David Stern is an Idiot!

I've said it before and I'll say it again. David Stern is an idiot. How much longer are the NBA owners going to sit back and watch David Stern run the NBA into the ground?

The dwindling NBA fan base has been screaming for years about the poor quality of officiating in the NBA. There isn't a week that goes by where you don't hear someone talking about the horrible officiating in an NBA game. Hell, you've even had some players commenting publicly that they knew their team was going to lose the game as soon as they saw who the referees were going to be for that night's game. What has David Stern done to address this problem? He has fined the players and coaches for making public comments. He has also adopted new rules to penalize a player for reacting negatively to calls made by officials during a game (regardless of how poor the call really was). Are you shitting me?

This problem lies solely in David Stern's lap. He has been an arrogant little bastard every time the subject of poor NBA officiating has come up. He hears what the fans are saying, but he doesn't listen. A recent fan poll on ESPN.com showed that 78% of NBA fans think that NBA officials have too much control over the outcome of the games. Think about that for a minute. Gee, I wonder if that number might have anything to do with the poor television ratings?

When this story broke this morning about the "unnamed referee" fixing the point spreads I thought it would be interesting to see what referee names were coming up the most on the message boards and in internet searches. Guess what? I only saw Donaghy's name come up a couple of times. In fact, 90% of the posts and searches that I found focused their suspicions on Steve Javie, Joe Crawford, Bennet Salvatore, or Dick Bavetta. It seems to me that there are an awful lot of people who think that these four guys shouldn't be officiating NBA games. The NBA suddenly has a huge problem on their hands. How can the NBA regain their fans' trust?

I'm thinking Javie, Crawford, Salvatore, and Bavetta should join Donaghy in never being allowed to officiate another NBA game. I'm not necessarily saying those 4 guys did anything illegal, but I think it is pretty obvious that the fans don't trust them. If you want to win back the fans' trust, you have to get rid of those guys. Then, the NBA owners have to get rid of David Stern. That little egomaniac has worn out his welcome. Stern should apologize publicly for the current state of the game, and then he should resign and go home. The NBA would be better off without David Stern.