The NBA would like us all to forget about disgraced former referee Tim Donaghy and the gambling scandal that rocked the league.
This is why we are going to remember it.
Donaghy, who wrote a book about his experience over a decade ago, speaks again. This time he took part in a documentary – “Operation Flagrant Foul” – which is streaming on Netflix. In the opening minutes of the documentary, after asking the NBA for comment, the league responds, “Tim Donaghy is a convicted felon. … There is no longer any reason to go back on all this.
Whenever people in positions of power tell you that, it means quite the opposite. Let’s review it.
Donaghy, you will recall, was the NBA referee who was at the center of a huge gambling scandal in 2007 that cast (further) real doubt on the integrity of the NBA. As any sports fan knows, the sports world panics whenever a player, coach or official bets on games because it compromises the integrity of the competition.
The NFL suspended wide receiver Calvin Ridley indefinitely this year for betting on NFL games, a punishment that even exceeded quarterback Deshaun Watson’s 11-game suspension for two dozen sexual assault cases. Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Black Sox were banned for life for fixing Major League Baseball games. Superstars Paul Hornung and Alex Karras were suspended by the NFL for the entire 1963 season for betting on games.
Either way, the NBA pressed the panic button when Donaghy’s crime was discovered. the league just wanted it gone already. Donaghy left, okay, serving 11 months of a 15-month prison sentence. He had accepted money from a professional gambler in exchange for tips and had placed bets on games, some of which he officiated.
With all of that behind him, Donaghy speaks out again, pulling back the curtain on the league and how it works. You can’t watch the documentary and not believe the league is also less than honest. The NBA shares blame for creating situations that leave it vulnerable to manipulation by officials with its uneven application of its own rules. And if Donaghy is to be believed, many of the worst fan suspicions about the league are true.
Fans have frequently accused the league of favoring stars in how games are called; it is, says Donaghy.
Fans accused referees of make-up calls and, worse, making calls to thwart certain players; they do, says Donaghy.
Fans accused the referees of having personal agendas and being deliberately inconsistent; they do and they are, says Donaghy.
Donaghy details how the referees took revenge on star goaltender Allen Iverson. Iverson threatened referee Steve Javie in the 2006-07 season. The league fined the player $25,000, but other umpires were upset that there was no suspension.
According to Donaghy, they called a series of violations “palming” – dribbling from the bottom half of the ball, allowing him to carry it and cover more ground. Although it is a rule, it is rarely enforced, but that night it was used against Iverson. Here’s the point: why doesn’t the NBA always enforce this rule? Why leave it open to interpretation and something that referees can use for their own agenda? The same goes for the rule of verticality and other variants of displacement violations, which are applied inconsistently, if at all.
In the documentary, Donaghy cites a vivid example. He says the league has decided to crack down on a certain rotational move by calling it a move violation. One night, Donaghy made that call – on Michael Jordan. As Donaghy puts it, “Phil Jackson (Jordan’s coach) just got stolen off the bench and he’s starting to give me (expletive). And I say, wait a second, Phil, you know as well as I do that’s the spin move they’re telling us to call, and he said, ‘They may want this game called, but they certainly don’t want him appealed to him. Later, in the locker room, another referee told Donaghy, “They want that call, but don’t call it.”
According to Donaghy, “When (Commissioner) David Stern structured the league, we as officials knew it was better to treat star players than not. I just wanted to be the best umpire and move up the ranks and I saw the way the guys who were in the NBA Finals handled the game. They didn’t call fouls against the stars and they were highly respected. These (fans) who pay thousands of dollars to sit here, they didn’t come here to see Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Shaquille O’Neal sit on the bench. They came to see them play. The league is your boss, and you want them to think you’re doing a good job because if you are, you’re on the playoff roster that comes out. With that comes a huge amount of extra money and respect.
Donaghy says fans should maintain a dose of skepticism about the league. He told USA Today: “I was in the inner workings of it for 14 years and saw what we were going to do and how star players were treated, and it was different, depending on what was on the front and back of the shirts. And the rules weren’t enforced as they were written in the rulebook. I saw it then, and I see it now.
The irony is that in recent years the NBA has embraced – of all things – the game, in search of even more revenue. The league, which once abhorred any connection to gambling, has partnered with several gaming companies – including MGM Resorts, which has casinos across the country, theScore, Sportradar and various media which will provide access to NBA data bettors and sports betting. . “It’s hard to believe you couldn’t place a legal bet on sports less than a decade ago unless you were in Nevada,” Roger Wright wrote in Versus Sports… “Things have changed so drastically that NBA teams are now considering a sportsbook at their premises.
The league is trying to bury the Donaghy mess on the one hand while embracing the game on the other. Money talks, but it remains to be seen whether, after all these years of trying to keep his distance from the game, he can avoid the pitfalls the league found itself in in the Donaghy case.