Sports media outlets throughout the nation have spent the last two days debating the validity of Tim Donaghy’s recent claim that NBA executives had officials, not players, determine the outcome of playoff games. Donaghy has specifically mentioned at 2005 playoff game between the Dallas Mavericks and Houston Rockets and a 2002 Western Conference finals game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings.

Most have effectively dismissed the claims made regarding the Mavs/Rockets game. The gist of the accusation is that referees were asked to watch Yao Ming’s moving screens more closely due to the request of Mavs’ owner Mark Cuban. If true, the severity of such an arrangement is very minimal because, in reality, we’re talking about calling a foul that should’ve been called anyway. Sports writers and commentators have quickly recognized this as the non-story that it is. Besides, Cuban isn’t the best of friends with NBA commissioner David Stern, so it’s hard to believe that Stern would ever fix a game to benefit “The Benefactor“.

The brunt of the discussion this week has centered around the claim that officials were asked to aid the Lakers’ effort to overcome a 3-2 series deficit to the Kings in 2002. It’s easy to see that the NBA would prefer to have Los Angeles and their huge market in the finals over what might as well have been FC Sacramento because of their Euro-heavy lineup. At the time, PTI’s Michael Wilbon was covering the game for the Washington Post and made the following statement:

“I have never seen officiating in a game of consequence as bad as that in Game 6….When Pollard, on his sixth and final foul, didn’t as much as touch Shaq. Didn’t touch any part of him. You could see it on TV, see it at courtside. It wasn’t a foul in any league in the world. And Divac, on his fifth foul, didn’t foul Shaq. They weren’t subjective or borderline or debatable. And these fouls not only resulted in free throws, they helped disqualify Sacramento’s two low-post defenders. And one might add, in a 106-102 Lakers’ victory, this officiating took away what would have been a Sacramento series victory in 6 games.”-Michael Wilbon

With the country in support of the fact that the game referenced here was one of the worst officiated games in recent memory and the fact that Donaghy was the alternate official for that game, many are allowing themselves to believe a man who David Stern dismisses as a felon trying to lessen his sentence.

Why is no one suggesting that this desperate individual has successfully pointed to the most likely game because it’s just that “the most likely game”? In what may’ve been nothing more than poor officiating, given the outrage following the sixth game of that 2002 series, wouldn’t that be the easiest game for fans to believe was fixed? In my “believe what I want to believe” sports reality, Donaghy has done nothing more than point to the one who looks guilty.