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| Nader’s on the Ball | |||||||
| While other presidential hopefuls work on no-win issues like homeland security, Ralph Nader’s out front on an issue that can’t lose: Is basketball fixed? | |||||||
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| June 10 — There’s a crisis of trust in America today. The Enron scandal left the country wondering if corporations care about the public interest. Pedophilia in the Catholic Church has made it difficult to trust your local priest. Reports of inadequate intelligence cause us to wonder if our government is able to protect us against terrorism. |
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| BUT FORGET ABOUT all that: Did you see what happened in Game 6 of the Western Conference basketball finals last month? | |||||||||
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Thank goodness
we have Ralph Nader fighting for us on the basketball issue. Yes, Ralph
Nader—the very same crusader who helped make cars safer in the 1960s, who
exposed campaign finance corruption and who remains the strongest voice
against corporate greed—has sent a letter to National Basketball
Commissioner David Stern demanding “an apology to the Sacramento Kings”
and an admission of “decisive incompetence during Game 6, especially in
the crucial fourth quarter.” But Nader, whose office swore to me that he did not lose a bet on Game 6, is not merely fighting for the Sacramento Kings, he’s fighting for the working man, who deserves nothing less than the right to lay on a couch with a cold one and be certain that the playoff game he’s watching isn’t fixed so the damn Los Angeles Lakers can win their third-straight championship. “At a time when the public’s confidence is shaken by headlines reporting the breach of trust by corporate executives, it is important, during the public’s relaxation time, for there to be maintained a sense of impartiality and professionalism in commercial sports performances,” Nader told Stern. If you didn’t see the game, which Los Angeles won 106-102 and necessitated a seventh game that L.A. also won, you missed a scandal that ranks somewhere between Watergate and Teapot Dome. A review of some irrefutable facts might help: Fact: The referees seemed to regard the fourth quarter of the tight game as an overdue foul-shooting practice session for the Lakers. After sending Laker players to the foul line an average of 22 times throughout the first five games of the series, referees Dick Bavetta, Bob Delaney and Ted Bernhardt then gave the Lakers 27 such trips in the fourth quarter alone. Fact: If Shaquille O’Neal could only be fitted with a large metal cylinder instead of feet, he could gain employment in what he obviously would prefer as a chosen field: laying down a smooth sheet of cement on highways all over America. Fact: Vlade Divac, a Sacramento star, was ejected from the game at a crucial moment for apparently fouling the Lakers Robert Horry. A replay of the infraction clearly showed Divac running astride Horry and then falling down in his immediate vicinity. Fact: Late in the game, Lakers star Kobe Bryant attempted to perform a rhinoplasty on the nose of Mike Bibby—using only his elbow! Rather than call a foul, a referee standing right next to Bibby was heard to remark, “Thank God for Kobe Bryant. I always thought Bibby needed a nose job.” In fact, the Bryant incident was singled out in Nader’s still-unanswered letter to Stern. “The elbow in the nose of Mike Bibby, who after lying on the floor groggy, went to the sideline bleeding ... prompted many fans to start wondering about what was motivating these officials.” You can have your FBI lawyer Coleen Rowley or your tobacco “insider” Jeffrey Weigand, but to me, they’re just common whistleblowers compared to Nader—a man who’s not afraid to blow the whistle on the whistle-blowers themselves. Some commentators have openly mocked Nader—basketball guru P.J. Carlesimo called him “absurd” and added, “I resent [the allegations] acutely, if that’s the right word”—but plenty of “august” basketball “writers” have pointed out that Nader is as right about NBA officiating as he was about the Chevy Corvair. “I have never seen officiating in a game of consequence as bad,” wrote Washington Post basketball writer Michael Wilbon. “Game 6 was a rip-off.” |
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Clearly, Nader,
who struck out in the 2000 presidential campaign with tired
anti-globalization, neo-populist demagoguery, has found himself a genuine
issue to touch Americans. In fact, by forming a new watchdog group
(complete with a vaguely superheroic name), “The League of Fans,” Nader
has fired the first salvo of the 2004 presidential campaign. As such, I felt compelled by journalistic integrity to give all the leading presidential candidates—like Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) and Al Gore (D-Nial)—a chance to respond to Nader’s charges by either getting on board or issuing appropriate condemnation. Not surprisingly, I found these supposed leaders—who are always “rolling up their sleeves,” “getting down to business” or “sleeping with an intern” for the good of the American people—woefully unprepared for Nader’s broadside against professional basketball. Spokespeople for Edwards and Daschle didn’t even bother to return my call, while Gore could not be reached for comment because the phone at his Tennessee office was “being checked for trouble.” (I’ll say!) Not even President Bush would weigh in. “The White House is not going to have a comment on that,” said Harry Wolff, a Bush spokesman. I considered this a mistake. If NBA officiating continues to be this bad, the president won’t even need a pretzel to choke and faint in front of the TV. Kori Bernards, a spokeswoman for Gephardt, was willing to comment, saying that the once and future presidential wannabe is “not supporting what Nader is calling for.” As an aside, Bernards did add that Gephardt staffers felt disappointed that Nader got more press than their boss for speaking out on “the crisis of trust in America.” |
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“It’s an issue
that Gephardt has often talked about,” Bernards said, her tone of voice
subtly suggesting that Nader had actually jumped on a Gephardt bandwagon.
“The crisis of trust in America is one of Gephardt’s themes.” As evidence,
Bernards e-mailed me a transcript of a recent conversation between
Gephardt and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “We’ve got to get past the blame game,” Gephardt told Blitzer. “If we can’t get the mistakes out on the table, then we’re never going to do better the next time. We’ve almost got a crisis of trust in our country right now ... We’ve got corporations ... we even have the Catholic Church being questioned today. There’s a crisis of trust with a lot of our institutions.” Let the record show that Blitzer had given Gephardt a perfect opening, but the Missouri Congressman missed the opportunity to move the discussion beyond the simple issue of government accountability for the terrorist attacks to its logical conclusion: poor NBA officiating. Another politician who is clearly afraid to take on the all-powerful basketball lobby. Gersh Kuntzman is also a columnist for The New York Post. His Web site is at http://www.gersh.tv/ © 2002 Newsweek, Inc. |
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