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Ah, the Celtic Four, or "Shamrocks" as they're otherwise known.Donaghy, a baby-faced 40, is one of four NBA referees to have graduated from Cardinal O'Hara high school in Philadelphia. The others are Joey Crawford, Mike Callahan and Ed Malloy.
I think the thing that is most damning about Donaghy here is the fact that if you paid attention, as timvp noted earlier, you could see a few years ago that he was a good official who was earning his stripes and working his way up the NBA ladder.
Of late, though, he had become something of a Javie-like crumudgeon -- it seemed like he made more and more bad calls and that he had a very short fuse with those who questioned his bad calls. When Javie was younger, he was like that, but I think that had a lot to do with his desire to be in control of things and a willingness to piss people off if they slighted him.
With Donaghy, in many cases, it seemed that he wasn't even close to making the right call and wouldn't hear any complaints from the team that was adversely affected. I had chalked some of that up to crew assignments (some crews call games very differently than others) and I had considered the possiblity that he had grown to consider himself bigger than the game (Javie of a few years ago; Joey Crawford of late). But as I sit and think about it more, that exchange with Chris Paul last January in San Antonio, to me, was one that exemplifies the decline in Donaghy's efforts.
I don't think those bad calls ever cost a team a game -- not that I can remember -- but I can see where someone like Pop would find the calls maddeningly inconsistent and would be even more pissed that the official wouldn't even try to defend his call. Pop strikes me as someone who's all about intellectual honesty, and officials manipulating games with choice calls are decidedly not about that.
It's easier for me to say that now, of course, and I'll admit that I've continued to view him as a pretty good official despite his seemingly-changed temprament. I guess that's because I can't recall him ever just brutally screwing a team over in the games that I watched; he "missed" calls or "blew" calls, but all officials do that from time-to-time, particularly the younger officials. I guess that's why I think we'll eventually discover that Donaghy was fiddling with things that didn't affect the ultimate win or loss outcome of games, but that he was messing around with spreads. I still see those as being different things, though each is absolutely reprehensible to me.
Ah, the Celtic Four, or "Shamrocks" as they're otherwise known.Donaghy, a baby-faced 40, is one of four NBA referees to have graduated from Cardinal O'Hara high school in Philadelphia. The others are Joey Crawford, Mike Callahan and Ed Malloy.
Donaghy was one of the refs in Game 3 of the Spurs-Suns series. Here's what Bill Simmons said at the time: "Congratulations to Greg Willard, Tim Donaghy and Eddie F. Rush for giving us the most atrociously officiated game of the playoffs so far ... Most of the calls favored the Spurs, but I don't even think the refs were biased -- they were so incompetent that there was no rhyme or reason to anything that was happening. Other than the latest call in NBA history (a shooting foul for Ginobili whistled three seconds after the play, when everyone was already running in the other direction), my favorite moment happened near the end, when the game was already over and they called a cheap bump on Bruce Bowen against Nash, so the cameras caught Mike D'Antoni (the most entertaining coach in the league if he's not getting calls) screaming sarcastically, "Why start now? Why bother?" What a travesty."
spurs racking up them asterisks.....
Honestly if there is a team whose championships i would not question it would be the Spurs.
Absolutely.
Baseball can have a decade of players cheating and phony records, and college basketball has had more than its share of point-shaving scandals, but the media will no doubt call for the NBA to be outlawed.
Wow so as it turns out the Spurs might have not 1, but 2 asterisks next to this trophy.
Does that mean the Spurs have five championships now?
I think everyone is going to flash back to some point in time when Donaghy made some bad call and claim that his bad call cost a team a game. It's human nature, in a time like this, for some to claim that they saw this coming. I'm not sure who ever could have really seen this scenario playing out. Even the league thought Donaghy was a good enough official (despite his tinkering with games) to continue to call games into the 2nd round of the playoffs -- those aren't assignments that are given out lightly.
I still don't think Donaghy changed results as much as he affected scores and differentials. But that's enough to create a major, major problem for the league.
NBA officials are about to have their lives examined microscopically by the league. Perhaps this will be the thing that brings about the sort of transparency that so many have wanted.
Fortunately, there's a weekend coming up... and if Bonds hits another one this weekend he'll probably dominate sports news in the coming week.
Because you're a Piston fan and understand something besides dilettante ball.
Anyone know what the over/under was for "Pacers going into the stands" for that game?
Yeah. It's quite obvious that rampant cheating occurred in the MLB for at least the last 15 years and yet here we have one of the obvious offenders about the break the most coveted record in the league's history. Sure, this has been the subject of a myriad of media reports, but what has actually been done about it?
If the reported allegations against Donaghy are true, he'll be reffing in the Federal Penal League before long.
pathetic
Mavs have plenty of asterisks, just no championships to put them next to.
Even the most mentally challenged criminal could figure out that it wouldn't be wise to commit that.
Well, there was this guy.
So we now get to read bloggers who cite games Donaghy didn't even work as evidence that he fixed games. Yay. And for all our collective basketball knowledge, we have one complaint of a single bad call as evidence that we knew this was happening.
Tim Donaghy was the ref....
He seemed not too bad.
Oh well.
As far as any fan can tell, there are few checks and balances in how NBA games are reffed. It's varies widely from game to game and within a game when the refs finally decide they want to control it. There are special rules for the last few seconds when you get much more physical.
I think the NBA needs to move from reffing as an art form and get to work on getting the calls right and consistent from ref to ref, game to game, quarter to quarter, and between first quarter and crunch time. In baseball, strikes and balls are closely scrutinized by MLB. This year I've noted that they are calling checked swing strikes much more consistently. However, I won't be holding my breath waiting for this to happen.
I agree, at least to the extent that there's going to be a lot of retrospective speculation -- a lot of it misguided -- about Donaghy's efforts.
I will say this: part of the reason that Spurs fans might be having a difficult time citing to specific examples of Donaghy perhaps messing with games is that this season presented so few of those opportunities.
By my count, Donaghy officiated only 4 games involving the Spurs during the 2006-07 season and playoffs. He did the aforementioned New Orleans game in January and Game 3 of the WCSF against Phoenix.
He also called a March 8 game at Sacramento that the Spurs won 100-93 (they were 9 point favorites). I don't recall enough about that game to think that it was tilted one way or the other -- Corliss Williamson had a big night for the Kings that night, but the game was pretty close all the way. There was, IIRC, a mildly disputed call late in that game that put Bibby on the line for 3 free throws, but I have no idea if Donaghy called that or not. I honestly couldn't say for sure that the call was actually disputed.
Donaghy also called a March 26th game at Golden State that the Spurs won 126-89 -- they shot almost 70% in the first half and cruised to a victory in James White's debut. With that game, I don't think there could have possibly been anything that might have suggested a fix.
Anyway, the dearth of Donaghy-officiated games this year might explain why we can come up with so few examples that might suggest support for the allegations.
I'm just disappointed that it wasn't Joey Crawford.
They should check him just in case.
Joey Crawford is still suspended, I think.
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