Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
It's just too enticing and too easy for corruption. But yet, you know, that's the cynical side of me, but yet I inherently want to believe in the integrity of sports. I inherently want to believe in the competitive nature and the true spirit of the competitive nature of an athlete. But yet, knowing what I know about gambling, knowing what I know about greed and the human element...
One of Joe Gagliano's first real jobs was at the Chicago Board of Trade in the early 90s. Self-admittedly, the 25-year-old floor trader became addicted to the rush of earning that fast money. He became addicted to the thrill of making the rapid decisions that day trading required.
I loved everything about the financial markets from the very first day, he told an Arizona news outlet. The pace, the lifestyle, and the flash were all intoxicating, but most of all I was drawn to the non-stop action. But before long, that non-stop action on the trading floor wasn't non-stop enough for Joe Gagliano. He began looking for other ways to scratch that itch, and he found one in the form of sports betting.
Football, basketball, baseball, golf. If there were sweaty men and balls involved, Joe was interested. He was throwing down hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars on every televised sporting event. Win or lose, Joe Gagliano would do it all over again the next day. And like any gambler, Joe was always looking for a leg up. Joe's brother, who was a student at Arizona State University, introduced Joe to a campus bookie named Benny Sillman.
Joe liked to gamble through Binnie because the betting lines were always a bit more generous than those in Vegas, and the campus bookie lacked the technology and ability to adjust the numbers on the fly, which drastically improved Joe's chances of winning. And gambling is fun if you are winning, that's no secret. But gambling is even more fun when you know you are going to win.
At some point early in the 1993-94 college basketball season, Benny Sillman, the Arizona State bookie, called Joe Gagliano on the phone with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This is Joe recalling that conversation to the news division of Arizona PBS. I remember distinctly him calling me back in Chicago. One day he was at ASU and he called me and I was living in a high-rise building in the suburbs of Chicago and
sitting at my desk with a white portable phone and the phone rang and it was Benny and I was looking out the window at the snow falling on the ground and he distinctly said, "Hey Joe, I got a fix for you." I said, "What are you talking about?" And then he finally, he spelled out the letters. He said, "F-I-X."
The FIX involved another student at ASU named Stevan Headache Smith. Stevan was one of Benny Sillman's gambling clients, known for placing money on Monday Night Football and the Sega Genesis video game matches that took place in the dormitories every night. And most of the time Stevan would lose. In less than a year he owed Benny Sillman more than $10,000 for his ill-advised bets.
Stevin Headache Smith was also known for being the best player on Arizona State's basketball team. He dictated everything that happened on the court. He led the NCAA in three-point shots and had the highest free throw percentage amongst all players. His talent was undeniable, which is why Stevin Smith was a projected first-round pick in the following year's NBA draft. There were millions of dollars in Headache's near future, but those prospects did nothing to satisfy his current debts.
But Benny Sillman had an idea. The bookie, along with Joe Gagliano, approached Stevan Smith with an opportunity to wipe his gambling slate clean and to earn a lot of extra money on the side. If Stevan Smith agreed to fix a few of the Arizona State basketball games in which he would be playing, not only would Benny Sillman forgive what was owed, Smith would receive $20,000 from Joe Gagliano per fixed game.
and they weren't even asking Hedake to lose the games for his team. Stillman and Gagliano just needed Smith to ensure that ASU did not cover the point spread. In sports betting, the spread is the margin of victory by which a bookmaker believes one team will beat another. For example, if Arizona State was favored to win a game by 10 points, but only wins by 8, the team fails to cover the spread and everybody who had money on the other team would win that bet, even though that other team had actually lost the game.
If Arizona State was favored by 10 points and wins by more than that, then everyone who bet against them would lose. In theory, against an overmatched opponent, shaving a few points off the board to avoid covering the spread would be easy for a player as dominant as Stephen Smith.
It's unlikely that anybody would even notice. So Stevan was in. Earning $20,000 per game was just too enticing compared to the $0 college athletes are usually paid by the billion-dollar industries that chew them up and spit them out year after year.
That said, Joe Gagliano was still worried about tarnishing the integrity of the game. So he examined the upcoming schedule of the Arizona State Sun Devils men's basketball team and he identified two meaningless games late in the season that were ripe for the fixing. The first was against the lousy Oregon State Beavers on January 27, 1994, three days before the Super Bowl. Arizona State was heavily favored to win the game by 14 points.
The plan was for Stevan Smith to miss a few baskets and to play sloppy defense on the way to a smaller margin of victory for the Sun Devils. The team still wins. The gamblers win. Everyone gets paid. Everyone goes home happy. Before the game, Joe Gagliano traveled to Las Vegas with some friends and family. The group pulled their resources together to make the largest bet possible on the inevitable win.
Gagliano says he placed bets at 30 different casinos and sportsbooks, betting more than half a million dollars in total. He had already bet another half a million with the bookies back home, each wager the same. He took Oregon State and the 14 points every time. There's no way Arizona State would beat them by that much. He just had a hunch, Gagliano told the bookies, and he couldn't wait to sit down with a beer and watch his premonitions come true.
Also, each bet Joe Gagliano placed was less than $10,000, which would help him avoid paperwork and tipping off the IRS. But more importantly, the smaller wages would help prevent the point spread from shifting. If the bookmakers realized that the majority of the public's money was being placed on Oregon State, that 14-point spread could decrease and make Stevan Smith's job on the court that much more difficult and risky.
Gagliano needed the superstar to be able to throw up bricks without them being attached to giant red flags. But Stevan "Headache" Smith already had a plan to make the fix less obvious. He enlisted a teammate named Isaac Burton to help shoulder the load. Isaac was the second-to-best player on the team. If neither he nor Stevan was playing well, the game would be close. For his troubles, Stevan agreed to give Isaac $4,300 of the $20,000 that would be waiting for him at the final buzzer.
When the game started, Joe Gagliano could not believe what he was seeing. Stevan "Headache" Smith could not miss. He drained 10 three-pointers throughout the entire game, scoring a career-high 39 points, which was definitely not part of the plan. Fortunately for Gagliano, Headache also played terrible defense that day. He conceded additional space to the man he was supposed to be guarding and allowed him to shoot freely, which helped buffer the Beavers' score.
In the end, the Arizona State Sun Devils won the game 88-82, but they did not cover the spread. The fix had paid off, and it paid off for a second game, and then a third. The original plan was just for two games, but it proved too easy and too lucrative for everyone involved. Stephen Smith had pocketed $60,000 for himself, and the bettors were up $5.1 million.
There were only a few games left in the season anyway. What's wrong with one last hurrah? The Washington Huskies were coming to town. They were the worst team in the conference at the time.
The opening spread was set at 11 points in favor of ASU. There was plenty of room to work with for Gagliano, Stevin, and the boys, as long as the line stayed put. And so, you know, one thing led to another. The line started, I think, it was Washington minus 11.5 or 12, right around there, and
But the line kept dropping because the Arizona State fix had become the worst kept secret on campus. The meaningless game was garnering so much action at the sportsbooks that the Nevada Gaming Control was notified.
A horde of students in Sun Devil's gear had descended upon Vegas to bet duffle bags of cash on the other team. A former sportsbook director of the Mirage told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that a game that innocuous would typically attract about $40,000 in wagers. But for that particular ASU vs. Washington game, more than $900,000 had been bet, mostly on Washington, which moved Arizona State's 11-point favorite spread down to just three.
It remains the largest one-day movement on a betting line for any game ever. And then the game started. Smith, three-pointer, short. Playing at home against the last place Washington Huskies, ASU started horribly, missing its first 14 shots, leading by only two at halftime. Wow, Arizona State is doing everything it can to throw this game away.
It's rumored that the FBI made its presence known to Stevan Smith and the Sun Devils during halftime of the game. The authorities made it clear to the team and the coach that they knew something fishy was going on and they would be watching the remainder of the game closely. In the second half, Arizona State miraculously recovered and began making every shot. They covered the spread easily and ruined every gambler's day.
The season ended without further incident. Stevan "Headache" Smith declared for the NBA draft but was passed over because of his rumored but not yet proven involvement in the point shaving scandal. The one-time first round prospect was doomed to a life in the minor leagues. He spent the next few years chasing his hoop dreams internationally and in the CBA before signing a 10-day contract with the NBA's Dallas Mavericks in 1997.
That same year that he had finally reached the pinnacle of basketball, Steven Smith was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit sports bribery. Two other ASU students who were in trouble with the feds had offered up information about the gambling ring in exchange for a lesser charge. Steven Smith pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year in prison.
Joseph Gagliano and his associates, Benny Silman, the bookie, and Isaac Burton, the teammate, were also charged with similar offenses. Silman received the longest sentence of 46 months. Stevan Smith and Isaac Burton, two former basketball players at Arizona State University, have pled guilty to felony charges of
Kind of makes you wonder what other games have been rigged, doesn't it?
Well, that list is long. Every sport from badminton to snooker has had its fair share of match-fixing scandals. There are hundreds of examples listed in the match-fixing article on Wikipedia, if you care to read. And there's almost always a financial motive at the center. Betting rings and bookies and organized crime.
Money makes the wide world of sports go round. Because nobody is immune to greed. Not even the athlete in the poster that hung on the wall of your childhood bedroom. Although one of the reasons athletes are so massively compensated is to resist that temptation of being bought. It's not worth the risk when they already have millions of dollars in the bank. But no thanks is easy for a professional athlete to say.
Collegiate athletes such as Stevan "Headache" Smith are a much easier sell, especially those without a future in sports. Kids who grew up with nothing and still have nothing should be a little more susceptible to playing ball, if you know what I mean. Just ask Tim Donaghy, a professional referee for the National Basketball Association.
Absolutely. When you look at some of these kids that are in college, okay, they're not making it to the NFL. They're not making it to the NBA. They're playing lower division one basketball or football. It's easy for somebody to go up to them and say, hey, listen, here's 20, 25 grand and go take care of your family. The line's 15. Don't win by 15. Win by 11, 12, 13, even 14. Win the game. Just don't cover the spread. Former referee, I should say.
Tim Donaghy was fired 13 years into his career after getting caught up in a sports betting scandal of his own. A scandal that has raised far more questions than it has answered. A professional basketball referee uses his inside knowledge of the league to feed an insatiable gambling addiction on this episode of Swindled.
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That's Tim Donaghy, who it seems has never really had to take that long, difficult road for anything in life.
Even after getting caught cheating on the SATs, Tim was accepted to Villanova University, his top choice, where his mother just so happened to work. But it's not like Tim needed that university degree to improve his career prospects. Thanks to friends and family, Tim Donaghy already had a job waiting for him. Tim Donaghy's father, Jerry, had been a prominent NCAA basketball referee for 40 years, while Tim's uncle, Bill Oakes, was a longtime official in the NBA.
For Tim, who graduated from Villanova in 1989, it was a smooth transition into the family business, with additional assistance coming from another NBA referee who lived near Philadelphia named Jack O'Donnell. Jack helped Tim, and a few others that attended the same Catholic high school in Springfield, Pennsylvania, break into the league. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. Not that Tim Donaghy wasn't a good referee. By all accounts and measurements, he was.
But even the best referees have to earn their stripes. It can take decades to make it to the big leagues, which most referees never do. But most referees do not have the connections that Tim Donaghy had. Tim's connections allowed him to spend just five years officiating high school basketball before being hired by the Continental Basketball Association, a now defunct minor league, where legends like coach Phil Jackson and Stevan Hedig-Smith got their starts.
After seven seasons of officiating in the CBA, Tim Donaghy was called up to the National Basketball Association in 1994. An exaggerated resume and a lifetime of nepotism was all it took. Welcome to the NBA. It was a dream come true for Tim Donaghy, even though he had never been much of a basketball player himself. In fact, Tim puffed up his referee association biography with lies about athletic achievements he had never actually won.
But nobody ever bothered to check. Not in the 13 seasons that Tim Donaghy was in the league. 13 seasons in which Tim Donaghy had front row seats to the greatest show on earth. Getting to watch Jordan, Kobe, Shaq, LeBron, and others make magic on the court every night was just part of the job. So were the A-list celebrities sitting courtside that were screaming for his head.
It was a surreal experience to say the least. Traveling from city to city, rubbing shoulders with the stars, earning well over six figures, Donaghy was living quite the glamorous life. But there were definitely some ugly moments too, like in 2004, the Malice in the Palace, when Indiana Pacers players climbed into the stands to fight the Detroit Pistons fans.
Donaghy was part of the crew officiating the chaos. Fist fights were breaking out all around him. It was a game that he would never forget. During other times in his career, it was Tim Donaghy in the middle of the physical altercations. A year before the brawl, Rasheed Wallace, the 6'10 power forward of the Portland Trail Blazers, confronted Donaghy on the loading dock outside the arena after a game. Wallace disagreed with a foul call that Donaghy made earlier that night, and he wanted to make sure the referee knew.
Donaghy defended himself as Rashid approached and told him to "watch the tape." To which Rashid Wallace responded, "I'm gonna kick your ass, punk ass, motherfucker." The NBA suspended Wallace for seven games because of that threat.
There was also the time in 2001 when Tim Donaghy lived out every NBA fan's dream of punching referee Joey Crawford in the face. It happened during a meeting of the league's 54 officials at a Hilton Hotel in New Jersey. Donaghy was allegedly steaming from not being asked to appear on the Today Show along with some of the other refs who were paid $500 for their participation.
Donaghy admits to being a jerk, but when Crawford slapped him in the face after a minor spat, his temper flared and he dropped his colleague with the left hook, a punch that left Donaghy forever shunned by some of his fellow referees. But Joey Crawford should have known better than to come between a referee and his money.
Not because Tim needed it. It was all about the rush of earning it or winning it. That was the culture of the league. There was always room for a little action on the side, whether it be a TV appearance or a friendly wager. Tim Donaghy claims his crew would gamble on anything and everything. They would even place bets on the halftime entertainment, 20 bucks on the tricycle races or $50 on the half-court shot.
But that was nothing compared to the money the players were throwing down. Here's Tim Donaghy on Mad Dog in the Morning, 7:30 WVFN, describing that pre-game gambling ritual. You know, just before the game starts warming up, you know, they're betting, you know, thousands of dollars on free throws and three-point shots and just, you know, the gambling that kind of went on prior to the start of the game.
Off the court was even more of an issue. Hall of Fame player Charles Barkley has publicly admitted to losing more than $10 million dollars gambling over the years. And there are highly disputed rumors that Michael Jordan's out of control gambling habits and unpaid debts led to the murder of his father. As well as a secret suspension from the NBA which MJ spent playing minor league baseball instead.
Unsurprisingly, the referees were gambling too. Even though their NBA contract strictly prohibited betting of any kind, even legal gambling in a casino would get a referee fired on the spot. It was that important to the league to avoid any appearance of impropriety.
But rules are made to be broken. I was gambling a lot. I was gambling on the golf course, going to the casinos, betting on college and pro football. And it just escalated to my buddy had the Daily News one day. And I had just come from home. I knew who was refereeing the games. And he said, you know, give me a couple winners in the NBA tonight. And I gave him three games, and they all won. And the next day, you know, he gave me a call, and he said, you know, is it that easy for you? And I just said, yeah, it is.
What started out as modest wagers on the golf course between old high school acquaintances would soon turn into lifelong regrets. In 2002, Tim Donaghy and his friend Jack Concanon began placing bets on NBA games, some of which Tim was on the court officiating. It was the ultimate betrayal, a cardinal sin of the profession.
But according to Donaghy, they were only using information gained from his position. It's not like he was fixing the games or anything. He didn't have to. Because Tim Donaghy knew the league inside and out. He knew the players. He knew the coaches, the owners, and the referees. He knew that some of those referees, including himself, hated certain players and coaches and owners and vice versa. And he knew that those relationships spilled out onto the court.
As a referee, Tim also had behind the scenes information about injuries and league directives. He could predict how a team would be influenced by those factors before the game was even played. I picked the games based on relationships that existed between referees and players, referees and coaches, and referees and owners, and what took place in the morning meetings with the referees and what was going to be called that night and how a team was going to be put at an advantage or disadvantage.
Donaghy would analyze the schedule and the referee assignments before giving his picks to Jack Concanon, who would then place the recommended bets with a bookie named Pete Ruggieri. Donaghy was picking winners at an astounding almost 80% of the time. Clearly, the system worked, perhaps a little too well. Donaghy was aware that what he was doing was wrong. If someone found out, his life would be ruined.
Every now and then he would back off from gambling on the NBA and stick to betting on cards and other sports. No more, he would tell Jack on Canon. But somehow, Tim was always reeled back in. And it was never about the money, Donaghy claims. Quote, It was about the risk, the adrenaline, the juice of standing over that four-foot putt or flipping an ace or a king over someone's two queens. That's what it was about for us. And Jack and I couldn't get enough.
It was an addiction, as uncontrollable as it was powerful, the kind that forces you to pull the lever on a slot machine just to see what happens, despite the potential damages far exceeding the rewards. At their peak, Tim Donaghy and Jack Concanon were placing 35-40 wagers across all sports every week. During breaks in the NBA schedule, Donaghy would meet his friends at the casino in Atlantic City instead of going home to spend time with his wife and kids.
He was keeping secrets and hiding money, constantly lying about his whereabouts, stuffing cash into his socks to get through airport security. Gambling became Tim Donaghy's number one priority. Nothing else mattered except the next bet. Tim needed that action like a junkie needs his fix.
and then almost caught up to him. In 2005, after a dispute with his neighbor over the removal of some trees from an adjoining lot, that neighbor contacted the NBA and told them that one of their referees, Tim Donaghy, was a heavy gambler.
In response, the league hired a private investigator to look into the allegations, but Tim Donaghy was tipped off when that private investigator accidentally emailed a report to a Donaghy friend and fellow referee whose first name was the same as the NBA's vice president of security at the time. Nevertheless, Tim Donaghy would have to respond to those allegations. The NBA summoned the referee to league headquarters in New York, where executives grilled him about his gambling habits.
"Do you ever go to casinos?" "No." "Do you ever bet on football?" "No." "Basketball?" "Of course not." "I only bet on golf with my buddies," Donaghy told them. And the NBA had no proof otherwise, so he was off the hook. Although the league did penalize Donaghy for using bad judgment in how his neighborly dispute was handled, he was not permitted to officiate as many playoff games as he normally would, which equated to about a $15,000 loss in wages.
But that was fine. Tim Donaghy was just relieved that he didn't get caught. Besides that $15,000 could be recouped through one good week of gambling. But getting busted was always in the back of his mind. That's why in November 2006, Tim Donaghy told Jack Concanon for the last time that he was done. One final bet and then they would walk away clean. But that was before Tim Donaghy realized that other people knew what he was doing.
That was before Tim Donaghy realized that there was no way out. In November of 2006, we stopped. In December of 2006, I was in Philadelphia and I was picked up by two individuals associated with organized crime outside the Marriott Hotel. Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money.
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I had been betting on NBA games with a close friend of mine and he was passing along the information to somebody that was associated in the mob. And when I was at a hotel in Philadelphia, they came down and picked me up. They picked you up? Mm-hmm. And what happened then? They basically told me that I didn't want to be exposed
for what I was doing. They were well aware of what I was doing and who I was giving the pics to because the information was being passed along to them and that I needed to give them the pics. And if I didn't, that it's a possibility that somebody would go down and visit my wife and kids in Florida. Tim Donaghy and Tommy Martino had been best friends since the ninth grade.
Their lives had splintered off into different directions throughout adulthood, but the two kept in touch. Anytime Tim was in Philadelphia repping a game, he would reconnect with his oldest friend, who had become somewhat of a mafia guy wannabe. Tommy Martino worked as a driver for a man named Jimmy Batista, a professional gambler and bookmaker that had grown up in the same neighborhood. Donaghy remembers Batista playing on his older brother's football team back in the day. Everybody called him "Baa Baa" or "The Sheep."
Tim remembered Batista as a bully with whom his relationship was never very close. If Tim Donaghy was a betting man, and clearly he was, he would have wagered that after leaving Pennsylvania, he would never see or hear from Jimmy "Baa Baa" Batista ever again. Tim Donaghy was wrong. On December 12th, 2006, Tommy Martino brought Jimmy Batista to the hotel where Tim Donaghy was staying.
They convinced the referee to get in the car because Batista wanted to talk. He was there to make an offer the referee could not refuse. Obviously someone had said too much because Jimmy Batista knew about what Tim Donaghy was doing and he wanted in on it. Batista offered Donaghy $2,000 for every NBA game that he picked correctly. If the picks were bad, there would be no consequences, Tim was promised. Batista would shoulder all of the risk, financially at least.
Before Tim could say no, Batista issued a warning to the referee that if he declined to help, someone might pay a visit to his wife and children in Florida. Apparently, Baba had ties to the mob, or so Tim was led to believe. And just like that, Tim Donaghy was back in the gambling business, using his fellow referee's quirks, patterns, prejudices, and tendencies to pick winners against Las Vegas' betting lines.
The plan was for Tim to call Tommy Martino to deliver the picks using a coded language. Tommy would then pass the picks on to Batista who would bet hundreds of thousands of dollars on every game. Tommy would drive Batista from Philly to New York to pick up and drop off large sums of cash, and then he would bring 2,000 quote apples to Donaghy for a job well done.
This is Jimmy Bautista sharing one of the code words with Vice Sports. Something that we want to double our bet or triple our bet on, we're going to call it a schmaga. It was code words. So this is a significant word because schmaga was a Down Syndrome boy that grew up with us that everyone loved. Tim Donaghy nailed the first two picks he gave to Bautista. Boston over Philadelphia, San Antonio over New Orleans. And as promised, Tommy delivered Donaghy his cut.
The referee was disgusted with himself, but the picks continued. Donaghy claims he had no other choice. At least his share of the take would increase to $5,000 a game as a token of Batista's appreciation for the extraordinary rate of success. Bhabha even began to refer to the referee as Elvis because he was the king of making correct picks. And then all of his friends would probably politely pretend to laugh.
In three and a half months, it is reported that Tim Donaghy received a total of $30,000 for the confidential information he shared with the gamblers. Information that Jimmy Batista and the Mafia relied on to win millions.
And the league was none the wiser to what the wise guys were doing until March 2007. That's when the gravy train would come to a sudden and complete stop. Batista was down $7 million gambling. Then he started getting involved with me to recover that money and he was able to get it back. And he was just doing so many drugs and talking on the phone. He ran his mouth and it was heard over again being a wiretap.
As part of a broader investigation of organized crime, the FBI's Gambino family crime squad picked up conversations on a wiretap that referred to a corrupt NBA referee who was providing information and potentially fixing games for the mob. Within weeks there was a knock on middleman Tommy Martino's door. The FBI already knew everything. They had the phone records to prove the pattern of calls between the three men and the associated bets that were placed at the same time.
I get the call from Tommy and I just totally panic. I lose about 30 pounds in less than a month. And my attorney keeps telling me, sit tight, sit tight. And it just, the stress was just unbearable. And he called up the United States attorney and had him on speakerphone and I was sitting in his office and he said, listen,
So, Tim Donaghy flew to New York the very next day, Friday, July 6th, 2007.
In a five-hour meeting with the FBI, Tim spilled his guts. He explained his gambling problems and the threats and the relationships in the NBA and how he made his picks. But Tim was adamant that he never had a hand in affecting the outcomes of any game in any way. A fact that the NBA was quite relieved to hear when the FBI briefed them about the meeting later.
Fixed games would not have been a good look for a league who, at the time, was negotiating massive broadcasting contracts with television networks. Three days later, Tim Donaghy quietly resigned from his dream job as a referee for the National Basketball Association. He was instructed not to say a word until the investigation was complete. The league wanted to understand and confirm the extent of the scandal before the public was made aware.
But the media caught wind of the emerging details two weeks later and broke the news to a very interested audience. On July 20th, 2007, the front page of the New York Post featured the headline, "Fixed! NBA Ref and Mob Betting Scandal." But Tim Donaghy's name was not revealed in the report. But it did get out eventually, and the press showed up clawing at his front door.
One unlucky photographer was treated to an unexpected shower thanks to the Donaghy's lawn sprinkler. Eventually, Tim's wife Kimberly handed a note to the salivating reporters that read, "We have no comment, period. Please do not knock on our door, ring the bell, or wave at us as if we intend to give you the comment that may improve your chances of moving up the food chain." And then Kimberly filed for divorce.
As a competitor, as hard as I play, it is disappointing, definitely, said superstar LeBron James about the allegations that a referee was rigging games. Calamity can be a catalyst for significant change, wrote Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks. I think I'm going to come back to the fact that I'm going to wait for this investigation to run its course because we think we have here a rogue, isolated criminal. This is not something...
That is NBA Commissioner David Stern who reminded the public that Tim Donaghy was acting alone and the NBA was going to make damn sure that Donaghy was telling the truth about that because surely a league worth billions of dollars would turn over every stone in order to protect the integrity of the game, right?
Or would the NBA avoid shining a light on the dirty underbelly of professional basketball, too afraid of what might be lurking in the dark, waiting to be discovered?
On August 15th, 2007, Tim Donaghy pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in wire fraud and transmitting wagering information through interstate commerce. He would not be sentenced until late July of the following year. He was facing 33 months in prison and who knows how much in restitution and fines. The NBA was demanding that Donaghy reimburse the league for airfare, meals, game tickets, wages, and legal fees, a grand total of $1.4 million dollars.
Donaghy's lawyer argued that the leak was just trying to retaliate for his client's misconduct. The judge agreed and lowered the restitution to $217,266, which would be paid jointly by the three defendants, Tim Donaghy, Jimmy Batista, and Tommy Martino.
Before sentencing, Tim Donaghy did everything he could to minimize his time behind bars, which included revealing some of the NBA's dirtiest secrets to prove that he was not the only misbehaving referee on staff. On June 10th, 2008, Donaghy's attorney filed a court document that confirmed the suspicions of the NBA's most cynical fans.
Donaghy alleged that Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals was stacked in one team's favor. "Tonight a former NBA referee says the playoff series between the Kings and Lakers in 2002 was fixed." The game, which took place on May 31, 2002, featured a Los Angeles Lakers team on the brink of elimination in a seven-game series versus the Sacramento Kings, who had finished the season with the best record in the league.
The document claims that Donaghy, who did not work the game, learned from "Referee A," who has since been determined to be a man named Dick Bavetta, that Referees A and F wanted to extend the series to seven games. Quote, "Tim knew Referees A and F to be company men, always acting in the interest of the NBA. And that night, it was in the NBA's interest to add another game to the series." End quote.
It's not hard to see why it was in the NBA's best interest to add another game to the series. The most obvious reason being additional games means additional revenue. Additional revenue is good for the league, good for the game, and good for the network selling commercials. Furthermore, Sacramento was considered a small market team with a small fan base, while Los Angeles is, well, Los Angeles. A team and a city full of stars. The Lakers had Shaq and Kobe. The Kings had Mike Bibby.
which would have most casual fans asking, who the fuck is Mike Bibby? It's no surprise that the leak would try to help out Los Angeles, which is what Donaghy alleged in the document, and the video evidence backs him up. Speaking of Mike Bibby, he was the player elbowed in the face by Kobe Bryant during the game while the refs looked the other way. Every call and non-call went the Lakers' way, which left the best players on that Kings team in foul trouble and on the bench while L.A. got away with murder.
Yet going into the fourth quarter, the Sacramento Kings were ahead by two, but they were outnumbered since the officiating crew had seemingly joined the other team. The final quarter featured 27 free throws by the Los Angeles Lakers, three times as many as the Sacramento Kings, which for you non-basketball aficionados means three times the number of called fouls, a heavily lopsided affair that the big market Lakers won by four points.
The next day, sports writer Bill Simmons called the game the, quote, most one-sided game of the past decade. In fact, the fix was so egregious that even former presidential candidate Ralph Nader felt compelled to write a letter to NBA commissioner David Stern. Game 6, 2002, Western Conference Finals is a game that lives in infamy for every NBA fan. Kobe Bryant elbowed Mike Bibby in the face who fell bleeding. No foul was called on that superstar.
The big market Lakers shot 27 free throws in the fourth quarter to win by only four points against the small market Sacramento team that hasn't been the same since. At the time I said something stinks in La La Land, but the NBA owners and David Stern didn't listen. In 2008, once again, we have two candidates who are awash in corporate dollars, and once again, I'm calling foul.
The NBA got what they wanted: a Game 7, which the Lakers won handily in front of the most television viewers the league had seen in years. On to the NBA Finals, where Los Angeles won its 14th championship easily, their third in a row.
The celebratory hats, shirts, replica rings, and retrospective DVDs were probably boxed up and ready to ship before the series was even over. That's all it ever is.
Donaghy also claimed that the NBA would instruct referees to avoid calling technical fouls on certain star players, which could remove them from the game, along with the fans' interest in the process. He also described how certain referees would use their favorite team's practice facilities or share meals and tennis outings with the coaches. Sometimes players would provide autographs or merchandise to the officials and not expect anything in return. Wink, wink.
And then there was the gambling. Tim Donaghy alleged that almost every referee and player was guilty, and the NBA was complicit, he claimed. In fact, if you were a big enough star, the league might even cover for you. So you're going to confirm that, that David Stern did. That is the reason why, in your eyes, that Michael Jordan stepped away from the NBA because of the problems he had with gambling circles.
The NBA League office vehemently denied Donaghy's allegations. Commissioner David Stern called the disgraced official a sinking, cooperating witness. Stern said Tim's statements were nothing more than a desperate act by a convicted felon.
He's a singing, cooperating witness who is trying to get as light a sentence as he can. He turned on basically all of his colleagues in an attempt to demonstrate that he was not the only one who engaged in criminal activity. The NBA did investigate Tim Donaghy's claims but found no evidence to support them. The league was also able to confirm that Donaghy himself had never fixed any games.
What a relief. What does your gut tell you whether Tim Donaghy influenced the outcome of games by making excessive calls? We can't find it, and his fellow refs can't find it, and as best as we can tell, law enforcement can't find it. So I accept the prevailing view. However, the NBA's investigation analyzed only 17 games refereed by Tim Donaghy in his final season.
which seems like a small sample size considering Donaghy had officiated over 700 games through his 13-year career, which included four years where he was admittedly gambling. This led many spectators and members of the media to believe that the league's conclusion seemed a little too convenient, including Scott Eden at ESPN the Magazine, who years later conducted his own investigation. The reporter looked at 40 games officiated by Tim Donaghy,
10 of the games were blowouts and discarded from the analysis. But of the remaining 30 competitive games, Eden found that in 23 of them, Tim Donaghy's calls favored the team his gambling partners had wagered on. That's 77% of the time. For the gamblers out there, the odds of that happening naturally were 6,155 to 1. Statistically improbable.
So even if only subconsciously, Tim Donaghy's gambling habits appeared to have affected the outcomes of the games he worked. The NBA provided ESPN a statement that said the league had performed substantial statistical and database analyses to determine whether Donaghy had attempted to fix games, and the league's analyses, quote, did not support your finding that an unbiased official would not have made the calls that Donaghy did, end quote.
The NBA's dismissal of the findings was suspect. The league claimed that it was quote "impossible" to fix NBA games, that there would be too many red flags visible to ever pull it off. But even Phil Scala, the former FBI official who busted Donaghy was skeptical, telling ESPN the magazine quote "When someone tells you something is impossible, you know they are full of shit."
Scala insinuated that NBA executives were eager to move on from the investigation in order to protect the league, further evidenced by the fact that the NBA quickly settled with Jimmy Batista after the gambler refused to accept a plea bargain and threatened to go to trial, where his defense team planned to subpoena every referee in the league to testify under oath. Apparently, that was the last thing the NBA wanted to happen.
Eventually, the NBA did admit that there was a gambling problem within its officiating ranks. The league's internal investigation revealed that every single referee had violated the no gambling clause in their contracts in some form or fashion, but Commissioner Stern assured the public that none of the violations were major and that the league would take the necessary steps to correct it.
Those necessary steps included revising the NBA's gambling rules to allow referees to engage in non-sports betting. "The ban on gambling is absolute," Stern said, "and in my view, it is too absolute, too harsh, and was not particularly well enforced over the years." This is ESPN writer Scott Eden. Right now, betting markets, it's a global thing. Whether they're legal or not, it's a global betting market.
Once it's fully legalized in the United States, the size of it is going to explode. And we need to stop thinking about sports betting as going into a casino and a sports book and laying down money inside of a sports book. No, I mean, it is like a financial market. So like a financial market, it needs to be regulated, not by the participants. Like you can't have a Goldman Sachs regulating itself. That's right. You can't have a Goldman Sachs regulating itself.
That would be ridiculous. Of course.
Anyway. One year and three months behind bars for disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy. He could have been sentenced to much more prison time under federal guidelines, but the judge gave Donaghy credit for his extensive cooperation with investigators. On July 29, 2008, Tim Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his participation in the gambling scandal. "'I brought shame on myself, my family, and the profession,' he told the court."
Jimmy Batista and Tommy Martino received similar sentences earlier that month. Went in there and I was a cooperating witness for the government, so I had a big stamp on my forehead. I was attacked in prison by a guy who claimed to be associated with the Gambino crime family, and he did damage to my knee. I've had two operations on my knee to try to alleviate that pain, but it's something I'm just going to have to live with.
After 11, quote, hellish months in prison, Tim Donaghy finished his sentence at a recovery house where he was treated for gambling addiction. He was placed back in jail in August 2009 after being caught at a health club rehabbing his busted knee when he should have been at work. Tim Donaghy was released from prison for good on November 4th, 2009.
and transitioning to life on the outside after a year behind bars was not easy for the former ref. Tim was unemployed and struggled financially before landing a job in real estate managing rental properties. He had also written a memoir that his first publisher abandoned after pressure from the NBA. When the book finally did hit the shelves, his second publisher refused to pay him until he sued them and won $1.3 million. Jackpot. Just like old times,
Although the former referee claims he no longer bets on sports. Tim says he can't even force himself to watch basketball because he misses it too much.
However, within a few short years, after a speaking tour of schools warning students about the dangers of gambling, Donaghy was operating a new website called refpicks.com, where he breaks down game film to help gamblers make the right bets. He always makes sure to point out when something looks extra suspicious from a referee's perspective. Greetings, everyone. Tim Donaghy here for refpicks.com. Take a look at this play with Kobe Bryant coming off the screen.
Tim Donaghy has also spent his time post-prison getting closer to his daughters. In fact, according to Tim's lawyer, trying to be a good father landed him in trouble recently. What's happening is she was held against her will at a house. I found her from tracking her phone. She came out trying to leave. The parents are out here screaming and yelling. There's marijuana. My daughter is...
Okay. Okay.
Are you at that location now, sir? I am right out front. Okay. And the father is out here screaming at me. I don't know if you can hear him. Okay. With the mother. All right, sir. Just stay on the line with me, okay? I can hear some yelling, yes. Okay. Where's the hammer now, sir? Oh, the hammer's right here with me, pal. Okay. If he comes near me, if anyone comes near me, I will crack him right in his fucking head.
Tim Donaghy was arrested for aggravated assault by Manatee County Police in Florida on December 22, 2017. He threatened a homeowner with a hammer after catching his 19-year-old daughter smoking pot. Tim would probably tell you that, in retrospect, that probably wasn't the best way to handle that situation. Sometimes people get caught up in the moment and make bad decisions that could negatively affect the rest of their lives. But why take the risk?
Life is about choices, you know? I hope that sharing my story with others will help people realize how important the right choices are in life. Those choices not only affect ourselves, but the people we love the most, and that's our family. Thank you. Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, a.k.a. The Former, a.k.a. The Sheep.
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