I thought it would be cool to start a topic to discuss all other sports outside of our very popular
NFL Football thread. So this would include NBA, MLB, NHL, UFC, PGA, and any sports related stuff you can think of.
You may have heard that the FBI is investigating allegations that veteran NBA referee Tim Donaghy bet on basketball games he officiated over the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 seasons, including ones in which he officiated. Apparently this ref got in some gambling debts with some bookies and ended up resorting to this to pay of his debts.
ESPN.com's Eric Stein has a really good article regarding the severity of these alligations. Here are a few highlights of his article:
Quote:
You know it's not a good Friday, as a sports commissioner, when you wake up to a crisis that you'd gladly trade straight up for baseball's steroid scandal.
Or as my Bloomberg News colleague Scott Soshnick put it on ESPN's "Outside The Lines": It would have been a much, much better Friday for David Stern if he were merely faced with the news bulletin that one of his Michael Vick-sized stars was being indicted on charges of sponsoring a widespread dogfighting operation.
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This sort of thing has never happened in the US before:
Quote:
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How bleak is the situation? Various international soccer leagues have survived a handful of match-fixing scandals, but no referee, umpire, linesman or in-game official of any sort has ever been arrested or indicted for point-shaving or match-fixing in the history of America's four major sports.
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Here is another quote that sums up the troubles the NBA is in:
From Bruce Arthur of the National Post Quote:
But this has the potential to bloody the NBA, and badly. This might have been the worst season in NBA history -- the short-lived change of basketballs, the injuries, the tanking, the whining, the All-Star fiasco (in Vegas, natch), the dead-dull playoffs, the playoff-altering suspensions, and finally, a dreadful NBA Finals.
But this is different. This might be the worst poison of all.
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Crazy times we live in. I really soured on the NBA years ago, and the Nuggets SUCKED as well! But I've come around (about the same time Carmelo Anthony arrived coincidently) and I'm really starting to enjoy the NBA game again, especially watching the Phoenix Suns play. But the NBA really has a long way to go to get their act together.
