This week’s article deals with the current NBA refereeing scandal in the United States. Locally little emphasis was made on this case and thus I decided to give the readers a thorough breakdown (adapted from various sources) of what occurred in what I term a shock for sports in general.

Tim Donaghy was born on 7 January 1967 in Havertown, Pennsylvania. In total he was a professional basketball referee in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for 13 seasons from 1994 right up to this year.

In fact, during his career in the NBA, Donaghy officiated in 772 regular-season games and 20 play-off games.

One could call him a sort of ‘figlio d’arte’ as Tim Donaghy is the son of Gerry Donaghy, a former Atlantic Coast and Atlantic 10 Conference basketball referee who worked four NCAA Final Fours in the early 1990s (including the 1992 championship game between Duke University and the University of Michigan). Apart from this, Donaghy is also a nephew of former NBA referee Bill Oakes.

Before officiating in the NBA, Donaghy spent five years working Pennsylvania high school games and seven seasons in the Continental Basketball Association (CBA). He then joined the NBA in 1994.

In his 13-year career as an NBA official, Donaghy was considered one of the league’s best, and was often among one of the select pool of officials who worked the second round of the NBA Play-off series.

Donaghy suddenly resigned from the league two months ago, on the 9th of July, prior to reports of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for allegations that he bet on games that he officiated during his last two seasons and that he made calls affecting the point spread in those games.

A few days later, exactly on July 20th, a report of an investigation by the FBI into allegations (covered indirectly in an unrelated FBI operation linked to the Gambino Mafia family in Brooklyn) of an NBA referee betting on games to control the point spread emerged by columnist Murray Weiss of the New York Post.

Donaghy, who also told US District Court Judge Carol B. Amon he is under psychiatric care for his gambling problem and is taking antidepressant and anxiety medication, provided details of the betting scheme.

He admitted passing information to two associates, James “Baba” Battista (a professional gambler also known as “Sheep”) and Thomas Martino. Donaghy was originally paid $2,000 for each successful tip. He would pass on predictions of which teams he thought would win games, which officials would be officiating, and the injuries or fitness status of players (i..medical conditions usually closely guarded by teams). Later, Donaghy was paid $5,000 for each successful tip (however he did not lose money if his pick did not win and cover the point spread). Prosecutors believe that Donaghy has been paid about $30,000 in total since December 2006.

Donaghy (who earned $260,000 as an NBA referee last season) had begun betting on NBA games in 2003 but only began passing along inside information in December when James Battista learned of the referee’s gambling. Dates of Donaghy’s interactions with Battista and co-conspirator Thomas Martino, who together gathered the picks from the referee and made the cash payments to him, were listed in the court. Reports have stated that both Battista and Martino were high school friends of Donaghy from their days in Springfield, outside Philadelphia.

“I would use a telephone or cell phone to make calls around the country to one of the individuals in order to communicate the picks,” Donaghy said. “In many of these calls we used a coded language, and I concealed this conduct from my employer.”

Donaghy said he “was in a unique position to predict the outcome of NBA games” because he had access to information not available to the public. “As a referee, I was given access to master referee schedules that included the identities of officiating crews for particular games,” he said.

Donaghy also said he was aware of the interaction between officials and players, the way officials called games as well as the physical condition of players, all of this being information that could help him make his picks.

Donaghy was released from federal court on a $250,000 bond, a $500,000 fine and a reimbursement of the $30,000 to the NBA. He faces up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced on 9 November for conspiracy to engage in wire fraud and transmitting betting information through interstate commerce.

Compassion appears reserved mainly for Donaghy’s retired father, Gerry, who when reached by telephone said that he had no comment.

Tim Donaghy, who now lives in Florida, is married to Kimberly since 1995 and have four girls, aged six to 11. However, just days ago, his wife filed for divorce.

“I’m sure it’s heartbreaking,” said Hank Nichols (a friend of the Donaghy family) who is the NCAA’s coordinator of men’s basketball officials. “It’s such a tragedy for officiating. Players have fixed games. Coaches did this and that. Referees were always above that. Out of the blue now comes a thunderbolt. It’s once in a lifetime, in my lifetime, and it’s not good.”

Sports gambling expert R. J. Bell, president of sports betting information site Pregame.com, tracked every game Donaghy worked from 2003 to 2007. He discovered that during the two seasons investigated by the NBA, the teams involved scored more points than expected by the Las Vegas sports books 57 per cent of the time. In the previous two seasons, this only happened 44 per cent of the time. According to Bell, the odds of such a discrepancy are 1 in 1,000, and there was “a 99.9 per cent chance that these results would not have happened without an outside factor.” He also found 10 straight games in 2007 in which Donaghy worked the game that the point spread moved 1.5 points or more before the tip, a clear indication that big money had been wagered on the game. Also, the big money won every time. This is another indication that “something was going on.”

NBA Commissioner David Stern said in a statement, “We would like to assure our fans that no amount of effort, time or personnel is being spared to assist in this investigation, to bring to justice an individual who has betrayed the most sacred trust in professional sports, and to take the necessary steps to protect against this ever happening again.”

According to Stern, NBA referees are not only barred from betting on games, but cannot provide information to anyone about their games or disclose their travel schedules outside their immediate families. Anyone who does so, he said, faces almost certain banishment from the league for life. He emphatically denied that the NBA knew about Donaghy’s gambling and let him work anyway. He also called the Donaghy matter “an isolated case involving an NBA referee who engaged not only in a violation of our rules, but in criminal conduct” and “the most serious situation and worst situation that I have ever experienced” in 40 years with the NBA.