[Basketball News]

NBA Commissioner David Stern announced Tuesday that the league has named Lawrence B. Pedowitz, a former Chief of the Criminal Division in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and current partner at law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, to lead a comprehensive review of the league's rules, policies, and procedures relating to gambling and its officiating program.

Pedowitz, a former law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., and members of his law firm will conduct a broad examination of the NBA's league-wide anti-gambling efforts, including its rules, its policies regarding disclosure of confidential information, its methods of monitoring and enforcement, and its efforts to educate NBA personnel. In addition, the review will include an analysis of the current hiring and development processes for NBA referees, and the systems used to monitor their off-court behavior and on-court performance, all with the aim of improving the overall effectiveness of NBA officiating and of bolstering the league's efforts to detect and deter betting on its games.

"There is nothing as important as the integrity of our game and the covenant we have with our fans," said Stern. "In order to preserve their trust, we will make every effort possible to ensure that our processes and procedures are the best they can be. With his background as a Federal prosecutor and his vast experience in criminal law and risk management matters in almost 25 years of private legal practice, Larry Pedowitz is an ideal person to lead this independent review."

Pedowitz to lead review of NBA's officiating program

[Lefty Noob]

As many as 20 other refs have been implicated in the Donaghy investigation. What do you think this Pedowitz will find?

[legend]

Same thing George Mitchell has found in baseball-nothing.

[ThePundit]

I'd be shocked if this were actually widespread among the refs. Shocked! If it were, this would be worse than the Black Sox scandal.

[LSC9901]

Originally Posted by Lefty Noob

As many as 20 other refs have been implicated in the Donaghy investigation. What do you think this Pedowitz will find?

How many refs are there in the NBA and who did the implicating ? If it was Donaghy I would view that as a bit tainted at this point. If there are 200 refs in the NBA then 10% isn't totally off the wall. Granted 10% isn'tgood but if we are looking at 50 refs and 20 of them have been pointed at then that is a bigger issue.

[Lefty Noob]

Originally Posted by LSC9901

How many refs are there in the NBA and who did the implicating ? If it was Donaghy I would view that as a bit tainted at this point. If there are 200 refs in the NBA then 10% isn't totally off the wall. Granted 10% isn'tgood but if we are looking at 50 refs and 20 of them have been pointed at then that is a bigger issue.

It was Donaghy doing the finger pointing. As for the question about how many refs the NBA employs, well, I'm afraid I have no idea.

[LSC9901]

Originally Posted by Lefty Noob

It was Donaghy doing the finger pointing. As for the question about how many refs the NBA employs, well, I'm afraid I have no idea.

I just did a quick search and what I found was that "in any season the NBA has about 60 referees." So I guess we are now looking at about a third of them being implicated.