All Sport Report

Why is it that anytime anyone in the public eye does something stupid, illegal, or just plain morally wrong they have a “disease”? You just have to look at Hollywood to see that. Mel Gibson goes off on an anti-semantic tirade it wasn’t really his fault. He had a disease called alcoholism. When Lindsay Lohan got arrested, and arrested, and arrested she went to rehab, and another rehab, and another rehab because she was “sick” with an addiction problem. Then there is my favorite, Isaiah Washington. He called T.R. Night a f#@ not once, but twice (including mentioning it on television at the Golden Globes), and when he was facing major heat for it, he suggested he go to “rehab” to get help for his “problem”. He calls discrimination a problem a.k.a. a disease, while I call it ignorance.

Rather than take responsibility for their actions and change, these celebrities found scapegoats including blaming the booze, screaming racism, and hiding in rehab until things blew over. Yet, you know their efforts were insincere considering the fact that Lindsay (for example) has been caught over and over doing the same thing time and again. She never seems to learn. Meanwhile, Isaiah, who wronged T.R., changed the focus by saying his network just hates him because he’s a black man (in so many words) and that’s why he was fired. Great move to get the heat off your actions, Isaiah. Everybody loves a well prepared sob story.

I digress, because now this kind of “excuse by disease” mentality has headed to sports. In the wake of the biggest crisis in NBA history, the commissioner and other officials of the NBA have made it clear that while referee Tim Donaghy is indeed a criminal, you must excuse the behavior from affecting the NBA as a whole because Donaghy has a “disease”. Sure, they didn’t use the words disease per se, but they did say Donaghy had a gambling problem (which is technically considered as much of a disease as alcoholism is) and they also said it was a known fact.

The big question then becomes, what in the Sam Hill were the NBA officials thinking for allowing a known gambling addict to be the moral compass and judge of a competitive game? It just doesn’t make any sense. Further, it thrusts a lot more of the responsibility for the Donaghy betting and game throwing snafu on the NBA. Don’t get me wrong, the major player with the most amount of blame does need to be Donaghy himself, but the NBA shouldn’t have allowed him to be a part of the game if they were not certain he had all of the characteristics to accurately and fairly referee NBA games.

While the NBA Commissioner, David Stern, spoke to the press in a press conference, where he said that this was an “isolated incident” and he referred to Donaghy as a “rogue criminal”, the vast majority of us are not buying it. How can we be certain? We cannot even trust the NBA to hire people with the proper credentials, so why should we trust them to tell us the truth now after they have proven to be untrustworthy? All I can say is the NBA is in a load of trouble. They’re up a creek with a very small, non-existent paddle, and they may just have to get out of the boat if they wish to wade to safety, braving the violent current that is ready to sweep them up and wash them away, in the process. Who knows if the NBA will survive the floodwaters, because in truth, only time will tell.

As an NBA referee, Donaghy was not allowed to gamble on anything, NBA-related or not. He would have been lucky to play the lottery. Yet, in 2005, it was confirmed by Stern himself, that a firm had been hired to investigate Donaghy privately, concerning his gambling habits, so this scandal really was no news to these officials. They knew he was gambling already. The interesting part of this is that he was still able to referee well into the 2006-2007 season playoffs with no mention of his criminal activity and no slap on the hand…until now.

How many games did Donaghy throw? How many players, who worked their butts off on the court, did Donaghy jip out of better stats? What is going to be done about it, and will the NBA be able to recover? Do you think Donaghy’s actions should be excused because he has a “disease”? Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment and answering my questions.

NBA, Tim Donaghy, David Stern, Gambling Addiction, Disease, Scandal