“Stern already was aware through Pedowitz’s interviews that nearly all his referees had violated some form of the gambling rules, so Stern said last year he would change them to make them more easily enforceable.”

So nearly all of the refs were breaking the rules, and rather than enforce the rules than the NBA thought at one time to be relevent, he just changed the rules so that his officials wouldn’t be violators.

THAT is leadership. I guess.

The report also finds that the league was complicit in creating this atmosphere of permissiveness. In essence, the NBA created Donaghy. As I have been saying.

Unfortunately, after reading the full report I find it wasn’t actually a study but a series of inferences and assumptions based on the FBI’s investigation.

Then beginning on about page 40 the report goes on the confirm that the refs basically make up the rules as they go along as the inidividual ref sees fit.

“Referees were also conscious of game circumstances and considered them when
making judgments about calls. For instance, we have been told that some referees maintained an
awareness of substantial imbalances in foul calls against teams. Also, if a referee recognized that
he or his crew had made an incorrect call, a referee might whistle a "make-up" call soon
thereafter. Finally, some told us about giving consideration to the number of fouls called on
"players of consequence."”

Terrible. Gambling or not, this report confirms some of the very worst things many of us have been saying about the NBA.

The point is that the FBI investigated the alleged conspiracy argument and found nothing on that score, not what the results were of the investigation conducted by the independent folks hired by the NBA to further investigate the matter and to broaden the investigation into other areas to make the league and its referees do better jobs.

John R’s posts above remind me of a class I took in my first year in law school at SC touching on the issue of whether anything is truly objective. People assume that referees are all alike, that they all see the same thing, and that a foul is a foul is a foul. Once you dig deeply into these sorts of things, you will find that although there are certain basic standards, there are really many different interpretations possible of any play. Any player is comfortable with the fact that there are many intangibles involved. Some fans, however, who are not basketball players themselves, cling to the rulebook like it is etched in stone, waiving it at anyone who dares to do something that is slightly different than what is printed in black and white. Life, like the NBA, ain’t so perfect, and perhaps that’s a good thing.

For example, everyone in the NBA knows that there are things such as makeup calls. Players accept it. Fans accept it. Just because it ain’t in the rule book doesn’t necessarily make it wrong or bad for the game.