http://www.cracked.com/article_16588_p2.html


NBA commissioner David Stern makes his second appearance on the list. If the NBA was the Mafia David Stern would be its Vito Corleone, if Vito Corleone came from the Shire instead of Sicily.

Hell, he's even a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (a group that some think secretly runs the world). Players dread getting called to his office in New York, and there are unconfirmed reports that upon leaving their meetings with Stern, they can be heard repeatedly muttering the phrase "one of us."


Theorists have said that for the duration of Stern's reign, things have played out a bit too conveniently, in the sense that big market teams seem to get all of the advantages. Many people, most notably ESPN.com's Sports Guy, point to the fact that the first year the league used a lottery to determine draft position, the league's biggest market team, the New York Knicks, somehow managed to land the top pick. They drafted Patrick Ewing, widely considered to be the sweatiest man to ever play the game.



Even worse, those same big-market teams seem to get some pretty favorable calls in the playoffs. This past season there were rumors that Stern was pulling the strings in order to get his most storied franchises, Boston and Los Angeles, into the finals.

How? Why, by having the referees make sure the calls went the right way. But even if Stern was as corrupt as Satan, the refs would never go along with such a scheme, right?

Why it Might be True :

Two words: Tim Donaghy.


Donaghy was an NBA referee, and an FBI investigation turned up evidence that he had a bit of a gambling problem. You can see where this is going. Rumors swirled that Donaghy owed money to the Mob (presumably the one that's not run by Stern) and started betting on games he worked so he could assure he got the right outcome.

A sports betting site figured out that nearly 60% of the games worked by Donaghy saw the participating teams going over the Vegas point projections, a number so high that gambling experts insisted could not have been reached without an outside influence.

So we have at least that much evidence that refs are corruptible. Now consider what Donaghy had to say about the 2002 playoff game between Sacramento and the Lakers, which many say is a prime example of referees stepping in and making sure the big market team won.

We're not going to say any more. We'll let you be the judge. Partially because the evidence isn't at all conclusive, but mainly because David Stern ****ing terrifies us.

Weak argument, but whatever