“That Bleeping (NBA) League IS Bleeping Rigged”

Tim Donaghy, the NBA referee who has pled guilty to gambling on basketball games he refereed, alleged, through his attorney this past week, that he was told that referees who officiated the sixth game of a seven-game playoff series in 2002 called made-up fouls on the team leading the series in order to add an extra game to the series. Donaghy also said that the foul calling led to the ejection of two players on the team leading the series.

Even though he did not state what teams were involved, it is not hard to deduce that he is referring to Game 6 of the Los Angeles Lakers-Sacramento Kings playoff series in 2002. The Kings were leading the series 3-2 and would have won the series in Game 6, but the Lakers were awarded an incredible 27 free throw shots in the fourth quarter, and two of Sacramento’s centers were ejected from the game for six fouls, which led to Sacramento’s defeat, forcing a seventh game, which was won by the Lakers. In addition, at the end of the game a foul was called against Mike Bibby of the Kings after he was shoved and elbowed by Kobe Bryant of the Lakers. This foul call took away an opportunity for the Kings to try for a tying basket.

After the game Michael Wilbon wrote in the Washington Post that too many of the calls in the 4th quarter were “stunningly incorrect,” all against Sacramento, and he stated that “I have never seen officiating in a game of this consequence as bad as that in Game 6.”

The horrible officiating of that game prompted Ralph Nader to write a letter to David Stern, Commissioner of the NBA, asking him to use his “absolute power” to issue “an apology to the Sacramento Kings and forthrightly admit decisive incompetence during Game 6, especially in the crucial fourth quarter.”

Donaghy also brought up that the 2005 series between the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks was influenced by the NBA office. Jeff Van Gundy, who was the coach of the Rockets at the time, said that an NBA official told him that the series would be officiated differently. So many illegal screen foul calls were made against Yao Ming of the Rockets that the momentum of the series shifted away from Houston and towards Dallas. For his comments, Van Gundy was fined $100,000 by Stern. Now, we learn from Donaghy’s claims that Van Gundy’s assertion was basically correct.

While, of course, the NBA (and David Stern specifically) have dismissed these allegations by Donaghy, actually this is only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, the fixing of games by the NBA goes far beyond what Donaghy has claimed. Bob Avakian, in his talk “The NBA: Marketing the Minstrel Show and Serving the Big Gangsters,” talks about how the NBA has been rigged and how David Stern, who he calls “the Mafia Don” of the NBA, has established a certain marketing strategy to promote particular teams and particular players, a marketing strategy which is partially achieved by rigging the league. Avakian chronicles how Stern promoted the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, during the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson era in the 1980s. Avakian points out that the Celtics were promoted as a stereotypical “white, lunch bucket, blue collar, work ethic team,” and the Lakers were promoted as a “sanitized, watered-down version of playground basketball.” So, as Avakian explains, for a period of time in the NBA Finals you had these two poles of the “working class” team and the sanitized, watered-down “playground team,” which has an element of racism. In this regard, Avakian also brings out the comparison between the NBA and the minstrel shows, where most of the players in the league are African-American, while the games are played in front of white audiences and that the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson/Celtic-Laker rivalry played into this.

Now the Celtics and Lakers are currently in the NBA Finals, which has resulted in enormous TV ratings due to the marketing of this Finals as, yes, once again Larry Bird vs. Magic Johnson, even though it is actually Kobe Bryant of the Lakers vs. Paul Pierce of the Celtics. So how did this come about? Because last year both teams were floundering, with the Celtics having one of the worst records in the league and the Lakers not much further ahead. At the end of last season Kevin McHale, a former Celtic and now General Manager for the Minnesota Timberwolves, traded Kevin Garnett, one of the best power forwards in the NBA, to the Celtics for some less talented players, to be teamed up with Paul Pierce. In the middle of this season Jerry West, a former Laker player and General Manager, and who, at that time, was the General Manager of the Memphis Grizzlies, traded Pau Gasol, one of the best centers in the league, for two less talented players, to the Lakers to be teamed up with Kobe Bryant. Those two trades were instrumental in putting McHale’s and West’s former teams into the NBA Finals.

Some people may think that this is a coincidence, where a former Laker and a former Celtic would make a trade to the betterment of their former teams and to the detriment of their current teams. But if you listen to Bob Avakian’s talk on the NBA, you would come to another conclusion—he explains how rigging things, like building up the Lakers and the Celtics, is part of the NBA’s marketing strategy. What is interesting is that now the Boston Celtics is an all-African American team, but the marketing of this NBA Finals still harkens back to the Bird-Johnson rivalry.

And now Tim Donaghy’s new assertion that the league rigs games also corroborates what Avakian was saying two years ago about the NBA and its “fakeness element.” Basketball fans have been incensed about what Donaghy has alleged. In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Eric Bailey says, “Fans have smothered sports talk radio shows with an avalanche of angry phone calls. They’ve compared NBA officiating to the artifice of big-time wrestling.”

But Avakian’s talk takes this much further. He explains how this “fakeness element” goes hand-in-hand with racism. In the NBA talk he brings out how the racism was promoted by the NBA and the media by using Larry Bird against African-American players like Julius Erving (Dr. J.), who played for the Philadelphia 76ers, and Isiah Thomas, who played for the Detroit Pistons.

That Tim Donaghy’s allegations are being made in the midst of one of the most heavily watched NBA Finals between the Celtics and the Lakers makes Avakian’s talk on the NBA more relevant then ever and will give people a much better and a materialist understanding of why this stuff is going on in the NBA. I urge everyone to listen to this talk.

Note: the title of my letter comes from Bob Avakian’s talk on the NBA where he discusses a “phantom” foul call at the end of the game between the Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat in the 2006 NBA Finals that gave Dwayne Wade of the Heat free throws that won the game for the Heat. After the game, Dallas owner Mark Cuban ran out on to the court and was alleged to have said to David Stern, Commissioner of the NBA, “Bleep you and your bleeping league. Your bleeping league is bleeping rigged.” Avakian says he does not know if this was actually said or not, and Cuban denies saying it. However, Avakian goes on to say that the actual truth is that, “That bleeping league IS bleeping rigged.”

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