ESPN’s Bill Simmons calls it the “tipping point” of “the most damaging NBA season in three decades.”  Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration…but maybe it’s not.  Last week, NBA referee Tim Donaghy was accused of betting on the outcomes of the past two years of NBA games, including those that he officiated.  The FBI is investigating allegations that he tipped games in a particular direction, as well as potential ties to organized crime.  Forget Barry Bonds and Michael Vick.  This is a really, really big deal.

NBA Ref Tim Donaghy

It would be one thing if Donaghy (assuming that he’s guilty) was the only problem that the NBA was facing.  Then the solution would be relatively easy: sack Donaghy, revamp the referee selection process, and assure the public that everything is still okay with a couple new enforcement policies.  But it’s not that simple.  First of all, we still don’t know if Donaghy is an isolated incident or just the first person to get caught.  But more importantly, the NBA is already swamped in major criticisms over their officiating.  Last season, veteran referee Joey Crawford threw superstar Tim Duncan out of the game just because he was laughing while on the bench.  The flopping (or overacting to try to draw a foul call from the refs) epidemic in the league has gotten so bad that it’s more surprising if someone doesn’t exaggerate contact with an opponent than if they do.  A badly-worded regulation on bench decorum led to the potentially series-altering suspensions of Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw in the 2007 Playoffs (don’t even get me started on that one…Amare and Boris were clearly only making sure that Steve Nash was okay.  Check it out on Youtube). 

Indeed, Donaghy is only the latest, albeit the worst, affront of current NBA officiating.  So the easy solution – sack Donaghy, revamp the process, assure the public – isn’t going to cut it anymore.  Even when he’s gone, his legacy will remain.  It’ll be in the games and outcomes that he may or may not have affected with his whistles.  Even worse, it’ll be in the ponderings and accusations of every fan and player following each dubious call or evaluation.  And if decision X seems to be favoring one team over another, how can we be sure that it wasn’t intended to do so from the beginning?  Any trust that NBA fans still had in the game’s officiating is quickly disappearing.  Before the Donaghy scandal, was the problem fixable?  Absolutely.  Now?  I’m not so sure.

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 I hate to be depressing, but this week just wasn’t a good one for sports.  Before he could even finish celebrating his first-place finish at Stage 16 of the Tour de France, overall leader Michael Rasmussen was dropped by his own team and removed from the race on Wednesday, following reports that he missed random drug tests over the summer.  Rasmussen claimed that he was in Mexico, but another rider had stated that he had seen the race leader in Italy in mid-June, the same time that Rasmussen was supposed to take one of his examinations.  One could easily say that a couple missed tests shouldn’t justify dumping a rider as successful as Rasmussen – after all, we still don’t know whether he actually did anything wrong – but it does make some sense.  Anyone who calls themselves a professional biker absolutely must be aware of how serious the sport’s doping problem is, aware enough to not make even the slightest move that could cast suspicion upon them.  The ejection comes only a day after Alexandre Vinokourov, initially considered a favorite to win the race, withdrew following a failed drug test, and just hours after an entire contingent of participants staged a sit-in at the beginning of the sixteenth stage to protest the drug issues.  Rasmussen’s expulsion is only the second time in 104 years that a contestant has been kicked while leading the overall field, and came on the heels of his removal from the Dutch national team due to the same accusations.  Yet another depressing tidbit: With his substantial lead, Rasmussen seemed to be assured victory on Sunday’s final stage in Paris.  Now, every single winner or would-be-winner of the Tour since 1996 (Bjarne Riis, Jan Ullrich, Marco Pantani, Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis, and Rasmussen) has failed a drug test, admitted to using drugs, or faced multiple allegations of usage.

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 A lot of people have been talking about Tiger Woods’ 2007 “slump.”  Woods hasn’t managed to win a major since last year, and if he fails to win again at the PGA championships this August, it will be only the fourth year of his career without at least one major championship.  But the truth is that no other golf player on the tour would be described as being in a “slump” just because he went to a few majors without winning one – except for Tiger Woods.  Every time the “Tiger Woods struggles” talk comes up, that’s something that many people forget to keep in perspective.  It also may shed some new light on the reputations of players like Padraig Harrington.  The latest player to be cursed with the “good enough to contend but never good enough to win” moniker, Harrington finally had his breakthrough on July 22, winning his first major at the 2007 British Open.  The real question, though, is this: Is it that Harrington has only now become good enough to win his first major?  Or is it just that he was unlucky enough to be playing at the same time as someone like Tiger Woods?  If Woods slipped into a real slump, maybe other “never good enough to win” players like Harrington could get a chance to achieve similar breakthroughs.

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