What did David Stern do to deserve a year like 2008?
The Celtics and Lakers were not just good again, but championship contenders again. The Western Conference had a playoff race that silenced those who call the league’s regular season meaningless. Playoff ratings were up across the board, and the NBA Finals drew their highest ratings in four years.
And Tim Donaghy accused the league of rigging games. “What did I do to deserve this?”, indeed.
It was a highly successful year for the NBA. Regular season ratings were up on ABC, marking the first time in over a decade that regular season ratings increased on broadcast. All Star Weekend in New Orleans was the polar opposite of the previous year in Las Vegas, with NBA players being showcased performing charitable endeavors. The NBA Playoffs were the most viewed ever on ESPN, and viewership for the Conference Finals on TNT and ESPN was up 25% and 51%, respectively, from 2007. The NBA Finals between the Celtics and Lakers averaged a 9.3 rating, the highest in four years, and a higher rating than October’s World Series — only the third time ever that the NBA Finals has beaten the World Series in the same calendar year. The Christmas Day rematch between the Celtics and Lakers drew a 5.3 rating, the second-highest rating for a regular season NBA game this decade.
Even overseas, the momentum continued. The U.S. men’s basketball team won the gold at the Beijing Olympics in August, with NBA players, most notably Kobe Bryant, being treated like rock stars. The game between the U.S. and China was estimated to be the most viewed basketball game ever (though estimations of 1 billion people watching were likely exaggerated). Overall, the two weeks became a showcase for the global spectacle that the NBA has become — a far cry from the scorn the league and its players garnered during the Athens and Sydney games.
And yet even with all of that success, no year would be complete without a major, apocalyptic controversy in the NBA. That came via disgraced convicted felon Tim Donaghy. Throughout the year, the former NBA referee, caught betting on games in ’07, kept giving hints that his misconduct was just the tip of the iceberg in the league. Then, hours before Game 3 of the NBA Finals, Donaghy’s lawyer released a bombshell court filing, accusing the NBA and its referees of conspiring to fix two playoff series — including the infamous 2002 Western Conference Finals.
Whether or not that allegation was true, many fans believed it almost unconditionally. The NBA’s officiating is such that fans of all thirty teams believe their team is being unfairly targeted by the referees. Even some Laker fans believe the 2004 NBA Finals was fixed because of a league vendetta against Kobe Bryant.
Despite the furor over the allegations, ratings held up for the NBA Finals. Literally a week after the accusations, it seemed that more fans were talking about the Celtics’ 17th NBA title than Donaghy. Throughout the offseason, small pieces kept popping up about the Donaghy affair. A retired FBI agent said he believed that what Donaghy claimed was true. Fox News reported that Donaghy made hundreds of calls to fellow NBA ref Scott Foster during the ’06-’07 season, the year Donaghy confessed to betting on games. And yet, at least through the first part of the 2008-09 season, Donaghy was a non-factor.
Do not expect the league to have the same luck in 2009. Donaghy will likely get out of prison sometime next year, and clearly has an agenda to try and bring the NBA down in any way he can. Donaghy also has significant credibility among NBA fans who would rather believe the referees are crooked than that their team lost fair and square. It would not be at all surprising to hear from Donaghy in some capacity, say, at around the All Star Game or the NBA Finals.
For the time being, the NBA can look at 2008 as an almost perfect year. The league returned to its status as a marquee television property. For the first time this decade, the Olympics were a PR triumph for the league, as opposed to a PR nightmare. And, even though there are those who still refer to the league as “ghetto garbage“, the image of its players has improved dramatically. Unfortuately for the league, while its players’ image has improved, the image of its referees has reached rock bottom. One somewhat encouraging sign: it appears that, like the steroids scandal in baseball, fans are more apathetic than angry about the Donaghy allegations.
