Sports Handicapping: Calling Out Tim Donaghy’s Accusations Of NBA Wagering By Referees
If you haven’t read it yet, you must check out the newly released excerpts from the new Tim Donaghy book. This disgraced former NBA referee makes a few over the top, yet exact claims about how NBA officials go out of their way to affect the results of games. Basically, Donaghy admits that the referees are dishonest and would often play around with results on thing as immaterial as who needs to tip the team ball boys.
The most intriguing parts of the book are when Donaghy names names and points out certain referees and how they took pleasure in manipulating games. Tim discusses Dick Bavetta who was a ref in one of the worst officiated ganmes in history: game six of the 2001 western conference finals between LA and Sacramento. And although it’s arguable, he makes the following claim as well:
“The main reason I bet the loser was that I was certain that they woulc cover the spread, even if they played bad. This is where Dick came into the picture.
From when I first got involved with him, I quickly learned that he prefers to keeps game close, and when a team gets down by double digit points, he conveniently helps the players save face. He achieves this by softly yet blowing the whistle regularly on the team that is having the better night. Fouls suddely became on sided and the score began to tighten. This is how Bavetta refs a game, and everyone knew it. ”
If these allegations are true, we can assume that if you bet on the team most likely to lose in the games Bavetta was working, then you should have won some serious cash, sports betting handicapping aside. Of course you couldn’t win every game, but it appears that he made a killing with this wagering theory.
These allegations and stories got me thinking, so I conducted a number of investigations and the results were quite convincing that Donaghy is full of it! If you don’t understand, you have to hit 52.7% of the bets to even earn a profict if you are betting with common ten cent juice this means $110 to get back $100). Mr. Donaghy left from the pressure in 2007, so I looked back over the ten year period before the time we are talking about, and I found a few interesting things.
During the ten year period there were just two seasons that returned a profitable percent when betting on the underdogs in games where Bavetta was working. These two seaons were 1998/1999 when the underdogs came back at 55.7% and 2001/2002 when they made it to 57.1. This isn’t bad, but remember these were the only two seasons that returned at least 52.7%. Actually, if you made bets based on this theory, you would have lost a great deal of money in nearly every other basketball season.
These numbers and research proove that these allegations about Bavetta are false, and make me question the truthfullness of other comments he has makde. This isn’t to say that the NBA didn’t do anything wrong, or that yes, refs do make mistakes from time to time – sports handicapping aside, but we must ask if the rest of Donaghy’s comments are legit.
Rich Allen is an expert in Sports Handicapping and his Sports Betting Professor Systems have sold over 250,000 units and cover all major sports including horse racing. Download a FREE copy of The Sports Betting Insider’s Guide at: http://richallensports.com/sports-handicapping
