Is the NBA rigged? Reports surface as the 2016 finals ramp up.
From 1994 to 2007, Tim Donaghy worked as a professional basketball referee in the NBA for 13 seasons. During his career in the NBA, Donaghy officiated over 700 regular season basketball games and 20 playoff games. But, after an investigation by the FBI, Tim Donaghy retired from the league for betting on games that he officiated on during his last two seasons and that he made calls affecting the point spread in those games. He would later plead guilty to two federal charges related to the investigation.
In 2008, he filed a court document alleging that Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings was fixed by two referees. According to Donaghy, he “learned from Referee A that Referees A and F wanted to extend the series to seven games. Tim knew Referees A and F to be ‘company men’, always acting in the interest of the NBA, and that night, it was in the NBA’s interest to add another game to the series.”
It’s titled “Lakers 2013 Playoff Conspiracy:”
The Lakers won Game 6 by attempting 18 more free throws than the Kings in the fourth quarter, and went on to win the 2002 NBA Finals. The teams were not named in the court documents, but according to investigators, the Western Conference Finals was the only seven-game series that year. The document also claimed that Donaghy told federal agents that he was told to make those decisions in order to increase television ratings and ticket sales, “top executives of the NBA sought to manipulate games using referees”. It also said that NBA officials would tell referees to not call technical fouls on certain basketball players, and points out that a referee was punished by the league for ejecting a star player in the first quarter of a January 2000 game.
Fast forward to 2016, the NBA Playoffs are in full-swing and rumors are circulating around the Internet that the games are rigged. Most recently, NBA’s Official Facebook page revealed that the Warriors are going to win Game 7 of the NBA Western Conference Finals. The NBA listed several upcoming events that included Game 1 and Game 2 of the Finals, scheduled for Thursday and Sunday nights, to be played between the Warriors and the Cavs at Oracle Arena in Oakland. The Warriors may win Game 7 but they still have to play it. The league has since deleted the info from its page but the damage may already have been done.
We will have to wait and see if this year’s NBA Finals is actually rigged. But, until then it’s just another conspiracy theory.
Update:
The Warriors defeated the Oklahoma Thunder, just as the NBA’s official Facebook page predicted.
Share with us your thoughts in the comments below.
