Tim Donaghy, the referee who spent 15 months in a federal prison for his role in a betting scandal that rocked the NBA, is out of prison and looking to make a splash once again.
The NBA did a phenomenal job sweeping the whole Donaghy scandal under the rug as best they could when the revelations were made public that he had ties to organized crime and that he may or may not have affected the outcomes of NBA games.
Beyond the initial outrage, little was mentioned of Tim Donaghy and his potentially crippling claims that he bet on NBA games that he was officiating. The NBA public relations department did a great job of painting Donaghy as a “rouge” employee and assuring the public that this was a very isolated incident.
I believe that the NBA even had a hand in getting Donaghy’s sentencing hearing pushed back from April (which would have happened during the first week of the NBA playoffs, a terrible time to remind people that there once was a referee that bet on game) to later in the summer when the NBA season was over.
But, no matter how great your PR department is, you can’t silence someone forever.
After serving 11 months in a federal prison, Donaghy was released on November 4th, and now he’s ready to talk.
He just released a book, Personal Foul: A First-Person Account of the Scandal That Rocked the NBA, and on Sunday he will give his first television interview since the scandal was made public on CBS’ 60 Minutes.
Regardless of how sure the NBA is about the fact the Donaghy acted alone, I can promise you that no one in the NBA offices in New York want this interview to air.
No good can come of it.
It’s been over two years since news of the scandal initially broke. Since then the NBA has acknowledged it and moved on, and the fans seem to have done the same. But with the book released this week and the interview to air on Sunday, the NBA is now forced to revisit the most shocking and embarrassing scandal that they have ever had to face.
My gut tells me that Donaghy won’t say anything too harmful to the NBA on 60 Minutes. If he does have any earth-shattering inside information, and I’m not sure that he even does, he surely isn’t going to reveal it for free on national television while he’s trying to sell a book.
And that’s a good thing.
The NBA knows that there are probably some embarrassing details in the book that they don’t want revealed to the public. But the league done such a good job of making Tim Donaghy look like a scumbag (which he is), that I doubt that any real NBA fans are going to be lining up at Borders to purchase his book. I know I’m certainly not going to.
Maybe Donaghy will make some vague comments about how the NBA can’t be certain that there aren’t other referees betting on the game, or how it’s easier to get involved in gambling than the NBA realizes, but unless he reveals some mind-blowing details about the gambling ring he was a part of or tells us something that we didn’t already know, this interview is going to blow over.
The NBA will issue a statement either Sunday night or Monday morning basically calling Tim Donaghy a terrible person, and that will be the end of it, hopefully.
The league has already survived this scandal once. There is no need to revisit it.
It is in David Stern’s best interest to ignore Tim Donaghy, now and in the future, and he knows it. It does the NBA no good to even address the allegations that Donaghy has made. Let him have his moment on TV to try to sell his book, and both parties can move on.
And while I don’t necessarily care about or completely believe everything that Tim Donaghy says, that doesn’t mean I won’t be watching on Sunday.
I’m ready for closure. This betting scandal has been a black eye to the league that I love and follow religiously. I’ll be watching 60 minutes because they way I see it, this is the final chapter.
After he says his peace, no one will care about Tim Donaghy ever again.
That’s the way the NBA wants it, and I’m happy to oblige.
Hopefully Sunday will be the last time that I, or anyone else who loves the NBA, will have to hear from this idiot ever again.
Keywords: NBA, Tim Donaghy
