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The 26-33 NO Pelicans front-office want to TANK on AD final contract season .. AD is not TANKING !!!
mafra
Legend
According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the Pelicans have parted ways with GM Dell Demps.
The Pelicans 2018-19 season has been a disaster. After advancing to the second round of the playoffs last year, they are out of the postseason picture and their franchise cornerstone, Anthony Davis, has requested a trade. Demps ended up being the fall guy. Per Woj, "Ownership was livid with an injured Anthony Davis leaving the arena during Thursday night?s game. Gayle Benson is telling associates she wants an overhaul of Pelicans and a search for a GM to take command of Davis trade talks and the reshaping of team?s future."
The Pelicans 2018-19 season has been a disaster. After advancing to the second round of the playoffs last year, they are out of the postseason picture and their franchise cornerstone, Anthony Davis, has requested a trade. Demps ended up being the fall guy. Per Woj, "Ownership was livid with an injured Anthony Davis leaving the arena during Thursday night?s game. Gayle Benson is telling associates she wants an overhaul of Pelicans and a search for a GM to take command of Davis trade talks and the reshaping of team?s future."
This might be the fastest that I have ever seen one of these situations escalate in the NBA.
We all knew it was Rondo's veteran experience leadership last postseason that got the Pelican's past the first round, sweeping the Portland Blazers.
The Pelican's let FA Rondo & FA Cousin walk to the next team in the 2018 off-season !!!
mafra
Legend
Not surprising to me at all:
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25980368/how-former-ref-tim-donaghy-conspired-fix-nba-games
?"You wanna get paid?" Battista had said to the ref. "Then you gotta cover the f---ing spread." The bribe was only two dimes, $2,000 per game-an outrageous bargain. If the pick won, the ref got his two dimes. If the pick missed, the ref owed nothing; Battista would eat the loss. A "free roll," as they call it. But this referee didn't lose much. His picks were winning at an 88 percent clip, totally unheard of in sports betting for any sustained period of time. They were now entering the sixth week of the scheme-what you might call a sustained period of time.
Battista had known the ref, Timmy Donaghy, for 25 years. They'd gone to the same parochial high school in the working-class Catholic ghettos of Delaware County, just outside Philadelphia-Delco, as it's sometimes called-where the sports bars are abundant, where a certain easy familiarity with all forms of gambling prevails, where guys have bookies like they've got dentists.
IT REMAINS ONE of the most tantalizing questions in all of American professional sport: Does game-fixing still exist? In the 100 years since 1919, when gamblers blackened the Chicago White Sox, only the Tim Donaghy scandal has offered the hint of an answer -- but also a repudiation.
For 11 years, the official plotline has been that Donaghy was a rogue, gambling-addicted ref who made some bets on his own games -- and nothing more. The NBA conducted its own investigation and concluded that Donaghy, in fact, did not fix games. But for many in and around the league, suspicions have remained that the full story has not been told, that what really happened has been suppressed.
THERE ARE MANY misconceptions about the Tim Donaghy scandal. Perhaps the greatest is this: that Donaghy was the ref who colluded with gamblers on NBA games for one disgraceful season.
That is incorrect. According to a court document, Donaghy and Concannon placed their first bet on a game Donaghy was refereeing in March 2003 -- more than four years and four NBA seasons before he was caught.
When Donaghy reffed and Concannon bet, the side he bet was covering the spread between 60 and 70 percent of the time. The Animals went so far as to study the box scores after each of Donaghy's outings. "If you looked at the stats," said one gambler in The Office at the time, "you could see he was calling more fouls on the team he bet against and less fouls on the team he bet on. That was obvious."
Said another: "Did I assume he was fixing the games? Yeah, I did. But I didn't give a s---, because it was great information. From 2003 to 2007, we didn't miss a game. Any game that he reffed we had a wager on.
According to Martino, if Donaghy mentioned out-of-state Johnny's name, the pick was for the visiting team. If Donaghy talked about Chuck, bet the home side. Not exactly the Enigma cipher but better than yapping about specific teams and risking someone overhearing.
Donaghy calling two fouls 50 seconds apart against the 76ers' leading scorer, Andre Iguodala, in the third quarter against Boston, with the score's margin right on the spread. Iguodala heading to the bench; Boston covering the spread ... Donaghy in Seattle, the Sonics hosting the Mavericks, calling 11 straight fouls against Seattle as well as the last foul of the night, with 23 seconds to go. Dallas making both free throws, increasing its lead to eight. The closing line: Dallas by 8 ... Donaghy on New Year's Day in Charlotte calling 14 fouls against the Bobcats, five against the Timberwolves; the Wolves covering ...
And then Donaghy whistling fouls on the visiting Heat 12 times in Madison Square Garden compared to four against the Knicks; the Knicks covering ... Martino flying to Toronto to pay Donaghy and to party, ordering prostitutes from a website ... Donaghy on March 14 in Indianapolis calling four straight fouls in the fourth against the underdog Pacers when they were losing by six to the visiting Wizards. Favored by 6, the visiting Wizards covering ... Battista on March 15 confessing to his wife that he'd lost $7 million of his clients' money ... Battista on March 16 strung out and sleepless at Martino's house and surrounded suddenly by almost his entire immediate family. An intervention ... Battista two days later wearing a bathrobe in rehab.
IT WASN'T JUST Donaghy who tried to convince the FBI that he didn't fix games. The NBA did too. Whenever Scala's special agents interviewed NBA executives for the case, they heard a refrain: "They told us, 'You can't fix a game in the NBA. It's impossible,'" Scala says. Too many invested observers-referee supervisors, coaches, players, owners, media, fans-would be too quick to complain if they saw something fishy, the NBA argued. But as Scala put it, "When someone tells you something's impossible, you know they're full of s---, because nothing's impossible. But that was the company line."
Instead, he surprised me. "There were lots of whistles in the game, by him, that did not fit the game," he says. "It's called literal interpretation."
What does it mean to "fix" a game? And how, in turn, could you uncover evidence of it years, even a decade, later? The methods of fixing are rather straightforward. A player who's on the take can shave points, purposely missing baskets, say, in an effort to lower the score for his side. A ref, on the other hand, can effectively add points -- calling fouls that result in free throws. And if a ref were to target one particular team with fouls, he could push the score for the opposing side higher than it otherwise would be.
"By six points either way. That's what he told me." Tommy Martino on how much Donaghy said he could influence an NBA game.
It is normal, of course, for a referee to call more fouls against one team than the other. There will almost always be an imbalance of calls. But examine that imbalance against the financial imbalances discovered in the trading histories-which side received the heavier betting -- and the important comparison isn't between Donaghy's foul calls and the team that won the game. The important comparison is to the team that received the greater amount of betting dollars.
Once we completed all of that, what we uncovered was that Donaghy's foul calls favored the team that received the heavier betting 70 percent of the time. But we also found that in 10 games during that 40-game span, one team was defeating the other team to such a degree that the spread was rarely in doubt. A referee wishing to manipulate game scores on these occasions would likely find he lacked much ability to sway the matter -- or the need to do so, if the score was already in his favor. And so, controlling for blowouts by removing those games from the ledger, what we ultimately found was this: Donaghy favored the side that attracted more betting dollars in 23 of those 30 competitive games, or 77 percent of the time. In four games, he called the game neutrally, 50-50. The number of games in which Tim Donaghy favored the team that attracted fewer betting dollars? Three.
In other words, Donaghy's track record of making calls that favored his bet was 23-3-4.
If one assumes there should be no correlation between wagers and the calls made by a referee, the odds of that disparity* might seem unlikely. And they are. When presented with that data, ESPN statisticians crunched the numbers and revealed: The odds that Tim Donaghy would have randomly made calls that produced that imbalance are 6,155-to-1.
(This is a long article)
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25980368/how-former-ref-tim-donaghy-conspired-fix-nba-games
?"You wanna get paid?" Battista had said to the ref. "Then you gotta cover the f---ing spread." The bribe was only two dimes, $2,000 per game-an outrageous bargain. If the pick won, the ref got his two dimes. If the pick missed, the ref owed nothing; Battista would eat the loss. A "free roll," as they call it. But this referee didn't lose much. His picks were winning at an 88 percent clip, totally unheard of in sports betting for any sustained period of time. They were now entering the sixth week of the scheme-what you might call a sustained period of time.
Battista had known the ref, Timmy Donaghy, for 25 years. They'd gone to the same parochial high school in the working-class Catholic ghettos of Delaware County, just outside Philadelphia-Delco, as it's sometimes called-where the sports bars are abundant, where a certain easy familiarity with all forms of gambling prevails, where guys have bookies like they've got dentists.
IT REMAINS ONE of the most tantalizing questions in all of American professional sport: Does game-fixing still exist? In the 100 years since 1919, when gamblers blackened the Chicago White Sox, only the Tim Donaghy scandal has offered the hint of an answer -- but also a repudiation.
For 11 years, the official plotline has been that Donaghy was a rogue, gambling-addicted ref who made some bets on his own games -- and nothing more. The NBA conducted its own investigation and concluded that Donaghy, in fact, did not fix games. But for many in and around the league, suspicions have remained that the full story has not been told, that what really happened has been suppressed.
THERE ARE MANY misconceptions about the Tim Donaghy scandal. Perhaps the greatest is this: that Donaghy was the ref who colluded with gamblers on NBA games for one disgraceful season.
That is incorrect. According to a court document, Donaghy and Concannon placed their first bet on a game Donaghy was refereeing in March 2003 -- more than four years and four NBA seasons before he was caught.
When Donaghy reffed and Concannon bet, the side he bet was covering the spread between 60 and 70 percent of the time. The Animals went so far as to study the box scores after each of Donaghy's outings. "If you looked at the stats," said one gambler in The Office at the time, "you could see he was calling more fouls on the team he bet against and less fouls on the team he bet on. That was obvious."
Said another: "Did I assume he was fixing the games? Yeah, I did. But I didn't give a s---, because it was great information. From 2003 to 2007, we didn't miss a game. Any game that he reffed we had a wager on.
According to Martino, if Donaghy mentioned out-of-state Johnny's name, the pick was for the visiting team. If Donaghy talked about Chuck, bet the home side. Not exactly the Enigma cipher but better than yapping about specific teams and risking someone overhearing.
Donaghy calling two fouls 50 seconds apart against the 76ers' leading scorer, Andre Iguodala, in the third quarter against Boston, with the score's margin right on the spread. Iguodala heading to the bench; Boston covering the spread ... Donaghy in Seattle, the Sonics hosting the Mavericks, calling 11 straight fouls against Seattle as well as the last foul of the night, with 23 seconds to go. Dallas making both free throws, increasing its lead to eight. The closing line: Dallas by 8 ... Donaghy on New Year's Day in Charlotte calling 14 fouls against the Bobcats, five against the Timberwolves; the Wolves covering ...
And then Donaghy whistling fouls on the visiting Heat 12 times in Madison Square Garden compared to four against the Knicks; the Knicks covering ... Martino flying to Toronto to pay Donaghy and to party, ordering prostitutes from a website ... Donaghy on March 14 in Indianapolis calling four straight fouls in the fourth against the underdog Pacers when they were losing by six to the visiting Wizards. Favored by 6, the visiting Wizards covering ... Battista on March 15 confessing to his wife that he'd lost $7 million of his clients' money ... Battista on March 16 strung out and sleepless at Martino's house and surrounded suddenly by almost his entire immediate family. An intervention ... Battista two days later wearing a bathrobe in rehab.
IT WASN'T JUST Donaghy who tried to convince the FBI that he didn't fix games. The NBA did too. Whenever Scala's special agents interviewed NBA executives for the case, they heard a refrain: "They told us, 'You can't fix a game in the NBA. It's impossible,'" Scala says. Too many invested observers-referee supervisors, coaches, players, owners, media, fans-would be too quick to complain if they saw something fishy, the NBA argued. But as Scala put it, "When someone tells you something's impossible, you know they're full of s---, because nothing's impossible. But that was the company line."
Instead, he surprised me. "There were lots of whistles in the game, by him, that did not fit the game," he says. "It's called literal interpretation."
What does it mean to "fix" a game? And how, in turn, could you uncover evidence of it years, even a decade, later? The methods of fixing are rather straightforward. A player who's on the take can shave points, purposely missing baskets, say, in an effort to lower the score for his side. A ref, on the other hand, can effectively add points -- calling fouls that result in free throws. And if a ref were to target one particular team with fouls, he could push the score for the opposing side higher than it otherwise would be.
"By six points either way. That's what he told me." Tommy Martino on how much Donaghy said he could influence an NBA game.
It is normal, of course, for a referee to call more fouls against one team than the other. There will almost always be an imbalance of calls. But examine that imbalance against the financial imbalances discovered in the trading histories-which side received the heavier betting -- and the important comparison isn't between Donaghy's foul calls and the team that won the game. The important comparison is to the team that received the greater amount of betting dollars.
Once we completed all of that, what we uncovered was that Donaghy's foul calls favored the team that received the heavier betting 70 percent of the time. But we also found that in 10 games during that 40-game span, one team was defeating the other team to such a degree that the spread was rarely in doubt. A referee wishing to manipulate game scores on these occasions would likely find he lacked much ability to sway the matter -- or the need to do so, if the score was already in his favor. And so, controlling for blowouts by removing those games from the ledger, what we ultimately found was this: Donaghy favored the side that attracted more betting dollars in 23 of those 30 competitive games, or 77 percent of the time. In four games, he called the game neutrally, 50-50. The number of games in which Tim Donaghy favored the team that attracted fewer betting dollars? Three.
In other words, Donaghy's track record of making calls that favored his bet was 23-3-4.
If one assumes there should be no correlation between wagers and the calls made by a referee, the odds of that disparity* might seem unlikely. And they are. When presented with that data, ESPN statisticians crunched the numbers and revealed: The odds that Tim Donaghy would have randomly made calls that produced that imbalance are 6,155-to-1.
(This is a long article)
Love watching Trae play even more than Doncic. Career high 36 pts and 8 3s for him against the Rox. Harden ice cold tonight and snapped his consecutive 30 pt scoring streak making 28 pts tonight.
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I"m with Spike Lee and still rooting for the tank. Knick fans didn't endure all this losing this season to all of a sudden go on some winning streak to ruin the chances of getting Zion. We need Fizdale to put his tank lineups on the floor for the rest of the season.
Dont worry .. Fizdale's best coaching would need a 40 minute Lebron James in the rotation to have a win streak CTFU !!!
mafra
Legend
Trae Young kept his hot streak going on Wednesday against the Wolves, scoring 36 points (9-of-22 FGs, 16-of-17 FTs) with eight rebounds, 10 assists, two 3-pointers and three turnovers in 43 minutes.
Young has now posted back-to-back games of at least 36 points and eight assists, which makes him the only rookie to do so since 1983/84. He also became the first rookie to score at least 35 points in consecutive games since Allen Iverson did it in 1997. Young has been on an incredible tear, posting games of 30+ in half of his last six outings. Over his last five games, he's been a top-40 fantasy value, which is more than 100 spots better than his season-long number. Ice Trae is hot
Young has now posted back-to-back games of at least 36 points and eight assists, which makes him the only rookie to do so since 1983/84. He also became the first rookie to score at least 35 points in consecutive games since Allen Iverson did it in 1997. Young has been on an incredible tear, posting games of 30+ in half of his last six outings. Over his last five games, he's been a top-40 fantasy value, which is more than 100 spots better than his season-long number. Ice Trae is hot
A little bit of a lucky shot but he played well in the game and I said to myself the guy can still play, why is he retiring? Dirk on the other hand moves like an old man now and rumor is he's considering playing for another year.
Yeah it was a 4OT Game and his team lost but he did the majority of his damage in regulation. He is legitimately back in the race for ROY. The shots and plays he was making was other worldly