Word: refereee
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For all the one-liners, the challenges facing the general are no joke. As the NBA tips off its 2008-'09 regular season this week, Johnson will inherit a demoralized group of referees who have taken a public beating in the fallout from the Tim Donaghy scandal. In August of...
But Donaghy made certain that the stench of corruption went beyond his own bad behavior, crashing this year's dream finals between the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers with scandalous accusations. Before Game 3 of that series, he alleged in a court filing that two refs conspired to fix...
Though federal prosecutors did not press charges on these allegations, and the NBA just released an independent report that refutes Donaghy's claims, the damage to referee credibility was done. "We were shaken," says Crawford, who himself came under fire in the spring of 2007 for jawing with and unnecessarily...
But NBA commissioner David Stern hired Johnson, who retired this spring as the second-highest-ranking engineer in the Army, for his management experience, not his ability to distinguish a charge from a blocking foul. "I've got some work to do to establish some credibility," Johnson, 54, admits. "But...
One of those who is sure to take him up on the offer - though he would surely make his opinion heard regardless - is Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, arguably the loudest ref critic on the planet. And though it's early in Johnson's tenure, Cuban is encouraged. "The biggest...