Reseña del libro "The Whistle (en Inglés)"
"Mr. Donaghy is a rogue, isolated criminal." - NBA Commissioner David Stern, July 24, 2007"If you're going to ask me if I would do it differently now, the answer is yes. I would not have gone to brief Stern." - FBI Special Agent Phil Scala, supervising agent on the Donaghy investigationThe most significant scandal in the history of NBA officiating began not with an investigation into basketball but with an investigation into the Gambino crime family's bookmaking operations in the Philadelphia suburbs.The Whistle tells the complete story of Tim Donaghy - the NBA referee who grew up in the specific working-class Catholic world of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where parlay cards circulated among high school students and his father was a respected NCAA basketball official, where his high school produced four NBA referees including Donaghy himself, and where his two childhood friends from those same hallways would become his co-conspirators.The Referee - Thirteen seasons in the NBA, 772 regular-season games, $260,000 annually by 2007. According to FBI Special Agent Phil Scala, who reviewed every game Donaghy ever officiated, he was one of the best referees in the league. Scala found no calls outside the bounds of acceptable officiating.The Scheme - Donaghy didn't fix games. What he did was more subtle and in some ways more troubling: he used his insider knowledge - referee assignments, player injuries, travel fatigue, the specific interpersonal dynamics between officiating crews and coaches and star players - to generate betting picks with a winning rate so far above chance that professional gamblers paid $5,000 per pick to access it.The Gamblers - Jimmy "Baba" Battista, an Oxycontin-addicted professional gambler with connections to the Gambino crime family, who had known Donaghy since Cardinal O'Hara High School. Tommy Martino, another Cardinal O'Hara classmate, who served as go-between. They called the operation "the ticket" and "the company." They were winning at a rate that moved the betting lines at multiple books.The FBI - The Gambino crime family task force, led by Special Agent Phil Scala, was watching Battista's bookmaking operations when they noticed the pattern of his betting activity: large, coordinated bets on NBA games, concentrated on games in which a specific NBA referee was working, winning at a rate that exceeded what chance could explain.The Cover-Up - On June 21, 2007, NBA Commissioner David Stern was briefed on the FBI's investigation. The FBI had developed a plan to wire Donaghy so he could catch other allegedly corrupt referees on tape. That plan was abandoned after the Stern briefing. Stern then called Donaghy "a rogue, isolated criminal." The New York Post broke the story framing Donaghy as a lone mob-connected bad actor. Phil Scala has since said he would not have briefed Stern if he could do it over.The Allegations - In court filings through his attorney, Donaghy alleged that Game 6 of the 2002 Lakers-Kings Western Conference Finals was manipulated by two referees who wanted to extend the series to seven games. The Lakers shot 27 free throws in the fourth quarter alone. The NBA denied the allegations. The Pedowitz review found no evidence to support them. The FBI investigation that could have answered the question was not completed.Book 1 of the Off the Court series: basketball's criminal cases told in full.
