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.