Tim Donaghy interview

[amusedofficial]

Playoff blowouts, in series or individual games, and teams overcoming disadvantageous officiating do not discredit Donaghy; officials can do little to make a lousy team beat a good team or to inflict undeserved defeat on a team for which individual effort and team mechanics flow correctly on a given night. Even the most crooked official or player can do little other than tinker at the margins. Overall, though, an empirical view of games and officials compared to Donaghy's betting strategies seems to discredit his claims.

One would also think that someone in law enforcement would have used something Donaghy said to launch a further investigation into the league. It `hasn't happened.

However, I think one would halve to be hopelessly naive to believe that competitive factors do not figure into instructions/evaluations of NBA officials.

Whistleblowers (in the prosecutoral sense of the word) need an incentive and Donaghy has a few, with his own economic survival at the top of the list. I do not reject what he says out of hand, even though the empirical evidence does not seem to support him. He may well have laid it on thick to sell books and make a living. IN that context, any exaggeration buries any truthful kernel ithat may lie beneath his garbage pile ofl lies. Even so, the claims are worthy of investigation, if only to spike them with credibility