Lupica Does Not Know Evil

At one point in his career, Mike Lupica was regarded as one of the country's best sports writers. In the present he's well-known for his appearances on the The Sports Reporters. Despite having having a panel of 4 people, Lupica speaks for 90% of the show and interrupts everyone with his PC jargon and valiant non sequiturs. I used to love that show, but now it is terrible compared to PTI and even Around the Horn. If Lupica was on Around the Horn, he would be muted more than Helen Keller. Anyways, earlier in the week Lupica wrote a piece declaring gambling as the "root of all evil". Below is a breakdown of the numerous misrepresentations littered throughout his article along with our commentary.

"For the longest time, the biggest professional sports have wrung their hands in public about illegal gambling, and how it can corrupt everything and everybody, and continued to treat legal gambling with a wink and a nod. "

If the major professional sports treated legal gambling with more respect, as FIFA is attempting to do and the NFL already does, they would be more prepared for the ill-effects of illegal gambling and corruption of referees, players, coaches, etc. The NBA is not doing enough winking and nodding at Las Vegas.

"Or perhaps you think the National Football League puts out those injury reports every week because they think we're worried if the sick players are getting better."

As the Sports Lawyer notes, if the NBA had put out similar injury reports as the NFL does, inside information would be drastically reduced and Donaghy would not have been near as helpful as an informant.

"Even the people running the NFL know that it's not just the most popular sport on television because of those real hard hits. Part of the huge appeal of pro football is because it generates the most betting, insane amounts of money changing hands all the way to Super Sunday. Basketball? There's games every night. Like it or not, that means the red-light district is always right across the street.

Why is this a problem? People are going to gamble no matter what counter-productive laws the empty suits in Washington DC pass. Don't believe me? Prohibition and the War on Drugs worked out real well didn't they? It's much better to regulate and publicly disclose as much information as possible. If a blanket law was passed outlawing all gambling people would resort to shady offshore shops and even shadier local bookies. Instead, myriad legitimate, reputable gambling options exist.

"Somebody walked across that street and put the arm on Donaghy, the one ref we know about so far with a gambling problem, gave him a moonlighting job as a way to get out from under his debts. So are you shocked about Donaghy, or more shocked that it took this long for some enterprising bad guys to figure out a way to finance bad behavior like this?"

I don't think any rational person is shocked. As mentioned previously, increasing referee salary and disclosing "insider information" would drastically reduce this risk. Additionally, I wouldn't say that $5,000 a pick is going to get him out of debt very quickly. Donaghy has either taken the short bus his whole life or had an alternative motive for providing picks than just money.

"Gambling is supposed to be bad, bad, bad, around pro basketball and everything else. But it is perfectly all right for the owners of the Sacramento Kings, the Maloof brothers, who own one of the biggest and gaudiest casinos in Las Vegas. This past year, the NBA decided to take All-Star weekend to Vegas, and there is always talk that the sports leagues are trying to figure out some way to put a franchise there.

Gambling is not "bad, bad, bad". It provides entertainment and creates jobs. Although one could argue it doesn't exactly create wealth, is that really any different than the entertainment industry? Putting a franchise in Vegas is a brilliant idea unless you think we should move another professional franchise to Hartford.

"There is a vulgar amount of money in sports and an army of young guys spending it, in all sorts of ways, hanging around with all sorts of people, in all sorts of places. On both sides of the street. If commissioners are going to police all that, if they want to be the traffic cops, they're going to have to put on more people."

Guess who is responsible for the "vulgar amount of money" in sports. The fans. The networks. The broadcasters. You. Me. Don't patronize the young guys earning all the money; they're doing what any rational person with exceptional athletic talent would do. Also, the only PLAYERS that have ever been enticed into throwing games are college players, who, shockingly are UNPAID. Vulgar amounts of money decrease the possibility of Donaghy-like events; it does not increase them.
Unfortunately the NBA and David Stern decided to take the ball-less approach - the one that looks great on paper and appeases fans and front office suits in the short-term, but doesn't do anything to solve the long-term problem of transparency. The other day, the NBA hired Lawrence B. Pedowitz to analyze the NBA's anti-gambling polices and monitoring processes for the NBA's officials. So far, I have received 8 press releases from different teams as the NBA has tried to force this down the throat of their teams and subsequently their fans. Stayed tune for a crack down on NCAA Tourney pool participants and casual, insignificant gamblers.

Written by Lewis and Kevin.

Donaghy is Dumber than We Thought

When news of the Donaghy betting scandal first broke, I wasn't particularly surprised. It was relatively easy to see how the temptation of riches could push someone in the wrong direction. It's happened countless time before. Since Donaghy had a job paying over five times the median American household income, I figured he was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for his services. I was wrong. Yesterday the Smoking Gun reported Donaghy was only paid $5,000 per winning pick (Donaghy wasn't penalized or compensated for losing picks) by professional gambler James Battista, who according to ESPN's Lester Munson was known as a big betting mover. Unless Donaghy was submitting 50-100 winning picks per season, this appears to be a ridiculously small sum considering the amount of money wagered on his picks, and Donaghy's salary and job stability with the NBA.

As we mentioned in a previous post, most of the NBA's gambling problem would partially defuse if the NBA paid their referees more money. Would $5,000 per winning pick really be worth losing a stable job paying our recommended high six figure salary? This being in addition to all the perks the referees receive from the league. Sure, you'd still have action-loving addicts like Charles Barkley to worry about, but the move would significantly reduce the risk of people chancing their career and the league's image to make some extra money on the side.

Going forward, it will be interesting to see the types of picks Donaghy submitted (e.g. spread, over/under, straight up) , what percent of his picks turned out to be winners and how much money he netted in total from the scheme. In the present, that isn't likely since the case isn't going to trial. However, more information could be revealed if the investigation snowballs.

Update: SH favorite, the Sports Law Professor has a insightful take on the matter here. I especially like the idea of making available "insider information", specifically player injuries and the names of referees like the NFL does. Lupica has a terrible, logical fallacy-filled piece here, which we'll discuss later in the week.

How to Fix the NBA's Gambling Problem

A lot has been made of the Donaghy point-shaving scandal. Some have eagerly offered suggestions to Stern on how to fix it, others don't know what to think and some have taken a much more collected approach while Stern already overreacted. Despite all the news coverage, what most of the public doesn't understand is that if Donagal is indeed guilty, it's highly probable that his actions primarily affected the Over/Under of basketball games, which are substantially easier to control than win-loss outcomes.

Although to some the situation certainly appears dire, it's not near as hard to fix as some people are making it out to be. What the ordeal hinges on is David Stern and his merry band of TPS Report-bearing yes-man, and their willingness to listen to others' ideas while being sure to not overreact. As the Sports Law Professor eloquently points out: this game fixing scandal really isn't that big of a deal, especially considered the amount of times similar situations have happened in NCAA basketball.

With all that said, here are my relatively easy to execute suggestions on how to fix the NBA's gambling problem:

1) Copy the NFL. As Brandon Lang mentions in his interview with Wayne Drehs "In the NFL, there's a task force that on Monday reviews every critical call that came anywhere near the point spread. I don't believe that's ever been done in the NBA." Sure there would be a lot more games to review, but the NBA certainly has the resources to make this happen - why aren't they doing this?

2) Pay the Refs more. As I discussed in a prior post, if you pay the referees more money, they have significantly less incentive to cheat. There's a reason players are rarely involved in these type of scandals: it isn't worth it. Pay the refs $500,000 to $1.5 million. Not only will this help recruit better talent (more people will want to become referees because it pays so well), the incentive to cheat will be greatly diminished. I promise the league can afford it.

3) Finally, hold David Stern to his words and make the NBA truly transparent. In a recent article, Chris Sheridan mentioned posting all NBA referee statistics online. This is a brilliant idea and one I wanted to elaborate on. Not only would this action add transparency, but it would also outsource a significant amount of the work. Stats geeks like John Hollinger, David Berri, Mark Cuban et al. along with numerous bloggers would be all over this data. There'd constantly be outside articles and analysis going on throughout the season in addition to the NBA's own inhouse team.

Stein Misses the Point

Earlier today, Marc Stein of ESPN wrote this in his Donaghy Questions & Answers article:

"If salaries were raised, would that reduce the possibility of referees being lured into the sort of activities Donaghy is accused of?

Referees make only a fraction of what NBA players earn, true, in a league in which the average player salary tops $5 million.

Yet it's a significant stretch to suggest they're all desperate for dollars -- even if you want to overstate things and make it sound as though fighting off such temptations is a common problem.

Entry-level referees are paid in the $85,000 area, according to league sources, but the overwhelming majority are six-figure earners. At the high end of the scale, salaries surpass $300,000.

It's believed that a referee with Donaghy's experience makes more than $200,000 annually, with extra cash coming in the playoffs.

The median wage and salary income in this country in 2005, according to U.S. Census data, was $34,926 for men and $23,546 for women."

I usually like Stein, but he completely misses the mark here. With regards to NBA basketball and gambling it doesn't matter how much the average person in the U.S. earns - these players, coaches and even referees are in a different world. What matters is that referees can easily earn more than 1x-5x their salary in a week long stretch of games without drawing any bookie-based red flags ( i.e. in Vegas people wouldn't look twice at mid five to low six figure bets).

In contrast, an NBA player, with an average single year salary of over $5.0 million would rarely risk millions upon millions of dollars in current and future salary along with endorsement opportunities and royalties payments for relative chump change point shaving. Additionally, if they wanted to reap rewards greater than their salary their bets would almost certainly draw scrutiny.

Money provides with people with incentive even if they aren't "desperate for dollars". Additionally, this situation exemplifies why having a team in Vegas shouldn't be a concern - at least as far as gambling goes. The internet is ubiquitous; people can place a bet anywhere as it doesn't matter where the team is playing. Generally speaking, players make too much money to ever risk it all wagering on games or point shaving. And the players who don't usually aren't significant enough factors alter the game outcome.