Ahh, how little we learn when we don't really want to. Or in other words, Tim Donaghy.
|
|
| Just like Tim Donaghy, David Stern is interested in protecting himself. (Getty Images) |
In other words, the old lawyer's trick about attacking the attacker works as well as ever, at least to those who don't want to think for themselves, or wait for actual evidence to be produced.
And therein lies our amazement this day -- that we still find it so incredibly difficult to wait for someone's charges to be proven or disproved before either proclaiming them God's own truth, or Satan's own lie.
So let's run through the Donaghy case to show how this works.
Donaghy is trying to avoid jail time after being caught betting on games he worked as an NBA official. He claims through his lawyer to have information that other officials gambled as well, although it is not clear whether they bet on games or not, that in one case, an official passed information on to a coach and that the NBA pressured the U.S. Attorney's office in the Donaghy case to shut down the prosecution before it extended beyond Donaghy.
OK, fine. Now let's see them prove it. It is plausible that all the prongs of Donaghy's story are opportunistic lies; it is equally plausible that they are all the stone-cold truth. And the only way to know is for the prosecution to investigate each and every one of Donaghy's claims and find them either fruitful or false. Taking the NBA's word for it isn't good enough, for the same reason that taking an industry's word for anything isn't good enough.
And his character matters not. He's a criminal; of course his character stinks. But we're not judging him any more. We're judging his story, and as hard as this is for some to believe, a criminal can in fact tell the truth on occasion. Thus, the rush to judge Donaghy a lying swine without investigating his claims is as dishonest as doing it to anyone else. And if the NBA doesn't feel like investigating itself ... in fact, never mind. We don't want the NBA investigating itself any more than we want the NFL investigating Spygate or Major League Baseball investigating the performance-enhancing drug scandal.
And why? Because they all have a vested interest in coming up clean. That should be fairly obvious.
But somehow, it isn't; not to everyone, anyway.
Here's how the system ought to work. Donaghy makes his claims. The cops investigate. We hold our judgments until the investigation ends. If the cops come up with something, arrests follow, and David Stern holds another shame-drenched press conference. If not, Donaghy does the max.
But the important point here is that we wait to see what we get. Our pathological need to declare truth or falsehood before we even know what the story is constantly gets in the way of our intelligence, our credibility, and you would have thought that by now, we'd have learned that only morons rush to judgment. And maybe that's what we have learned -- that only morons rush to judgment. As a mere dolt, I want to know what Donaghy has before deciding how much to believe him. And no, I don't think NBA president for league and basketball operations Joel Litvin is the most credible source here, because he has the same reason to lie that Donaghy does -- preservation.
So I'm thinking that if you're ready to pick a side on this, you're probably better off shutting the hell up. Unless you've bet with an NBA official, or worked in the U.S. Attorney's office, or have Tim Donaghy's briefcase, you know nothing. This is a potentially horrific story for the league, exactly the one people thought could happen when Donaghy was first found out, which is why waiting is better than not. This could be a complete pack of nonsense.
But maybe it isn't. And until we hear an independent person or people in a position to know and without a side to choose say so, this is an open question, no matter how creepy Donaghy may be.
But that doesn't mean you can't still try to enjoy the playoffs -- if such a thing is possible this year.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
