Las Vegas, Nevada (10/2/2008) - The results of an investigation ordered by NBA commissioner David Stern have concluded that Tim Donaghy did not affect the outcome of games, and that referee Scott Foster was not involved in any misconduct. These claims run contrary to some extremely damning statistics reported by RJ Bell of Pregame.com:
The first 15 games of the 2006-07 season refereed by Tim Donaghy that had big enough betting to move the point spread by at least 1.5 points were UNDEFEATED against Las Vegas - meaning that the big-money gamblers won 15 of 15 times on his games.
The odds of that happening randomly are 32,768 to 1.
"To conclude Donaghy did not fix the games you have to believe that a person troubled enough to provide inside information to criminals was able to referee games in which he had a financial interest without any bias. Plus, you have to believe that information alone allowed big bettors to beat Las Vegas 15 straight times," said RJ Bell of Pregame.com.
Donaghy called Foster 134 times from October 2006 through April 2007. The investigation was satisfied with the reason behind the calls being friendship between the men, even though, according to Fox Sports, the calls "stopped abruptly" when Donaghy is believed to have stopped gambling.
During the 2006-07 period under investigation, TEN games refereed by Scott Foster had lopsided enough betting on one team to move the point spread by at least 2 points; those ten teams were UNDEFEATED against Vegas, meaning that the big-money gamblers won a perfect 10 of 10 times on Foster's games.
The odds of that happening randomly are greater than 1000 to 1 against!
Combined, the two questionable referees had big line moves in 13% of their games. A random sample of the first 100 NBA games of December 2007 resulted in only 6% of games having a line move of 2 points or more.
RJ Bell of Pregame.com said: "Donaghy and Foster's games had big line moves over double as often as a random sample of NBA games."
RJ Bells reporting on this story has been cited by over 100 national media outlets.
RJ Bell is available for any follow-up questions at rjbell@pregame.com
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