As a promising and successful basketball referee who worked in the NBA for 13 seasons from 1994 to 2007, Tim Donaghy definitely has a crazy story to tell. He did just that in a recent Netflix Untold documentary.
“I have to live with”
Donaghy spent five years as a high school basketball referee, followed by seven seasons in the Continental Basketball Association before moving to the big league, where he refereed 772 regular season games and 20 playoff games. Interestingly, he was part of the three-man referee team during the infamous “Malice at the Palace” game that ended in an all-out brawl between the Pacers and Pistons. This story is fully covered in a separate episode of the Untold series on Netflix.
“Dude, I messed up my life. I’m definitely not scared of the fact that I’ve made mistakes and made bad choices. It is what it is, and sadly, I have to to live with. “
Tim Donaghy, Untold: Operation Flagrant Fault
Basically, at some point, he started providing inside information to others who would then bet on the game Tim was officiating. Of course, he would be financially rewarded for every correct result he announced to his low-level crowd relations. Things were going well until the FBI got involved while investigating the Gambino crime family that the low level guys were connected to.
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Basically it all went downhill from there when Donaghy turned himself in and pleaded guilty in 2007 to “conspiracy to commit wire fraud and transmit betting information through interstate commerce”.
Donaghy strikes back
Donaghy tried to fight back, so in 2008 he filed a court document saying the outrageous Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Sacramento Kings had been fixed in order to extend the streak. to seven games.
“The NBA’s top executives have sought to manipulate games by using referees,” Donaghy claimed in the document.
No evidence was found regarding these allegations which were followed up with an investigation. Later that year, Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in the gambling scandal. After his release, he remained vocal about the experience through books and videos while from 2021, he became a Major League Wrestling referee.
As a result of this mess, NBA commissioner David Stern revised and changed some rules for league referees.
“Our ban on gambling is absolute, and in my view it is too absolute, too harsh, and has not been particularly well enforced over the years,” Stern said via ESPN. “We’re going to come up with a new set of rules that make sense.”
“It’s too easy to make rules that they say are broken by Nassau at $5, sitting at a poker table, buying a lottery ticket and then we can move on,” said Stern. “And by the time I’ve finished and determined that going to a casino isn’t a capital offense…I’m the CEO of the NBA and I’ll take responsibility for that,” Stern concluded.