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I don't spend much time on Deadspin. It's often funny, generally outrageous, and well-crafted. But there's a cynicism in the way they blur news-as-entertainment that has always made me uneasy about what makes the Web the Web.
And that's what makes Tim Donaghy such an intriguing and dangerous guy.
Deadspin has been examining Donaghy's efforts to sell a book on being a crooked NBA ref. If that man wrote an honest book about being a crooked ref, I'd read it intensely.
And that's the problem: How can you trust anything the man says?
Understand something: I've read several autobiographies of former made men in the Mafia. I believe most everything I read about Sammy "The Bull'' Gravano. But there was an odd integrity to that book; there is order, if not honor, in how those people treat what they do.
Donaghy is something different; a guy who renounced what he was - a fair arbiter of the rules.
I know a bunch of NBA refs, and I've seldom heard men angrier than the way they talk about this guy. That's mostly because he reinforces the worst myths about this profession: That when they make a mistake, it's not honest misfeasance, it's evil manipulation of the result.
And now anything Donaghy heard in hundreds of nights on the road will be skewed for dramatic effect. And that's sad because fans are too quick to assume their teams lose because of bias or dishonesty, as opposed to the obvious: Your team isn't as good as the one it played last night.
I think basketball is the hardest of the four major-league sports to officiate because it's such a game of flow. There are more subjective judgments (and I appreciate that NFL officials could call holding on every play, still...)
Donaghy is going to find someone to buy what he's selling. It will be sexy because everyone who cares wants to believe his team has been robbed.
The vast majority of these refs want to get every call right. They feel remarkable remorse when they realize they've screwed up.
So they don't deserve Tim Donaghy turning second-guessing into his second act.
AROUND THE LEAGUE: Ex-Charlotte Hornet Kurt Rambis is coaching the Minnesota Timberwolves this year, after several years as Phil Jackson's assistant with the Los Angeles Lakers.
"If you closed your eyes, you'd think it was Phil," Wolves forward Kevin Love said of Rambis' demeanor.
"It's definitely that same calmness. At first I thought he was kidding the way he was talking to us at training camp. I was wondering when he was going to start yelling at any moment, like any other coach."...
Quentin Richardson was traded four times this past summer. He said that never rattled him, in part because of some advice he got from Michael Jordan, after being drafted by the Los Angeles Clippers.
"Don't worry about that. You don't play for the Clippers, you play for the NBA,'' Richardson recalls Jordan saying. "Your job is to stick in the NBA as long as you can.''
It all worked out: Richardson is now a starter for the Miami Heat.
