Tim Donaghy readily admits crossing a lot of gambling lines – betting in casinos even though it broke NBA rules, using inside information to place bets on NBA teams, even betting on games that he himself refereed. But Donaghy wants everyone to know that he never fixed a game.
“I know, I know,” he says now in answer to a question about the public’s perception of him. “But I zoned everything out and concentrated hard on just calling the game as I saw it. I know it doesn’t pass the laugh test – calling a clean game that I had money on. And it’s hard to sell that to people. But it’s the truth.”
If you’ve lost track of the NBA referee who went bad, Donaghy will tell you now that he is finally at peace with himself and trying to put his life back in order after spending 11 months in prison.
He is doing his best to repair the damage that his actions and subsequent incarceration did to his relationship with his four daughters.
He spends his time hawking his new book and gearing up for what he hopes will be his next career – warning college students about the dangers of compulsive gambling.
In a recent interview with Covers.com, Donaghy candidly discussed every aspect of his career as an NBA official, pressure that the league placed on officials to make sure superstars stayed in games, efforts to keep big-market teams alive in playoffs, and his own role in the betting scandal that caused many fans to believe – and many others to merely confirm – that not all games in the Association are completely on the up and up.
And as for games being fixed, while Donaghy proclaims he never made even a single call to help affect the betting line or outcome of a game, he also says that NBA had subtle ways of making sure that the teams it wanted to win, did indeed win.
“With David Stern it’s all about superstars and money,” said Donaghy. “He made the decision long ago to sell the league as entertainment. Only one team can win a title, but people will still come out to see a show. So a show is what Stern wants, and a show is what the referees help give the fans. So, did the NBA actually pre-determine the outcome of games? I guess it depends on how you define things.”
From the time referees are recruited and hired, says Donaghy, they are taught – in a subtle manner – that it is not in anyone’s interest for foul-plagued superstars to spend large amounts of time on the bench. Fans want to see LeBron James dunk, even if he has to take 4 steps to do it.
“If a little white guy from Seattle tried that, we called travel,” he says matter-of-factly. “Just the way things are in the NBA, and every official knows it.”
Every time a Kobe Bryant, LeBron James or Dwyane Wade gets away with a hand check, travels without getting called, pushes to get a rebound or gets away with cursing an official, the superstar’s team gets a huge advantage. Is that outright fixing, or just part of the show that Stern and the league bring to fans around the world?
Donaghy tells anyone who’ll listen that he didn’t need to fix games because of his inside information was so reliable. ESPN’s Outside the Lines did a great job reporting on the information Donaghy was talking about.
Donaghy readily admits that he took advantage of league directives and referee grudges to make money on bets.
“One time (Jan. 6, 2007) we were in Utah [the Jazz were playing Denver] and the league was getting complaints that Allen Iverson was getting an edge by palming the ball all the time. The other refs (Bernie Fryer and Gary Zielinski) and I agreed that we were going to call palming on anything close. Before the game I made a phone call and bet the Jazz, knowing that Iverson would be all messed up. Utah went up 15 early, Iverson was out of his comfort zone, and I cashed easily.”
The game was actually in Denver. Iverson turned the ball over five times and made just five of his 19 shots from the field. Utah won outright, 96-84, and covered as a 5.5-point underdog.
Another example:
“We’re in Los Angeles for a Lakers game and during our pregame meeting the NBA supervisor walks in with a tape that had been sent to him by the Lakers. It showed Kobe Bryant driving to the basket 25 different times, and the Lakers felt he should have drawn a foul on every play. The supervisor says that the Lakers were right 22 of those times, then walks out. The implication was clear – call more fouls on the defense when Bryant has the ball. I excused myself and made the bet. Kobe gets a ton of free throws and the result was predictable.”
Donaghy says it was well-known in referee circles that Dick Bavetta would be scheduled if a big-market team was in danger of being eliminated from a playoff series.
“If the league wanted a Game 7,” says Donaghy, “everyone knew that Bavetta would be on the court in Game 6. He was a company man through and through.”
And no Game 6 in NBA history has received more scrutiny than the 2002 Western Conference final match between the Lakers and the Kings in Los Angeles.
[Note: The game was played before Donaghy says he started wagering on NBA games.]
A Kings victory would mean sagging TV ratings in the Finals, and Donaghy says the NBA was sweating about it. In his book, Personal Foul: A First Person Account of the Scandal That Rocked the NBA, Donaghy recounts a conversation he had with Bavetta before the game:
“If we give the benefit of calls to the team that’s down in the series, no one’s going to complain,” Bavetta purportedly said to Donaghy. “The series will be even at three apiece, and the better team can win Game 7.”
The numbers don’t support that theory. Bavetta, who is an active referee in the league, has worked 12 Game 6-playoff contests and the side that was down in the series won six of those games.
Donaghy says Bavetta’s comments came after the league had sent word to referees that calls that would have benefitted the Lakers were being missed. “It wasn’t hard to connect the dots,” Donaghy says now.
Bavetta, Bob Delaney and Ted Bernhardt worked the game. Los Angeles shot 26 free throws in the final period (many the result of questionable foul calls against Sacramento) and won the game 106-102.
For the record, the O/U number was 193.5 and the total easily went over, but the Lakers (-6) didn’t cover. The Lakers went on to win Game 7 in Sacramento, then defeated the Nets for the NBA title. In the uproar that followed the game, the NBA said that it had found nothing unusual about the officiating.
Donaghy, an admitted avid gambler (golf, casinos, cards), says that he made his first bet on an NBA game in November 2003, using inside information he acquired from the league, other referees, clubhouse attendants . . . anywhere and everywhere. He made his last bet in November 2006, as FBI agents were gathering information on him that would result in his resignation and time in a Florida prison.
In between that first and last bet, says Donaghy, he was right on between 70 percent and 80 percent of his bets. But, he says again, “I never fixed a game. Besides, when you’re right 80 percent of the time, you don’t have to fix a game.”
