Sickening

Let's review: the Phoenix - San Antonio series was tied one game apeace. Phoenix, playing on the road, goes up big early and threatens to blow the Spurs out. Then most of their best players end up in foul trouble, Nash is beat up by Bowen for the entire second half, and the Spurs pull it out in the end. The officiating is so bad that the TV announcers break the unspoken code of not criticizing the refs on air.

It all takes on a new light now



Simmons has a great column on it here

Here is a paper written this spring by a Stanford Economics student stating that point shaving has to be going on in the NBA, just from looking at betting lines and final scores from an efficient market standpoint. The paper focuses on players as the causative agents, but not for any particular reason (the proof is that the scores are being altered, the paper doesn't pretend to know the mechanism)

I'm guessing that this is going to end up going well beyond a single referee. With any luck, the fallout will be so damaging to the league that the corrective measures taken also limit the NBA's ability to throw playoff series to the more marketable teams.

As we discussed at length on the email list that predated this blog, the officiating was so bad and one-sided during the Indiana-Boston first round playoff series in 2005 that you will never be able to convince me that the league wasn't actively trying to get the Pacers into a second-round match up with the Pistons.