NBA Paradox: Players Dumped Games But Owners Dump Entire Seasons

1/9/2015

Back in the day, fixers got arrested/ Photo by Weegee

A former college basketball star I know sees way too much of the New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers.

An intense player and demanding coach once upon a time, my friend has the distinct feeling he is observing a crime being committed.

We both knew players, decades ago, who dumped games, shaved points, to satisfy gamblers on one side of the point spread. Some (not all, I suspect) got caught. Many had their lives ruined; a few went to jail.

That is not the problem with the 76ers and Knicks, whose cumulative record was a ghastly 10 victories and 63 losses, as of Friday morning. The players are doing their earnest best to win but the owners are doing their dishonest best to keep the talent level down, in order to choose a top star in next spring’s college draft.

It enrages my competitive friend to see teams in the National Basketball Association skimping on salaries. He calls me and rails: What is the ethical difference between NBA teams ironically dumping games in plain sight by “virtue” of dumping salaries and the old point shaving by players?

My outraged hoopster friend asks if some of the executives’ activities are not some kind of crime, or at least a significant breach of competitive integrity? Why do the NBA poobahs allow such a public breach of faith with its fan base, the ultimate victims. Are the poobahs’ eyes shut to this “gaming of the system?”

I wonder if there is not some eager prosecuting attorney out there who could investigate the business tactic of tanking an entire season.

And what about the wealthy patrons who pay outrageous prices for seats and so-called food in Madison Square Garden? These folks did not accumulate their riches by being pushovers in their business lives. Is there not a potential class-action suit festering among the expensive suits at courtside?

Adam Silver, the still-new commissioner of the NBA, may be preoccupied by his announced goal of allowing gambling on his sport. Gambling used to be considered a vice. Now it is a way of raising money because people don’t like paying taxes for roads and bridges. Meanwhile, Silver has part of his league playing with inferior rosters in an attempt to reload, cover up past personnel mistakes, and take advantage of a system that is anti-competitive.

My friend used to dive for loose balls and rage against indifference. Now he sits in front of the tube and watches the Knicks and 76ers stagger around, according to the schemes of their ownerships.

I know of a former college player who got caught taking a few dollars to shave a few games. He’s never re-connected with teammates who would love to see him. He lives a clean life, after what he did. But the owners of NBA clubs sit in the front row and smirk.

Shouldn’t there be laws against owners blatantly trying not to win?

Whether it’s the owners or the players, dumping a game or a season emits the same foul odor.

In Sucker City, people pay to watch through peepholes

Thor A. Larsen

1/10/2015 04:33:03 am

George,

It would seem a simple solution to this problem: the selection process should not pre-determined by poorest record, but a RANDOM selection process. (A true lottery.)

Allowing gambling ?? Outrageous !!

Wasn't gambling that kept the incredibly talented Peter Rose out of the Hall of Fame ??

George Vecsey

1/10/2015 05:51:50 am

Thor, that's the joke of it. I should have footnoted it. The worst three teams enter a weighted lottery, so the worst record does not guarantee the first pick. But this process means that a near-worst team could still luck out. (Remember the Knicks getting Ewing?) In a year with a lot of talent, wretched teams are still rewarded. Hence, the year-long charade. GV

Brian Savin

1/11/2015 08:58:19 am

Thought provoking piece, GV. The thoughts it provokes in me aren't very cohesive, however.....
-- Well, for the first time in recent memory, the Knicks at least know what they are doing.
-- Actually, it's probably Jackson. Dolan on his own might do something even more stupid.
-- Why isn't there a move to demand lower ticket prices from the fans and media? About $5 sounds right. (And free food for the NYT beat reporter, if he ever comes back.)
-- Where are the billboards, fans? Fans? Fans? Is anybody out there?
-- Next good basketball game in NYC? Fordham-GWU, January 22.

George Vecsey

1/11/2015 09:41:34 am

Brian:
My alma mater, Hofstra, is 12-4, and plays much more cohesively than the hideous Knicks.
The NYT reporter couldn't accept free food. We've been paying for decades...and frankly my old paper Newsday was taking nothing free back in the early 60's.
Better to smuggle in something edible from the outside, anyway.
Your bigger point is whether the Knicks are bad on purpose or because the Curse of Dolan has stuck Jackson with Poor Clueless Melo. Either way, it is pathetic. GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

NBA Paradox: Players Dumped Games But Owners Dump Entire Seasons

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