It remains to be seen if the Tim Donaghy investigations will hurt Las Vegas’ chances of attracting an NBA franchise, but at least one gaming industry source tells USA Today’s Chuck Johnson that perhaps his business would prefer not to be associated with David Stern’s.
Alan Feldman, senior vice president of public affairs for the MGM Mirage, said “time will tell” if there have been any irregularities in betting on NBA games.
“From the way this unfolded, it appeared no one in Nevada had any knowledge of this,” Feldman said. “I have to believe that everyone involved ” the FBI, the league, Nevada regulators, the sports book operators and the customers ” will want to know if there’s any information that will shed light on this. We’ll do everything we can if it means bringing additional light.
Contrary to Mayor Oscar Goodman’s open-arms invitation to the league, Feldman said an NBA team might not be the right fit for Las Vegas’ gaming industry.
“We’re one of the most highly regulated industries in America and we live and die on our integrity,” Feldman said. “We can do nothing to put that in jeopardy. If it turns out that the league is shown to be incapable of protecting the integrity of their game, it’s not a league we need to have in Las Vegas.”
Basketbawful has reviewed the charges against the man Stephen A. Smith has called “the rogue ref”, and would like to say, “thank you, Tim Donaghy. Thank you for making us seem so smart.”
For quite some time, we at Basketbawful have bemoaned the inconsistent – and sometimes absurd – officiating of NBA games. It has actually made it more difficult, over time, to watch this sport we love so dearly. We’ve joked, we’ve needled, we’ve made assertions that somebody is “on the take.” And yet despite our most acrimonious accusations, in the back of our minds we always thought these officiating mishaps were honest, albeit incompetant, mistakes. There was that notion – naive perhaps – that the league, while grossly imperfect, was clean.
And now here comes Tim Donaghy, galloping in on a white horse to justify all of those assertions we made.
The saddest thing about the NBA point-shaving scandal? That Bill Simmons can actually ID Timothy Olyphant and believes Turtle from “Entourage” could play the part of a mob “muscle guy”.
I live in Vegas a 67 year old retired manager. Feldman does not speak for the city he barely speaks for MGM. This city can handle Stern and his arrogant staff. This nit-wit official is a lone wolf who has been on the outside and should have been detected far earlier than now. I hear folks say that Vegas should have caught the number changes….pretty difficult to catch the over/under movement that this guy was doing. Feldman needs to stay with his comfort area of hotel politics and leave this to the big boys.
The NBA conspiracy nuts don’t deserve a shred of credit. Wasn’t the core of every conspiracy theory that Stern and television were influencing the refs and outcomes of the games? That isn’t even close to a guy blowing his whistle to jack up scores.
I think there’s something fishy about college football and basketball. I’ll be back to collect credit the next time someone gets caught doing something wrong.