In our third scandal of the week we are going to tackle NBA referee Tim Donaghy and his charges against him of gambling on games he was referee and possibly influencing those games.
Personally i think the NBA really needs to upgrade their background checks before hiring these referees. According to my sources (none), all the NBA asked was to have been a referee before. What they didn't know was that his main referee experience was for the WWE (formally WWF). And if they did a financial background check they would have noticed that he deposited a lot of cash into his account at that time due to his betting on the matches, as he already knew the outcome. Wait you say the WWE isn't fixed, hmm that's weird, i thought people that thought that couldn't read.
Below are some other sporting events that he was referee, might have raised some flags?
Miracle On Ice - 1980: Yep, he was one of the referee's for this famous game. You could probably see he had some action on USA as he gave the USA 3 goals on what is normally called Icing and disallowed 2 of Russia's goals after he determined they were scored unfairly as they had more men on the ice than the USA, even though it was due to a penalty (probably to Jim Craig for getting hair grease on the ice).
Snow Plow Game - 1982: He didn't actually officiate in this game as he was an alternate official in case of injury, but that didn't stop him from affecting the outcome. In this game between Miami and New England there was a blizzard (I am guessing it was a Miami home game) which helped cause the teams to battle to a 0-0 score with seconds remaining. Well, Donaghy had money on New England so he hopped on the nearest snow plow tractor and blew off the spot where the NE Kicker needed to plant his foot.
NBA Summer League - 2007: He had some action against the Trailblazer's as evidenced by the 19 fouls he called on Greg Oden in two games for such infractions as "Looking like Cro-Magnon Man" and muttering "Me Swat Ball". The second one got him a technical.
Any Red Sox Playoff Game game prior to 2005: Him or elder family members are die-hard Yankee Fans (and what Yankee fan wouldn't cheat for his own benefit) and they have umpired in at least one playoff series that the Red Sox were involved in each year since 1918. As evidenced by the 1986 Red Sox playoff run where Donaghy was the umpire and called 124 consecutive strikes against the Sox, including some balls that hit the batter, bounced in the dirt and the one pitch that sailed over a batters head and into the stands.
So if the NBA had maybe taken a closer look at his background, they may not be in this situation.
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