Tim Donaghy

Why is just about no one surprised they finally caught an NBA referee who had a stake in his own games and made calls to influence a point outcome. Did anyone who wasted any time watching NBA games and the NBA Playoffs say to himself “Gee, this looks legit to me.” Or, “Wow, and can’t wait to see how this ends.” I have waited to post this because I was away on vacation last week and as more news and information on this story comes out, the more obvious the alleged truth seems. RJ Bell, the authority on sports gambling has dissected all of the games Donaghy has officiated, and then examined how much the spreads changed in the hours leading up to the game and the results and outcome for big money bettors. Not surprisingly, against steep odds, the same guys won every time. That’s because the guys placing the bets knew ahead of time what was goning to happen. They had Donaghy in their hip pocket. Now, this certainly does not explain why the tip to FBI came from a purported mafia figure since easy money on NBA games is going to be over for a while. But it does explain why Donaghy’s house is under heavy surviellance. Of all the things Commissioner Stern is worrying about: the future of the league, potential lawsuits from the networks, etc., the thing that would be most worried about if this were my problem is this: that Donaghy’s lawyer came out and said “a plea bargain is in the works…” Oops. That means Donaghy is going to name names in exchange for leniency, which can really only mean that there lots of other invloved. Now, surely the bad guys he owed money to are on that list, but what if that list contains the names of other NBA referees? This is going to get munch worse, so stay tuned.