ref-er-eez

honestly i was stuck between apathy and confusion when i first found out about this donaghy scandal. donaghate if you will (and i will).

i didn't know what to think, and i didn't care that much at all about it. it's a little bit comforting if you ask me--judging by your presence on lamar blogom i would say you are asking me. it lets me know that the refs aren't ALL incompetent. in fact, they're the exact opposite, in one case. donaghy did this shit for YEARS before he got caught, and guess why?

he was competent. better at his job than most of us would give him credit for probably. whenever most people watch a basketball game they care about the outcome of, the first or at least one of the first things bemoaned is the lack of quality officiating.

well, there are kind of two ways to look at donaghate as it relates to this officiating quality gap.

1. most refs ARE SO BAD at their jobs that WE CAN'T EVEN TELL WHEN ONE OF THEM IS FIXING GAMES. not exactly fixing, but you know what i mean. "tampering with the outcome of" or the score of or the poitns of. whatever you want to say.
2. donaghy was SO SMART. that he was ABLE TO FIX GAMES FOR YEARS WITHOUT ANYONE FINDING OUT.

shit, the nba only found out because of an fbi investigation into the mob. that's depressing. for all of stern and stu jackson's crowing about how tightly they monitor their refs, they can't even see that one of the refs is altering basketball games with intent to make money?

that is probably the scariest part of the situation.

however, this is also kind of comforting. maybe the refs aren't as bad as we think. maybe they ARE being paid off to influence the outcome of games. i don't know about you, but when i was a child around 9 i made a sign reading "how much did they pay you?" to take to a lakers game. i guess 9-yr-old me was right in a very delayed semi-perverse sense.

kids do say the darndest things. and sometimes they're right.

after a long hiatus

i am back. after 2 months (minus 10 days) i am back in this bitch like jordan. still wearing the old 2-3, but back nonetheless.

so what better way to get back on the blog-wagon (clever use of language!) than to take some quickie looks at shit going down around the league.

DARKO FREED (AGAIN)
orlando honestly i think made a huge mistake with this darko fiasco. they traded kelvin cato (trash) and a first round pick (useful) for a promising european big man who had been toiling on the bench for a championship team. that makes sense; darko was the #2 pick in the draft 4 short years ago. and he's STILL younger than some of the people drafted in this year's draft (al thornton stand up).

but the magic never played him either. or at least never in a way that set darko up to succeed. they needed to commit to playing him 40 minutes a night and LIVING with his mental mistakes, of which there were many but still, so he could have the opportunity develop into a tangible low-post asset. as it was, he was still a shot blocking m-fer to the Nth degree and could score somewhat. there still was the unfulfilled promise of rebounding, which he did at an apparently atrocious rate.

darko has another shot to bust out of his self- and other-imposed chaining. i hope he's about to be on some king kong shit and bust out of his chains to chase the elusive lady of fulfilled potential (the analogy kind of falls apart after that--i can't see a 7-foot serb climbing the empire state building only to be shot down by sopwith camels and other biplanes.) starring alongside another euro could be the perfect opportunity. both pau and darko face the knock of being "soft." however, they both have interestingly opposite games. pau will and can be and has always been a scorer of all-star proportions. darko, on the other hand, is a defensive force. well, could be a defensive force. he blocks a lot of shots. let's just say that.

(note: i'm not going to try to handle the foolishness that was the rashard lewis contract. it's been well-covered by other outlets, perhaps best by john hollinger.)

SEA-TAC RIDES AGAIN?!
the supersonics completed what might have been the fastest-ever rebuilding process. by my count, it took about 20 minutes. think of all the things you can do in 20 minutes! they include:

1. watching a sitcom (minus two minutes)
2. run 3 (or so) miles
3. watch the first 20 minutes of "austin powers"

adding durant and green and unloading ray allen's double-ankle-surgery ass for one moderately useful player and a semi-expiring contract was a stroke of really good thinking by r.c. buford protege sam presti. also, resisting the temptation to pay shard his money that he was getting from team disney was a huge step in the right direction. i would have been down to see the sonics become like the hawks in that they played 3 SFs at once, but this time all the forwards have shooting strokes. HOWEVER, that shit wasn't worth the approximately $150 million.

they might not be great next year, but COUNT on durant and jeff green doing some shit in the near future.