Did he beat the spread 37 out of 47 times? That would indeed point to a problem, either with the way the spread is arrived at, or with the officiating.

Or did he predict the winer correctly? That might not be that hard, given the non-parity in the NBA; to say how plausible this is, one would have to know the games involved. Maybe to a test: just assume you picked every NBA game's winner last season, or over ten seasons, with the spread - what's you winning percentage? I would not be surprised to see it at 75% or so.

I bet you they wish there was a black guy with baggy pants to blame this on.

@christian--

obviously, he predicted the winner + spread -- otherwise it wouldn't be much good in gambling terms.

there's a lengthy interview somewhere in the espn.com archives with a professional gambler who's made a fortune betting on NBA games over the past 10 years or so. His job, he said, was made a lot easier when the NBA started publishing the ref crew prior to the game. Doesn't that indicate a problem, Mr. Stern?

With all the prosperity that Stern's overseen for the past 30 years, this will be one of the stories that haunts his tenure -- along with the rampant over-expansion and uprooting of franchises like the Sonics with wink-wink deals for corrupt owners.

But I seriously doubt that even any of the milder reforms you suggest, King, will be implemented. Stern is too arrogant with his product and his power.

Several years ago some NBA officials were caught skimming on their travel expenses. They were doing something like trading in their first-class tickets for coach, making tens of thousands of dollars a season. I may be "misremembering" but I don't think the league did anything about it (though they owed Uncle Sam a lot of back taxes). This certainly did not send the message from the NBA that we expect the highest levels of integrity from our referees.

You are right about Stern, at this point he is way to arrogant to implement any real changes. From all his comments lately especially related to the Sonics and the refs, he seems to believe he is doing absolutely nothing wrong at all. In his mind, it seems the problems is the fans complaints, not really any problems with the NBA.

Gang signs, oh they'll take care of that immediately, "thuggish" dress style, defintely a problem there, but refs nah, no problem what are you talking about.

The NBA has been claiming for years that its referees are right ninety-something percent of them time. For the league to completely overhaul its officiating system would require an admission that they have been misleading fans for all that time. David Stern is never going to do that.

There is a slim possibility that the next commissioner might be willing to take such a step, but I doubt it.

The NBA fired the officials who were pocketing the arline-ticket difference and not reporting it to the IRS. I personally trace the decline in NBA officiating quality to that moment; most of the fired officials were longtime veterans, and suddenly there were not enough experienced refs to mentor the new ones.

MCD I bet you they wish there was a black guy with baggy pants to blame this on.

I don't get it. Am I being dense? I'm trying to piece together some kind of "Wizard of Oz"/M.C. Hammer reference ...

But to the 'sport' not so much. It's entertainment. If the corporate body that owns the sport sees fit to tweak it to the extent that the fans get to see some extra bball then so what? It's not as if lives depend on it (well maybe if you owe Big Angelo 10 large it does). People take this crap too seriously. Guess what, Batman's not a real person either.

I think King's recommendations are a little over the top for something that's supposed to be as transparent as refereeing. What are we basing our assumptions about refereeing on? A few botched plays over the last few years? So what.

Should we also tilt the table in the referees' favor and tabulate the calls they got right, see if that outnumbers the ones they got wrong? But nobody would be willing to do that because we like to zero in on the deficiencies, and to see where we can gain an advantage for our hometown team.

Should we take the judgment out of every call, rewrite the rule so that there is no judgment to be made at all on the floor, to make it so rote and robotic that we'll get the Cyclops from tennis and reprogram it to handle basketball as well? "BOOP!" the Cyclops will screech, without knowing that the contact was two players high-fiving each other (oh wait, that might be deemed as 'hip-hop style' and subject to league action).

Be careful what you wish for, King. I know you need fodder for your daily sports column, but I think we can file this case under OVER AND DONE. I, for one, am done with it as I could care less about the subversive agenda Bennett Salvatore or Joey Crawford might have against Tim Duncan or Dwayne Wade. Which means that a spat or argument they had a few years ago might temper their handling of a future game. (If it's a point-shaving scheme, then I'm sure those veteran refs would have been ferreted out by now.)

And you know what? I can handle the humanistic part of that interaction. Joey and Tim yelling at each other! That's awesome. That's humans being humans. Do I want the alternative? Which is Tim Duncan hooking up his laptop to the Cyclops and uploading a virus.

If we're going to erect a filter so fine so as to ensure that only PhD's and Gandhi-like characters become officials, well, I don't know if I want NBA games officiated to that sort of scrutiny, devoid of any human error. I don't want rules rewritten to remove any notion of judgment--that's why the referees are there, to interpret; us armchair fans are there to yell against their interpretation and that's why I love being a fan.