his face pale from stress, Stern was still extolling the virtues of his officials with few qualifiers.

“Sometimes they perhaps carry themselves in a way that is not as modest as we would prefer, but they do their darnedest to get the result right,” Stern said. “And frankly, I’m more concerned, rather than chastising them, with reassuring them that I am committed to protecting them while at the same time making sure that we keep our covenant with our fans.”

The promise of purity was clouded long ago, when the league put referees above the law, when Stern continued to deify them without regard to their human faults, when Donaghy was cutting his teeth.

Protectionism isn’t what referees need. Protectionism is how the league got into this fix.


(2) RICHIE POWERS STORY FROM 1991

https://www.referee.com/sampleArticles/2001/SampleArticle0101/longwaydown/longwaytext.html