If the NBA is rigged, it's got to get a lot better at it

Trying to judge the impact of last summer's Tim Donaghy scandal, I recently called around to assess the reaction of the congenitally suspicious core audience . . . the gamblers.

It turned out there was no impact.

The Donaghy blockbuster, the latest story that seemed to presage The Death of the NBA, quickly faded away in what turned out to be a great season for the league.

"My gut feeling," says Bruce Marshall, associate editor of the Gold Sheet, "is it didn't change NBA betting one way or the other."

In other words, it looks like gamblers accepted the notion that Donaghy was what the league insisted he was, a rogue.

However, there was one wrinkle that was pure NBA.

One local bookmaker, asking to remain anonymous since making book is illegal, said a lot of NBA bettors grumble about conspiracies -- while continuing to bet on NBA games.

"They're betting on games they think may be fixed?" I asked.

"They're trying to figure out which way the league is fixing it," the guy said, laughing.

This just confirms what I've always known:

Everyone connected with the NBA from the league office to the owners, coaches, players, entourages, mascots, fans and, of course, press people, is out of his gourd.

Just how this ongoing conspiracy theory attaches itself specifically to the NBA -- and only the NBA -- has never been explained.

NFL officials are part-timers who can call holding on any play. Baseball umpires have personal strike zones. College basketball is almost as hard to officiate as the NBA game and, as its history of point-shaving scandals shows, easier to corrupt.

All have ongoing conflict with officials . . . but only in the NBA is it perceived as part of a wider conspiracy.

Every baseball team has umpiring crews it hates. Managers kick the ground, remove the bases and get ejected but the next day everyone starts over without any talk of a plot.

The skepticism with which the NBA is perceived stems from the league's image as a perennial mutt.

In the '50s it was derided as a "YMCA league," in the '60s as "bush."

In the '70s, it was the league that was obliged to try to market predominantly African American players to white fans.

Then after race declined as an issue in the NBA's golden age with Magic Johnson and Larry Bird in the '80s and its zenith with Michael Jordan in the '90s, along came hip-hop, the Internet and worldwide tabloid journalism.