DAVID STERN APPRECIATION THREAD

[jmill]

Originally Posted by chim17

NBA finals game 1 set a record for TV ratings according to Yahoo.

WheelDraw knows 100 people who wont watch the NBA anymore because they think it's rigged. Argument is invalid.

[Larry Legend]

Originally Posted by Loretta8

pbal: http://aloneinthecorner.com/

go back through the archives and there are a ton of posts, including one where he shows donaghy trying and failing to fix a game

eta: here's the link with all the videos: http://aloneinthecorner.com/post/665714379/a-failed-fix

Damn, hadn't seen this before somehow.

It makes me cringe as so many of these calls are bad but not surprising.

[Roger Clemens]

Originally Posted by Victor

when you are completely ignorant of something you shouldnt comment let alone criticize. the nba lottery is actually overseen and audited by the accounting firm ernst and young. im not saying large american accounting firms are de facto reputable and infallible (lol arthur anderson/kpmg/accenture et al) but isnt this exactly wat you are asking to be done? i suppose it would be more comforting if all the moufbreafers who think its rigged were allowed oversight.

Fair enough, I was not aware of the auditing. I am actually not accusing him of fixing it. I just have an issue of the perceived secrecy and overly complex method of determining the outcomes. It does not need to be that complex. And there is a ton of interest which is why it is marketed as such.

[Noze]

Yeah it really is absurdly complicated. Just assign each pick a round percentage out of 100 or 1000 if you really need decimals in the percentages. Start at the top pick and pull out a ball. They get the first pick. If you pull that team again for another pick, you ignore it and keep pulling until another team comes out. If a team has multiple picks in the lottery you just use different colors for the different percentages, so if one of the Hornets 14 "white" balls were pulled for the #1 pick, you could ignore the white ones but the 2-3 "green" balls from the other pick are still in play should they get pulled.

Yeah you might not get the drama of drawing out the first team last and you would have to do away with the weird "you can only move up if you somehow get into the top 3" rule, but it would obviously be way easier to televise and for Joe Idiot to understand.

[2OutsNoProb]

Originally Posted by bidon

Then it seems that I'm wrong - still, you should remember that LOTS of ppl claim they're "gone forever, what a sham blahblah" and then come back very soon.

Bingo. Half of America was "never going to spend another dollar on baseball" after the summer of '94. Didn't exactly end up panning out that way.

There is a gigantic amount of NBA viewers and fans who at least think there is a chance things are not 100% legit.

Almost everyone I ever watched a game with in college believed in some form of favoritism/ rigging in the NBA and the Donahue arrest has ballooned it in a huge way.

Meh. Probably true but this is true to some degree of all major sports, albeit to varying amounts. People see something controversial or extremely "lucky", or see a call go against their team. They immediately start ranting about it being rigged, or the refs/umps being in the back, or the league helping the success of big market teams, etc.

This is before we even get to boxing and horse racing, two sports that basically everyone and their uncle thinks are rigged.

[odb]

you guys are weird. more than any other sport the NBA has people who hate it/wont watch it but love college ball because the pro game is rigged/corrupt/players dont try etc. It's a pretty common opinion among casual fans. Pro football doesn't have this perception problem and neither does baseball.

[chim17]

Originally Posted by odb

you guys are weird. more than any other sport the NBA has people who hate it/wont watch it but love college ball because the pro game is rigged/corrupt/players dont try etc. It's a pretty common opinion among casual fans. Pro football doesn't have this perception problem and neither does baseball.

Again, finals game 1 just set a record for viewership.

This problem is completely anecdotal and not based in reality.

[TimM846]

Originally Posted by Larry Legend

There is a gigantic amount of NBA viewers and fans who at least think there is a chance things are not 100% legit.

Almost everyone I ever watched a game with in college believed in some form of favoritism/ rigging in the NBA and the Donahue arrest has ballooned it in a huge way.

Better known as Suns fans.

[timotheeeee]

The way Rome introduced the topic ("Was the fix in for the lottery?") was idiotic for a reputable reporter/interviewer. The way Stern handled it was also idiotic. Rome should've broached it more professionally rather than asking a question dripping with accusation, and Stern is the NBA commish ffs, have some class duuuurp did you stop beating your wife.

[demokritosdeath]

Originally Posted by Riverman

Ewing to the Knicks, Lebron to Cleveland, the league-owned team winning...these things raise questions.

No they don't.

Anyway, feel free to look at the lottery misfortunes of some of the NBA's biggest markets throughout the last two decades. Look at how poorly NYK fared in the lottery throughout the 2000s despite being in the biggest market in the country and a total joke of a franchise. Take a look at how bad Boston was pre-KG/Ray but somehow not shipping Oden/Durant.

Or, continue to cherry pick your "favorable" data, whatever.

Edit: btw, you forgot to include "Rose to Chicago" in your conspiritarding

[nath]

Originally Posted by vhawk01

But let me reiterate how dumb it is to actually think its rigged because NO won it. There are like 6 teams who, if they had won, have a "convincing" narrative for how its rigged in their favor.

But only one of those teams is owned by the league.

Originally Posted by odb

you guys are weird. more than any other sport the NBA has people who hate it/wont watch it but love college ball because the pro game is rigged/corrupt/players dont try etc. It's a pretty common opinion among casual fans. Pro football doesn't have this perception problem and neither does baseball.

But the NBA still has more people watching it than ever. The people who believe this don't comprise a significant enough percentage of the population for them to care. (And I say this as someone who thinks the occasional shady thing happens, but enjoy the sport at its highest level far too much to stop watching.)

(Also huge lol @ anyone who carries the "college basketball is not corrupt" opinion)

[jmill]

Originally Posted by chim17

Again, finals game 1 just set a record for viewership.

This problem is completely anecdotal and not based in reality.

This. The type of people who say that kind of stuff are a lot more likely to not be watching the NBA regardless.

Originally Posted by nath

But only one of those teams is owned by the league.

Yep. People might have tried making that argument if a few other teams won the lottery, but no where near to the same extent that they're going to when the team that's owned by the NBA wins it. It's not even in the same ballpark.

<---Doesn't think it's rigged because NO won it.

[Henrik Sedin]

Originally Posted by Loretta8

pbal: http://aloneinthecorner.com/

go back through the archives and there are a ton of posts, including one where he shows donaghy trying and failing to fix a game

eta: here's the link with all the videos: http://aloneinthecorner.com/post/665714379/a-failed-fix

Originally Posted by chim17

This quote rules:

I mean someone that has done as much reserach on Donaghy as he has truly believes he is not credible at all.

i don't get it, why is he claiming to have fixed games one way, but did it the other way? there's a post about it here that he ends with:

...So while its possible that Donaghy told Martino and Battista to bet Charlotte and they mistakenly bet Minnesota. The fact that Donaghy mentions that this game was a loss and it was their 3rd straight loss in a row leads me to believe that this wouldn’t be the case as I am sure he’d have gotten his “apples” after they won and mistakenly tried to pay him. But lets discount that for a second and take a look at how Donaghy called this game;

Tim Donaghy foul+violation details;

Calls favoring CHA 0

Calls favoring MIN 17

No that is not a typo, Tim Donaghy made 17 fouls+violation calls in this game and all 17 times the call favored Minnesota. Why did Donaghy call this game so egregiously? If you look at the score of the game - When Donaghy makes his 4th call MIN is already trailing by 7 points. By his 7th call they are trailing by 20 - Desperate times call for desperate measures especially as Apples are at stake.

Note that the largest call margin game Donaghy game had a similar pattern. That particular game featured 32 Donaghy calls, 26 favored the team he bet who was also trailing for most of the game.

What then is more likely;

Donaghy told Battista and Martino to bet Charlotte, they mistakenly bet Minnesota. Donaghy didn’t get paid for this game (the man says no apples).

Donaghy happened to call the game very one-sided against the side he thought he bet.

OR

Donaghy told Battista and Martno to bet on Minnesota, they bet on Minnesota. The line moved 1.5 or more points. Minnesota was trailing, Donaghy gave them a little 17-0 call margin help. Minnesota comes back and wins and everyone rejoices in victory (apples for all).

I don’t even think its close.

Which brings me to this, Aside from the fact that Donaghy may or may not be a pathological liar, why Donaghy would go to such lengths to lie about this particular game?

I’ll answer this in my next post.

but as far as i can tell, he never did follow up and explain this. Donaghy is just trying to make his book more interesting? lying in order to downplay the effectiveness of reg rigging? he was telling his guys to bet one way, then betting and rigging the other way? he's just a pathological liar? what?

someone help me out here...

[Loretta8]

hes lying to make himself seem like less of a fraud

[Henrik Sedin]

oh, is that what his book was about? i assumed the jig was up after the conviction and all that, and it was a tell-all. obv didn't read it...