Donaghy, Gambling and the NBA
The FBI's Investigation into this NBA Official could get ugly
Tim Donaghy has done far worse than Pete Rose ever did. And not because he has done more betting on more games or any other quantification you can think of.
It's because of his status within his game.
Pete Rose was a player and a manager. And while it is utterly inexcusable to gamble on games as either of those things, it would be infinitely worse if Pete Rose were an umpire. Why? Because umpires, like referees in basketball, are the keepers of the game.
Referees and umpires are the administrators. From the first pitch or the tip to the final out or the final buzzer, they are in control and are responsible for the well being of the game. It's like a child with a babysitter. The child shouldn't misbehave, but if the babysitter messes up on his/her watch, then it is far worse an offense than a deviant child could ever commit.
And these officials have infinitely more influence over the actual game than a player in basketball or a manager in baseball. In basketball, they can call traveling, out-of-bounds, and fouls, the most important of tasks.
The fouls are the monster of the three. While out of bounds calls and traveling violations can give a team a few more possessions here and there, it is the fouls that truly alter a game.
It isn't just the extra free throws that will give a team an advantage. It's who is playing on the court. There is always contact during the game that isn't noticed or willfully ignored by referees, because if they called every bump the games would last for five hours.
But if a referee, particularly one with something riding on the game, decides to pay very close attention to every minute graze, he could foul a player out in the first half. But the coach wouldn't let that happen, so most likely you would have a star player (on the team opposite the bet, of course) with two fouls in the first few minutes of the first half sitting on the bench for the majority of the game.
That changes the whole dynamic. If a player bets, he has a whole team around him that is trying to win the game and while he'll have a significant impact, it would be minute in contrast to a referee.
So where does that leave Donaghy? Banished from the game forever, you would assume. And where does that leave the NBA? The league couldn't do anything right in the first place, and now its integrity has been compromised, adding to the NBA's already-floundering image with the American public.
That means the NBA is up you-know-what's creek. And if Donaghy implicates other players or referees, it might take a decade for the league to recover.
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