Are you ready for FanDuel and Caesar’s Sportsbook commercials during your favorite sporting events, followed by Tim Donaghy story trailers? If not, buckle up because it’s going to be one hell of a dichotomy as the big leagues dive into sports betting in synchronized tandems while we’re reminded of the wildest esports scandals of the 21st century.
shaving points etc Players receive money to influence the outcomes of games was an issue in the 20th century. There was the Black Sox scandal of the 1919 World Series, 1951 CCNY and 1978-79 Boston College. Scandals like this are why Pete “Charlie Hustle” Rose was banned from baseball for over 30 years for betting on baseball, despite no evidence he rigged games and why Calvin Ridley is banned by the NFL for at least a year for using any of the legal sports betting apps to place a combo in which his team, the Atlanta Falcons, participates to win.
However, there is one 21st-century moment that threatened to compromise the NBA: The Tim Donaghy scandal. The former referee was actually serving time in a federal prison for his involvement in a scandal in which he bet on games he officiated. Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News reported that Netflix is working on a documentary about the Donaghy scandal and that the disgraced referee is involved in the film.
Donaghy has always denied fixing games, but that hasn’t gotten him jailed. He admitted to wagering on games he officiated in and he pleaded guilty to wiring fraud and conspiracy to transmit gambling information and was sentenced to 15 months in prison, of which he served 13. The NBA has denied rigging games in any way, as well as any allegations that have been made that other umpires were involved with Donaghy or compromised the games they officiated in.
This controversy resurfaces from time to time, and then usually fades away before you can finish reading Donaghy’s Wikipedia page. It was 2009 when he was about to be released from prison and Peppystores’s Tom Cragg published excerpts from Donaghy’s book, later published under the title, Personal Foul: A first-person account of the scandal that rocked the NBA. In the book he talks about certain referees Tendencies and resentments and the culture of NBA officers. This included some crews making side bets on which referee would be the first to report an infraction and messages they would receive before games from the league, noting what to watch out for and what to definitely call more often – Donaghy accused the league in those messages of trying to influence the results. This is how Donaghy claimed to be able to select games with such accuracy. The book was eventually published by a smaller publisher because, according to Craggs’ reportthe NBA threatened to sue.
Donaghy would continue to offer his expertise in administration after his release times to dead spin, Analyze how the referees acted and showed out where some bias might be at play. He was also a featured character in the 2016 documentary dirty games about the ugliness in the sporting goods store. A feature film about Donaghy, Inside Game, was released in 2019. TThen there was the ESPN report that came out that year.
In this story entitled How former referee Tim Donaghy conspired to fix NBA gamesone of the authors Scott Eden spoke to the FBI agent handling Donaghy’s case. This particular (now retired) FBI investigator Phil Scala was one of the agency’s lead investigators into the five New York Mafia families — Scala was responsible for the agency’s work on the Gambino family. Among the many interesting quotes, anecdotes, and characters in this story, Scala stands out, and if this documentary is going to be truly informative and engaging, it better be there.
For one thing, Scala didn’t believe that Donaghy never fixed any of the games he worked on and bet on. “I said yes [Donaghy]”Listen, don’t tell me you have an independent decision-making capability in your computer that’s going to be unbiased, because that’s not fucking going to happen,” Scala recalled to Eden. “All those gray area decisions you have to make, Tim? Because you’re betting on the game, your judgment is wrong – and you threw the game.’”
Scala also has his distrust of the party hurt the most by Donaghy’s gambling — the NBA. It didn’t sit well with him that the league would always tell him there was no way to fix an NBA game. He also regrets informing the NBA of their findings about Donaghy betting on games he worked on. Scala told Eden that the FBI had plans to bug Donaghy to find out if other NBA umpires were also involved in this massive operation, which netted hundreds of millions of dollars. That never happened because before anything could be set up, the New York Post cover story that brought this news to the world was published.
With Donaghy as part of the documentary, A lot will be from his biased point of view, but sometimes when a person has been disgraced the way they did it, there’s more to their showing up than just him defending himself. Lance Armstrong is over 30 for 30 on him and after watching it I feel like I understand him better as a person and still strongly believe he is an idiot.
I’m quite intrigued by this news about a documentary by Tim Donaghy. Some of Netflix’s best work, The New Cocaine Cowboys, Jeffery Epstein: Filthy richand Fire, are all documentaries. The timing of this Donaghy documentary, when so many commercials aired during professional sporting events are for cryptocurrency and sports betting, it could be At least make people think about what happened two decades ago and take a closer look at what they are observing. Maybe it can also make it clear to the NBA that they need to seriously address the issue that Chris Paul has never won a playoff game that Scott Foster advertised inand it’s such a well-known fact that ABC aired the two make amends before Game 6 of the NBA Finals, which Paul would lose again. Paul lost another Foster-managed playoff game last week
It’s not about whether it’s better to bet in the shadows or in the light. It’s about being able to recognize when the integrity of the game is compromised and not just throwing away confirmed offenders, but rather identifying where the integrity is vulnerable and taking whatever steps are necessary to strengthen it.
Of course, I’m mainly here for a Donaghy documentary to see the confusion and contradictions. But perhaps these need to be disclosed so that professional sports can do more than just say “this will never happen again” but take the right steps to ensure that that assurance is more a fact than a claim that happens to something that doesn’t can be wiped away as easily as Donaghy.
