January 6, 2026 • 51 mins
The world of professional sports is a multi-billion dollar industry -- and even the most ardent fans may not know what actually happens away from the bright lights and cheering crowds. Join Ben and special guest, journalist Tim Livingston, the creator of Whistleblower, as they dive into the strange, twisting tale of one of the NBA's biggest conspiracies -- a gambling scandal that rocked the industry and, disturbingly, may have reprecussions that continue throughout the sport in the modern day.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Philip conspiracy realists. We're coming in Little Caesar style, hot
and ready with a classic from twenty twenty as we
celebrate the holidays and the passage of one year to another.
We are not the experts on the NBA, but we're
pretty good at figuring out conspiracies. And in this one, guys,
(00:24):
if you remember, not an episode per se, but an interview,
we teamed up with a guy named Tim Livingston who
introduced us to one of the biggest conspiracies in the
entire history of the NBA.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, this official named Tim Donahy you back in two
thousand and seven got arrested for betting on games he
was officiating.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Whoops, wepe.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
Was this the podcast series that this dude did with Tenderfoot?
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah, so this is Whistleblower.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Really excellent deep dive and it goes into sports betting,
sports fixing conversations we've had in the past with another
expert on the subject. Now that I'm thinking about it,
his name is escaping me. But this one dude that
we talked to who is like all sports are rigged?
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yes, m mmmmm hmm.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Well, and Brian Dewey that's it.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
And then we all watched this past year in twenty
twenty five, when there's a crazy scandal with Chauncey Billups
and Terry Rosier I don't know how to say his name,
ro O z I E. R. And a bunch of
other players that were caught up in a casino scandal
or a you know, like a do it yourself casino
style betting scandal where they'd bring in famous folks to
(01:43):
play you know, I guess poker with and stuff like that,
and then they would just take everybody's money.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
Hey, do you like money?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Do you like the NBA?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
This is the interview for you. We can't say enough
good stuff about Whistleblower. Check it out. It's available on
every podcast platform that you dig personally. Add you know,
they absolutely did it. Just spoiler for the record, the gambling,
(02:14):
the conspiracy stuff is real. Tim l is correct.
Speaker 6 (02:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Well, and Tim is a sports journalist out there in
Los Angeles, or at least he was, so he really
knows what he's talking about. They did their work, you know,
to dig into this two thousand and seven thing. I
just want to put everybody else on one other show.
So if you listen to this episode you like it,
Maybe go check out Whistleblower. And then there's another one
Tim made called the Raven that you guys, it has
(02:39):
to do with a double murder that occurred right after
a Super Bowl in Atlanta. And then that was a
whole other story that was just pretty insane about Ray
Lewis and like potentially him being involved in a double murder,
double homicide.
Speaker 5 (02:56):
Rather from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history
is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
or learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Welcome to the show. They call me ben Mi Compatriots
Matt and Noel are on adventures, but we'll be returning
very soon. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
We're diving into a strange one today, fellow conspiracy realist.
(03:46):
It's a story that you may be familiar with if
you are if you are a huge fan of sports.
It's a story that you may have heard a headline about,
but you I've never seen it fully explored. We're diving
into a world of gambling. We're diving into the depths
(04:09):
of corruption, into the heights of financial shenanigans and ethics violations.
It's a mystery that is being unraveled that occurred here
in the US not too long ago. What are we
talking about? Well, to answer that question, we're going to
(04:30):
defer to an expert, as we always try to do.
You know that we want to bring you primary sources,
people with experience and expertise in a field. And that's
why today I am over the moon to welcome to
the show our guest, the sports journalist, writer and creator
of the Whistleblower podcast, Tim Livingston. Tim, thanks for coming
(04:54):
on the show today.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Thanks for having me Ben So, you and I I.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Have talked a bit off air about this story, which
as the podcast is still coming out. Whistleblower is a
term that I think a lot of people understand nowadays
in the West. But Whistleblower, the podcast is diving into
a very specific mystery. Could you tell us, just briefly,
(05:25):
I want to be careful not to spoil too much,
just briefly, what whistle Blower is about. How this story begins.
Speaker 6 (05:34):
The story begins with a former whistleblower, and not the
one that we know about now. He has nothing to
do with Russia or China or anywhere else. He's a
former NBA referee named Tim Donahy and Tim Donahey for
sports fans. Sports fans know Tim Donahey as the most
disgrace official in American sports history. I think he has
(05:56):
that title, and whoever's in second place, it's a pretty
distance second. Tim Donnahe is looked upon as a pariah,
and rightfully so. However, when he got into trouble, he
blew the whistle on That's where we're going with this, Ben.
He blew the whistle, the proverbial whistle on a much
(06:18):
bigger systemic issue within the NBA, and that issue was
a culture of refereeing in which players, coaches, and team
personnel were fraternizing with referees, creating relationships with referees where
just referees as the police of this game, we're not
(06:39):
being policed at all. And it led to, in my opinion,
corruption on an unbelievable scale, both with donnahe himself and
with other referees at the time.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
And so that's what we dive into.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
It's okay, the narrative has always been Donna, he was
a rogue criminal. It was just this guy, He's the
only one. And for me, I just never believed it.
I've watched so many NBA games that something just didn't
feel right. And so that's where we dive in from
is what happened, what happened with donnahe himself, and then
(07:12):
part two is what happened with his with his former employer,
what happened with the NBA, What actually happened behind the scenes.
What now can we look at thirteen years ago and
peel back layer by layer and understand on a much
deeper level. And that's where this story gets really crazy,
because thirteen years later, more people are willing to talk,
more information has come to light that might have trickled
(07:35):
into the news at some point, but that even the
most ardent sports fans don't really know. And so that's
where we're going with this, and that's the crux the podcast.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So one thing that's fascinating to me about this is
your inspiration because it sounds like you, you know, being
a fan, very familiar with the bones of the story,
or at least the headlines we saw reported back in
oh back in two thousand and seven. I believe it
(08:05):
started really the rubber really started hitting the road. But
it sounds like you had a tingle of your spider
sense almost right, a discrepancy. Something was rotten in Denmark.
There was a glitch in the matrix. One thing that
fascinates me about this is there's a line in the
(08:26):
very beginning of the first episode where you talk about
how referees are supposed to be kind of shadows, right,
almost non entities on the court. Referees don't get noticed
until they make a call that you don't like, Right,
isn't that how it usually works out?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Exactly?
Speaker 6 (08:49):
And what a weird profession, right, You get booed out
by thousands upon thousands of people every single night. You
only get noticed when you mess up. You get no
accolades when you're the best of what you do, and
being the best to what you do means that you're invisible.
It means that people have no idea who you are.
It means that the game they just watched was they
(09:10):
watched it without any inkling that there were officials, right,
it was just the players playing the game. And that
means that you did the best job you could have done,
the game was being played in its purest form.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
However, for basketball fans.
Speaker 6 (09:23):
We know that every single game that we've ever watched,
there's been at least three or four times you're going
to scream with the TV that that call was bull right.
That's we all do it as sports fans. We can't
help it. We're all couch coaches or whatever you want
to call us. And in the NBA, that's what exists
(09:45):
on every single night. And for me as a fan
growing up, I love basketball. I played basketball my entire life,
and so I've been cognizant of the effect that a
referee can have on a game since I was five
years old. And when I was a kid, I used
to have a really bad temper and I used to
scream at referees. I used to get so mad at
(10:05):
referees when they didn't make the call that I thought
was right in direct league, right, these guys are getting
paid ten dollars an hour back in the early nineties,
and they don't want to be there, and last thing
they wanted some little asshl screaming at him. I was
that kid, And then as I got older, I realized
that these are human beings that you can manipulate them,
right that if you're nice to them, if you chat
(10:26):
with them before the game, if you make them feel special,
they are going to give you the benefit of more calls.
So I've been fascinated by that, by the ability to
influence a referee for my entire life and for this story,
though I having played basketball my whole life and having
been in love with the sport forever, watching some of
(10:47):
these games that took place in the early two thousands
and mid two thousands before the scandal came out, before
it was exposed that donnihe before donnihe exposed the idea.
I can't say that he exposed everything, right, He just
gave us an inkling of the culture and of how
things operate behind the scenes. When that all came out,
(11:07):
it made sense to me. And because I watched some
of these games, some of those games were not right.
They weren't officials having a bad day. In my opinion,
there was no way there was motive. There was something
behind it, and that's what we're exploring in this podcast.
Ben that you mentioned I'm pretty transparent about like that's
where I'm coming from. I'm not coming from I'm a journalist,
(11:28):
but also I have eyes and I've watched these games,
and so I'm not shy about the fact that I'm
entering this investigation with bias, because you can't tell me
the two thousand and two Western Conference Finals were three
officials just having a bad game. I won't believe you.
It didn't happen. It wasn't just one or two bad calls.
(11:49):
It was an incredible amount an entire game, and especially
in an entire fourth quarters worth of egregious miscalls. And
for me, that's where I approached this destigation, where something
was something was amiss, what was it?
Speaker 3 (12:03):
How did it work?
Speaker 6 (12:05):
And that's what we really explore on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
You've raised a fascinating point here. It's something that I immediately
thought of when you and I were first talking off
air a few weeks ago about whistleblower and you were
telling us some of the nuts and bolts of the situation,
which are frankly disturbing. I started thinking about the tremendous
(12:28):
paradox that's inherent and being a referee, one of the
most powerful people on the court, is one of the
least compensated. They're making peanuts, you know, you get what
is it. I think it's an average of one hundred
and fifty thousand on the low end per year to
(12:50):
a little over five hundred thousand or so. And that's like,
depending on how you break down the math, that's what
some of the players are making. You know, that's like
a fraction of what they're making in a game. And
so I could see very easily the opportunity for someone
(13:10):
who is unethical to whether through character or stick, incentivize
the referee to make a little bit more scratch. And
we know you know this. This reminded me a little
bit of the conspiracy theories regarding Michael Jordan and gambling, right,
which is which is something we've explored a past episode.
(13:34):
I'm ted talking a little bit here, but I wanted
to outline that because I think a lot of people,
myself included, to be transparent, didn't really consider the discrepancy there,
the fact that like you know, I'm I'm making two
hundred and fifty grand for the whole year. That's what
I'm gonna make unless I'm moonlight right somewhere else. And
(13:59):
these folks that I'm calling that I'm making calls on
no matter what happens to them win or lose. They're
multi millionaires, so it doesn't seem like it would take
much for the push. But okay, So the idea of
rigged sports, it's tremendously controversial because any fan of sports,
(14:24):
any fan of any sport, wants the rules to be
followed right. Ostensibly, we want the game to be competitive,
we want the athletes at the top of their abilities,
and we want the rules followed so that a win
is a real win and not invalidated and not turning
into some like mafia esque con job. Could you tell
(14:48):
us a little bit about what Doneghey was going through
that pushed him to this like before, like okay, so
he clearly was a crooked ref There's no question about that.
Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
No question?
Speaker 6 (15:03):
And to your point, think about it, right, if going
back to the Michael Jordan Bulls, think about how much
power referee has Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen stuff from
the court. A referee could give both of them two
technical fouls for no reason right when they walk on
the court, eject them both from the game, and the
Bulls have to play the rest of the game without
Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen. No referee has ever done that,
(15:25):
and probably ever will. That's a little bit too obvious,
But think about how much power a referee has, right
because he can also call two ticki tack fouls on
Scottie Pippen and two ticki tack fouls on Michael Jordan
and force them to watch the rest of the first
quarter from the bench. And if you're betting against the spread,
that's hugely advantageous. If you're a referee and you have
money on the game, right, so are against the bulls
(15:47):
in that game. So a referee has incredible and incredible
amount of power. And for those for sports fans who
don't want to believe that there's any possible corruption in sports,
just using basketball as an example, the referees, to your point,
make tenth, one twentieth, sometimes one fiftieth as much as
the guys who were yelling at them, screaming in their
(16:09):
face night after night after night. How can they not
over time or immediately create how can they not be biased?
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Right? These guys aren't robots, they're humans.
Speaker 6 (16:19):
And with guys that have ego like Tim donahe that
and again I don't think donnahe's the only referee that
was fixing games over the course of history basketball. I
think that would be incredibly naive to believe that.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
The question for me is how many were there and
how high up did it go?
Speaker 6 (16:38):
So in episode two, we interviewed Michael Franzis, you might
have seen in Netflix's Fear City, one of the most
brilliant members of the Mafia of all time. A guy
who is running schemes that were making millions upon millions
of dollars a day and just a very He was
a criminal, but he was a damn good one. And
he talks about how he had two NBA referees on
(16:59):
his payroll in the nineties that weren't Tim Dannihi, Right,
So there's just this is one monster with two NBA
reps on his payroll that were not the guy that
we're focusing on. And that gives you an idea of
a And this is what Fretsy says. It was easy
to fix a game. It's not hard when it's against
the spread. It's hard if you need one team to win, right.
(17:20):
So some of the games that I'm referencing from the
playoffs and finals where there was the foul discrepancies you know,
there's one team is shooting sixty free throws, there are
teams shooting thirty.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
That that's where it gets egregious.
Speaker 6 (17:32):
And as fans, you know, those are the games that
we still talk about to this day because we a
lot of us don't feel that those were on the
up and up. But when it comes just to the spread,
that's easy. If the Bulls are supposed to win by
by ten and you got a bet on the other
team to cover that spread for you know, if the
Bulls need to win by nine or less for you
(17:52):
to win your bet, yeah, call two quick fouls of
Michael Jordan, put them the bench, and you're probably in
really good shape for the rest that that right there
probably affects the point spread by three or four points immediately.
And if the Bulls are up by eleven and in
the fourth quarter, start calling more thousand than Bulls, and
you as a referee can really dictate whether the Bulls
(18:14):
win by eight points or twelve points. So that's exactly
and where that's where it gets interesting. And that's where
we as fans have to look at the system and
look at how easy it is for these guys to
manipulate a game and put in The NBA has put
in checks and balances since Donahey, they've done an okay
job of improving the system. There are a lot more
(18:36):
referees who are anonymous, who are invisible, who do a
great job. However, there are still referees that have been
refereeing for twenty five plus years who one of them.
Scott Foster was Donnihe's best friend, and him and Tim
Donna He talked one hundred and thirty four times in
the phone at the height of the scheme from October
two thousand and six to March two thousand and seven,
(18:59):
on the phone that donnae He used as what the
FBI said, Donna he used this phone for gambling, primarily
for gambling or later purposes. And Scott Foster's the top
official in the NBA, right, So there's all this circumstantial
evidence that points to Scott Foster and Donnahe having a
relationship that it minimally needs to be explored further. And
this guy's being when we watch the NBA Finals this year,
(19:22):
Scott Foster's gonna ref two of those games. And that's
the guy that I'm supposed to trust has integrity and
then I'm supposed to trust, you know, it's going to
create an even playing field for both these teams and
not let his ego or bias or anything else infiltrate.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah, okay, I don't. We got a long way to go.
Speaker 6 (19:39):
But yeah, when it comes to the scandal this time
in two thousand and seven, I think it went and
this is what we explored in the podcast. I believe
that it went really, really deep, and it's really fascinating
what Donnie he was doing. And then it's also for
me on the conspiracy side, way more interesting what the league,
what the NBA was doing to make this problem go away.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
So yeah, let's let's explore a couple of those points.
So first off, to me, it's still you probably hear
me laughing in the background, folks, It's still hilarious to
me when you tim were first telling us in our
earlier conversations about a gambling phone, Like, I've heard of
(20:22):
a burner phone, but I've never known someone who gambles
so frequently that at some point they're like, I need
a different phone for this, and it's like.
Speaker 6 (20:33):
Yeah, several burner phones and this one was like primarily
the gambling phone, but he hit donahe himself. There were
so many tentacles he was betting with at least two
people that we know about that were part of the
scandal that were the FBI found at least two. We
speculate that he was probably betting with three, four or
five other people. Right, Hey, Ben, can you place you
(20:55):
know this is the pick tonight? Put five hundred bucks
on the bulls for me and kick me back, you know,
three hundred Just bring the cash next time I see you.
That's where it gets crazy, and you got to wonder
with if you look at Donnahe's phone records, think about
how easy it is for that money to move without
a trace, if it's just cash, if it's at levels
(21:17):
that aren't in the millions, which are what was being
bet on Donahe's games. In the professional betting markets, when
Tim Donahue refed a game, there were millions of dollars
being moved by the mafia, by the Gambino crime family,
and by various professional betting syndicates on each game that
he refereed. Tim Donnahey referee two hundred and sixty games
over the course of the scheme, So you do the math.
(21:39):
Were there hundreds of millions wagered in one on Tim
Donahy's games by organized crime and other shady outlets. At least,
right we know it's hundreds of millions where they're billions maybe,
And that's crazy. That's one referee games. So now expand
that there's fifty three referees in the NBA, and let's
look at college college is even easier. Hofstra is playing Northeastern.
(22:02):
Anybody watching that game, anybody gonna notice if a couple
grands placed here and there and all over the country
and Northeastern shoots sixty two free throws and Hofstra only
shoots twenty five.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Probably not.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
So that's where, again, as basketball fans, I think the
big thing I would love to see from our podcast
is just a demand for better checks and balances, a
demand for greater transparency, and just a demand that our game,
the game that.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
We love, is.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
Improved from an officiating standpoint. Because we're still not there yet.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
And we'll pause here for a word from our sponsor
before we return to examine this strange tale of conspiracy,
corruption and sports with Tim Livingston, and we're back. This
(22:57):
is to me, what are the roots of the dilemma? First,
though I have to ask, and I know there's a
question A lot of our fellow listeners are wondering. Now
the process you describe is so subtle, right, and it's
so easy to make, uh, you know, to make ten
(23:19):
million dollars through a series of relatively innocuous seeming bets
instead of one big ten million pot. This stuff being
so easy to miss. It makes me wonder how someone
got wind of this. How did this guy go from being,
you know, one one of the top most established referees
(23:40):
in the business to this pariah to this person who
was I believe I believe one of the descriptions used
is uh is scapegoaded? Right like NBA wanted a bad guy.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
So to answer your question, Donnahie was Donnie was betting
on his own games, so we can assume if he's
betting on his own games. I think we proved pretty
definitively in the first couple episodes that Donnay was fixing
any game that he bet on and was refereeing, obviously, right,
I mean his the FBI made him admit that he
(24:16):
at least subconsciously might have manipulated games that he was
referering and had money on. But I think we prove
again without a I don't think there's any doubt after
the first couple episodes of our podcast that Donnie he
knew what he was doing, and then he was fixing
those games. So, donnahe is fixing games for four years.
(24:37):
And what I think is interesting in two thousand and
seven when he got caught, if it wasn't for the
scheme getting too big, if it wasn't for this guy,
Jimmy bob A Batista, Donnahe's not really friend from high school,
but a guy that he grew up with and known
his entire life and became a professional gambler. It wasn't
for Jimmy Bautista getting involved. Jimmy Batista was at the
(24:59):
time addicted to pills, cocaine, and everything else under the
sun that you could smoke, swallow or inhale in any
in any way I'm trying to think of. I haven't
done drugs in a while, so this is I hope
my wife is listening for that reason, to for the
fact that I started over how to how to do drugs.
But Batista was an admitted addict. I mean he went
(25:19):
to rehab towards the end of the scheme. And if
it wasn't for Batista being in that state and he
went into debt, he was he was getting He's winning
eighty ninety percent of his picks, which is a professional gambler.
That's how you print, That's how you make that's how
you go buy an island. Right, you're printing money, like
you know, invest It's like, hey, in nineteen ninety he
(25:39):
invest in Apple. There's gonna be coming to Google. That's
gonna ipo in like two thousand and three, I invest
in that. You know, it's it's not fair. You're not
playing on an even playing field. But Batista, because of
his addiction and because of his hubris, went into debt
and started talking and he mentioned it to too many people.
The scheme got too big, there was too much money moving,
(26:00):
and ultimately it just came down to him talking to
an informant. It was an informant for the Gambino crime family,
and they caught it on a wire tap and boom,
your FBI is like, wait what you have a referee
in your in your pocket and they started listening and
they started, you know, they did their due diligence and
(26:20):
they're the FBI. They figured it out in a week
or two, and Donnahue was the guy, and they knew.
What's interesting, been to your point is if Donahue kept
it relatively small, if it was what he was doing
the first couple of years with a couple of friends,
and the circle was small, circle was tight, would he
still be refereeing in the NBA today? And I believe
(26:41):
the answer is yes, unequivocally. I think if a referee
was doing this today, we'd have no real way of knowing.
It's just it's completely undetectable. And that's a problem. That's
a big problem. And so Donahe and if you listened
to Tommy Martino, who was the middleman between Donahe Andatista,
Tim Martinez says, they're having the time in their lives.
(27:03):
They were making gobs of money, and there were criminals,
but they never thought they'd get caught. And when criminals
don't think they're going to get caught and think that
they're just going to make this kind of money and
live this kind of lifestyle forever, they have fun. And
so Donnahy eventually realized the FBI started knocking, and he
quickly went and confessed. Everything became a cooperator, because that's
(27:27):
how he only got fifteen months in prison from all this.
But that's what's interesting. Could this have gone on in perpetuity?
And again I think the answer is yes.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
And does it go on today, which it seems like
there's I don't know, no no for everybody listening. Of course,
the entirety of whistleblowers is not out yet. The story
is ongoing and you should check it out today. But
(27:57):
having listened to the show, what I can say is
I am per like I live in the world of conspiracies, man,
and there are a ton of conspiracy theories that are
just easily easily debunked or disproven or don't add up.
But I would say, this is not a conspiracy theory.
This is an actual conspiracy. Donnie conspired to do these things.
(28:20):
And as I was listening, you know one thing that
struck me is I massively appreciate you saying at the
very top, look, I'm a journalist. I came in with it.
I'm convinced something is up here, something's amiss, because as
I was listening, I ended up completely agreeing. So there
(28:42):
might not be like the FBI's equivalent, there might not
be something that meets the FBI's equivalent of a smoking
gun or a fire with Foster with some other close relationships.
But there's a lot of smoke. You show a lot
of smoke in this show, and it makes me think
that the money and the opportunity is probably too good
(29:09):
for some people to walk away from for a number
of reasons, like human ego, like you said, but also
just the financial aspect. I wanted to ask, you know,
as an outsider, I, like many people, many of our
fellow listeners, am not a professional referee. How well did
these guys all know each other? That's one of the
big questions I think a lot of people have. Is
(29:30):
it like a clock in, clock out job? Are you like,
once you get in the rarefied air of being a
professional NBA referee, don't you kind of know of all
the other people in that sphere.
Speaker 6 (29:47):
Absolutely, these guys have all been working together forever. They
exist in a very strange bubble and right now for
those that are actually in Orlando, that's a funny term
to you is considering that the NBA right now is
in a literal bubble, but referees, there's only about fifty
five NBA referees refing per season, most of them for
(30:08):
the most part. I mean it's some of them only
last two or three years and get canned. The ones
who make it though, they referee forever. They're in the
league for fifteen, twenty twenty five, sometimes twenty five plus years,
and they become synonymous with the show. And that's what's interesting, right,
And that's what we what we're exploring, is how much
of this is entertainment and how much of basketball professional
(30:30):
basketball is legitimate competition and where did those lines blur.
But the referees all know each other very well for
the most part. Some of them hate each other. Some
of them think that, you know, referee X might think
Referee why is the worst referee ever, and you know
he's a show off and he makes the game all
about himself, and you know those some of those things
(30:51):
came to light. Actually after the danahe scandal, the NBA
commissioned its own report, you know, like we're gonna we're
gonna really nail down and look at our system and
look at our culture and fix what's wrong, right, and
we're going to pay a lawyer to do it. So
this lawyer is going to be he's an independent. He's
been completely independent. This investigation is not going to try
(31:13):
and you know, cast cast doubt on some of the
more salacious things that have been alleged during the scandal.
This is an investigation we can all trust. And so
the Peduitz report, which is the NBA report that I'm
referring to after the Donnahie scandal, it still says it
looks at NBA referee relationships and it talks about some
(31:35):
of this stuff. Right, How some of these guys look
at Dick Pavetta, who's the most senior official during this time,
and think that he was.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Far too How do we say? How should I say?
Speaker 6 (31:47):
I mean intertwined in the game, that he made the
game about himself, right, which, according to my definition of
what makes a good referees, exact opposite thing that you
should do. Dick Paveta CORNEYA Donnie. He had an American
Airlines pilot that he call after every game in this Again,
according to Donnie, I can't prove this and never talk
with excuse me, the stewardess American Airline stewardess, but he
(32:09):
used to call stewardess friend of his after every game
and to get a report on how much airtime he
got during that game. So if that's true, that's really bad, right,
that's really really bad. But another interesting thing been to
your point, fifteen or so referees again tight fraternity, Not
that many. Fifteen hail from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, hail from
(32:30):
the greater Philadelphia area, which, over the course of refereeing
in the eighties, nineties, two thousands, and now into twenty twenty,
a lot of referees hail from this one area of
Philadelphia and which, as we find out in the podcast,
is a gambling hotbed. And that's where Donnie's from, and
Steve Jaffy and Joey Crawford and if you know NBA
(32:51):
referees could I could go on and on, but they
all hail from this one area in and around Philadelphia.
So it's certainly suspicious. It's not really a meritocracy. It's
incredibly Donna. He's a product of nepotism. His uncle was
an NBA referee, his father was a college referee. So yeah,
(33:11):
all these guys, it's gotten better, I think referees now
it's definitely more of a meritocracy as far as I
can tell. But really, at the time it was who
you knew and who your dad was or who your
uncle was.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
I mean, that's insane, because we know that nepotism often
wins the day over meritocracy and any number of fields
or pursuits. But the appeal of the appeal of sports
in general is the idea that through one's own hard work,
(33:44):
focused practice, and natural talent, you can leave everything else
that's outside of the court off the court when you
play the game. And for that not to be the case,
it's got to be just a profound punch in the gut,
you know, especially for a lot of kids who, like you,
were growing up living, breathing, loving basketball, you know, and
(34:07):
now to find that this may very well be rigged.
I mean, it's understandable that people would say, well, this
is a bad Apple situation, right, this is a bad actor.
It's a one off in the NBA. You know, as
you've explored, the NBA goes into crisis mode kind of
in their pr and their damage control. But one of
(34:30):
the big twists that comes about, there are two big
twists I think that are going to be startling. Is
first the NBA's damage control, their pr their report it
it didn't do the best job persuading people that this
was a one off. And I think Donna Gie himself
(34:53):
didn't agree with their findings. And I know this because
of another big twist in our story, which is that Tim,
you talked to him. Everybody should look if you're not
familiar with this character. We want to establish this. Tim
Donaghue is alive today and you, Tim have had like
(35:16):
multiple conversations with.
Speaker 6 (35:18):
Him, multiple And this is we start off. And what
I'll say now that we're a little farther because people
have asked me since we started, when we started this podcast,
the reason I had access to Donahe is because Donnie
and I were very friendly. I'm the only when I
was writing for The Post Game, which was a Yahoo
site back in twenty twelve, I'm the first one, I think,
(35:38):
the only person, at least, you know, according to Google
search results, which I've done. You know, I've google searched
this ardently over the past eight years. I think I'm
the only one who said that publicly right that I
believe what Tim Donahey's saying about about the culture of
the NBA. I said, in so many words, donnahe We
know what donnahe is he's not the best guy, but
(35:59):
he's also so I think he's a scapegoat for a
bigger systemic issue. And I think that the reason I'm
the only one to have written those words or something
far more eloquent in my actual article.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Hopefully.
Speaker 6 (36:14):
I think the reason I'm the one who was able
to say that is because I wasn't employed by the NBA. Right,
if you're an NBA beat writer and you believe what
Tim Donna he's saying, you can't say that you're not
going to get access to any locker room, You're not
going to get access to any player, You're going to
become a pariah. You can't say that. And most crime reporters,
and I'm sure a lot of the stories that you
guys explore from a journalistic perspective, you know, crime in
(36:37):
sports is not usually something we look at for that
crime reporters look at. Most crime reportters don't gravitate towards
sports to say, oh, what's the deal here, what's the
scandal here, what's.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
The corruption here?
Speaker 6 (36:50):
So, I, just as a freelance sports writer without any
ties to the NBA, found myself in this very odd position.
And then after I wrote the article, Tim Donne. He
reached out to me and said thank you so much
for writing this, and that's where we became friends and
now after. But look, at the same time, I'm a journalist, right,
so I did my research. I've done I've investigated this
(37:10):
story over basically from that day, over the course of
eight plus years, and what I found when it comes
to Donnae is that he in fact is lying about
a lot of things, in my opinion, and because of that,
we were forced to reveal those things over the course
of the podcast. So Tim Donnie, I don't think it's
my friend any longer. Ben unfortunately or not unfortunately, I
(37:31):
don't really care. But Tim Donnae is no longer doesn't
like me anymore, and that's fine because I still liked Tim.
I have no issue with Tim, and all I want
is to find the truth at the heart of this scandal,
at the heart of this conspiracy, because I really appreciate
you saying that it's not conspiracy theory. There's no theory.
It's really just a question of how deep the conspiracy goes.
(37:54):
And that's what our podcasts about, and that's what unfortunately,
for thirteen years, people in my world, the sports world
have been too hesitant to investigate for reasons that are
completely rational. If you're an NBA writer, you want a job,
you got a future family.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
I get it.
Speaker 6 (38:10):
At the same time, this is the darkest moment in
the history of basketball, and to make this fort better
and too, you need to understand its fault and why
you know what needs improving, And so that's where this
journey kind of kicked off from. But yeah, Tim Donnahie
is is a central part of our story, and I
think what's interesting for myself and the audience is deciphering
(38:32):
what's true and what's not true.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Let's pause for a brief word from our sponsor before
we return with more and the still developing tale of
whistle Blower with Tim Livingston, and we're back. These shows,
(38:56):
both both whistle Blower and Stuff they Want you to Know,
have have something in common, which is pursuing the truth,
even when pursuing the truth is not a popular or
even safe thing at times. One thing that stands out
to me that surprises me. I haven't thought about really
(39:16):
until exploring Whistleblower, until speaking with you, is the idea
that the NBA could wield such profound, pervasive influence over
what is supposed to be objective reporting. So is it
true that the NBA can just stonewall or blackball blacklisted journalists,
(39:41):
or they can they shut down and silence a story,
or is it more that the journalists themselves are kind
of proactively self selecting and avoiding things they think will
get them in trouble.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
That's a great question.
Speaker 6 (39:55):
And again, the media side of this is super, super
interesting and something that we explorer in the second half
of the podcast. So I don't want to give away
too many spoilers, but I will say that, in my opinion,
during the David Stern era of the NBA, and David Stern,
for those who don't know, is the commissioner from nineteen
eighty four to twenty fourteen, David Stern is and this
(40:16):
is what where if you're just if you're listening to
Whistleblower right now, you haven't heard this, or you're we're
about to start revealing in episodes five, six, and seven,
which you're coming out over the next you'll have heard
five and six and seven are about to come out.
But the NBA was an entity you did not mess with.
And that is not me saying that that's other journalists
(40:37):
that I've spoken with. Murray Weiss, a former New York
Posts reporter who broke the story in the NBA, said
those words very clearly, right you're about to hear You're
about to hear Murray Wyss say that right where people
warned him, don't mess with the NBA, don't mess with
David Stern. David Stern did not mess around. David Stern
was a monarch. He really was, and he was brilliant,
(41:00):
and he's a fascinating character in this.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
That we really.
Speaker 6 (41:05):
Are going to die, going to dive into his psyche,
going to dive into how he ran the league and
the way he ran the league. It wouldn't work in
twenty twenty, but it worked very well in the nineties
and early two thousands. He was not a social media
era guy. He said things that would just be absolutely
destroyed with the way we disseminate news and at the
(41:25):
speed with which we disseminate news today. But the NBA,
in my estimation, in my opinion, which hopefully at this
point your your audience values at least somewhat as somebody
who has spent eight years. If you guys, don't if
you think I'm an idiot. That's fine as well, but
my opinion is that, yes, the NBA was somebody was
(41:47):
a company, right, was a thing that you did not
mess with and that people were very scared of. And
it wasn't just they would go to great lengths to
make stories like this go away. And we explore with
the Donahue scandal the great lengths that they made for
this story to go away, and it's fascinating. Now.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
I do have to say I've been personally impressed by
the uh, the the thoroughness of the reporting, especially when
you know in a very real way you are telling
a story that doesn't want to be told right, even
in the modern day. And one thing we have to
let you know if you're listening to the show today,
(42:30):
is that me and Matt and nol in Mission Control
and Doc Holiday code named Doc Holliday. Uh. Tim, Tim
isn't giving us a preview of the episodes. So all
the stuff that that you just said, Tim with my question,
it's it's stuff that I have to wait for the
(42:50):
next episode to hear, which I think is it's fantastic.
I just want to say that, you know, unlike some
players of the NBA. We're not getting special treatment here,
so we are listening along with you, folks. Perhaps one
way to close today's episode, before everybody goes and checks
(43:12):
out whistleblowers for ourselves, is to go back to something
that you post that I think is of crucial importance here.
So there's this idea of checks and balances, right, and
how best to institute them, But it seems so complicated.
(43:34):
It seems like it's a very tall order. Do you
have things like checks and balances that you think would
mitigate this problem? I mean, is there a solution? Because
I you know, I'm not an expert. I'm not like
the King of referees or anything like that. And I
was thinking through this and yeah, I don't know, and
(43:55):
out smart than me. It's just so easy to get
away with it, you know.
Speaker 6 (43:58):
Yeah, And I think the first step is right now,
the referees are employed by the NBA. So, for example,
during the David Stern era, David Stern somewhat facetiously replied
during a Dan Patrick interview in two thousand and four
about his dream NBA Finals matchup. He said, Lakers versus
Lakers is the league. That's that's what the Laker. That's
(44:20):
what the league wants to see. And as a Lakers look,
I grew up a Lakers fan, right, The Lakers got
that hat on, I got the La hat on, and
I it's interesting because the Lakers were for ratings, which
the NBA cared a lot about. The NBA makes a
majority of its money via via television. The TV contracts
(44:41):
they've signed over the last twenty years have just gone
up by the billions. It's gone from hundreds of millions
to billions to multi billions. And last year the NBA
did almost nine billion dollars in revenue. So if you're
valuing the NBA as a company, their give or take
a thirty five billion dollar company, they're a huge corporation.
(45:02):
They're a very very powerful corporation. And so the first
thing you need to do is make the referees.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
You need to.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Create a separate employment agency.
Speaker 6 (45:12):
You can't have the NBA employee referees because if the
Lakers are playing whichever team in the Western Conference Finals,
and that referee has in his head that David Stern,
his boss's boss's boss's boss is rooting for the Lakers
to reach the next game, that's a problem.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Right.
Speaker 6 (45:28):
So that's step one is and Phil Jackson, formed Lakers coach,
the one who suggested that first, or at least, I mean,
I'm sure a lot of people had suggested before Phil Jackson,
but I think Phil Jackson, of the time NBA champion's
he knows, he's a smart guy. He knows his teams
have been privy to different officiating than a lot of
other a lot of other teams. And that's one anecdote
(45:52):
that donnae He provides in our opening episodes where Phil
Jackson or he calls Michael Jordan for travel, Michael Jordan
and Phil Jackson flip out and Phil Jackson, you know, Donnie,
he says, you watch the same training tapes as I do.
And Phil Jackson says, yeah, they might want that call
to travel, but not on Michael Jordan. So it's the
same kind of bias and talent discrimination that exists throughout
(46:16):
the league, and a call, the right call should be
the right call every single time, and it's not.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
In the NBA.
Speaker 6 (46:23):
There's biases and different rules for different players, and it's
it's not an even playing field. And to get there,
the first step is to create make referees part of
a different organization that has no ties with the NBA,
and that's that's step one, and that's a big step.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
Do I think it's going to happen. I don't know.
Speaker 6 (46:42):
I don't think anytime soon, because definitely during the David
Stern era, I think the NBA enjoyed having that control,
and I think they giving that up would be something
that they would really really have to be pushed into
a hole to do. But that's the that's the first
step the solution. And then you've got to make sure
that that agency, that organization is is run well and
(47:05):
run with integrity. But right now, the NBA having control
essentially over the employment of its officials creates a conflict
of interest. It's too wada chasm to to overcome.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Yeah, this is you know, this is reminding me of
all those memes where you see like a tiny hero
standing up against some gigantic colossus in the on the horizon.
That's an enormous conflict of interest. And you know what
what I like about this point and what I like
about I called some of my friends who are living, breathing,
(47:47):
God bless them for their optimism, Atlanta basketball fans and
uh and so they so so, uh, you know, a
lot of I think a lot of folks here or
somehow familiar with the problem you're addressing just at the
very offset of Whistleblower, and it's this I think. You know,
(48:11):
if you love basketball, then of course you feel like
there's been several terrible calls, as you said, Tim, two three,
four per game. So I think a lot of our
listeners are already excited to see it's a very real
proof that they weren't just being you know, sore loser
(48:33):
fans or something like that. And so we turn it
over to you, folks. Don't take my word for it.
Do check out whistle Blower. It's available wherever you find
your favorite podcast on any platform. As we said, we
actually waited a little bit on this interview because we
(48:53):
didn't want to have the interview here while episode one
was just out because there's so much stuff on the
horizon that we can't get talk about. And Tim, thank
you for being patient with me. I know you totally
caught me trying to slide in getting a little more info.
I guess I'll just have to wait. I'll have to
wait till next week, but.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
I appreciate it. Ben Now was great.
Speaker 6 (49:15):
I could talk about this stuff all day, So after
episode ten comes out, I'll come back on and we
can dive even deeper. But do you appreciate it? It
was a lot of fun, and yeah, check out Whistleblower.
I think you guys will like it.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
In the meantime, Tim, for anyone who would like to
learn more about your overall work, where can they find
you online?
Speaker 6 (49:36):
I'm on Twitter at Tim likes sports. To handle that,
I think I'd got like twenty twelve or twenty thirteen
that I'm going to stick with because I still like sports,
even after learning about all the terrible things that have
happened in the world that I love. So yeah, Tim
likes sports on Twitter, and that's where you can That's
where I'm most active on the social media's.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Again, you can also find Tim on the No Chill
podcast if you are like me, waiting for the end
of Whistleblower. In the meantime, while you're on the Internet,
you can also find stuff they don't want you to know.
We're on Instagram, We're on Facebook, We're on Twitter. If
you have listened to our multiple episodes about big data
and you are still on Facebook, then check out our
(50:22):
check out our group page. Here's where it gets crazy.
You can leave us a phone number if you don't
sip the social needs one eight three three STDWYTK. Let
us know if you want us to use your name
on air or not. We can't wait to hear your input,
your feedback on whistleblower? How deep do you think this goes?
(50:44):
How high and wide do you think this conspiracy breaches?
If you don't like phones is twenty twenty, I get it.
Real friends text and you don't like social media, there's
one way you can always contact us. We have a
good old fashioned email address where we are conspiracy at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Philip conspiracy realists. We're coming in Little Caesar style, hot
and ready with a classic from twenty twenty as we
celebrate the holidays and the passage of one year to another.
We are not the experts on the NBA, but we're
pretty good at figuring out conspiracies. And in this one, guys,
(00:24):
if you remember, not an episode per se, but an interview,
we teamed up with a guy named Tim Livingston who
introduced us to one of the biggest conspiracies in the
entire history of the NBA.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah, this official named Tim Donahy you back in two
thousand and seven got arrested for betting on games he
was officiating.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Whoops, wepe.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
Was this the podcast series that this dude did with Tenderfoot?
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah, so this is Whistleblower.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Really excellent deep dive and it goes into sports betting,
sports fixing conversations we've had in the past with another
expert on the subject. Now that I'm thinking about it,
his name is escaping me. But this one dude that
we talked to who is like all sports are rigged?
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yes, m mmmmm hmm.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Well, and Brian Dewey that's it.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
And then we all watched this past year in twenty
twenty five, when there's a crazy scandal with Chauncey Billups
and Terry Rosier I don't know how to say his name,
ro O z I E. R. And a bunch of
other players that were caught up in a casino scandal
or a you know, like a do it yourself casino
style betting scandal where they'd bring in famous folks to
(01:43):
play you know, I guess poker with and stuff like that,
and then they would just take everybody's money.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
Hey, do you like money?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Do you like the NBA?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
This is the interview for you. We can't say enough
good stuff about Whistleblower. Check it out. It's available on
every podcast platform that you dig personally. Add you know,
they absolutely did it. Just spoiler for the record, the gambling,
(02:14):
the conspiracy stuff is real. Tim l is correct.
Speaker 6 (02:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Well, and Tim is a sports journalist out there in
Los Angeles, or at least he was, so he really
knows what he's talking about. They did their work, you know,
to dig into this two thousand and seven thing. I
just want to put everybody else on one other show.
So if you listen to this episode you like it,
Maybe go check out Whistleblower. And then there's another one
Tim made called the Raven that you guys, it has
(02:39):
to do with a double murder that occurred right after
a Super Bowl in Atlanta. And then that was a
whole other story that was just pretty insane about Ray
Lewis and like potentially him being involved in a double murder,
double homicide.
Speaker 5 (02:56):
Rather from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history
is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
or learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Welcome to the show. They call me ben Mi Compatriots
Matt and Noel are on adventures, but we'll be returning
very soon. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
We're diving into a strange one today, fellow conspiracy realist.
(03:46):
It's a story that you may be familiar with if
you are if you are a huge fan of sports.
It's a story that you may have heard a headline about,
but you I've never seen it fully explored. We're diving
into a world of gambling. We're diving into the depths
(04:09):
of corruption, into the heights of financial shenanigans and ethics violations.
It's a mystery that is being unraveled that occurred here
in the US not too long ago. What are we
talking about? Well, to answer that question, we're going to
(04:30):
defer to an expert, as we always try to do.
You know that we want to bring you primary sources,
people with experience and expertise in a field. And that's
why today I am over the moon to welcome to
the show our guest, the sports journalist, writer and creator
of the Whistleblower podcast, Tim Livingston. Tim, thanks for coming
(04:54):
on the show today.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Thanks for having me Ben So, you and I I.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Have talked a bit off air about this story, which
as the podcast is still coming out. Whistleblower is a
term that I think a lot of people understand nowadays
in the West. But Whistleblower, the podcast is diving into
a very specific mystery. Could you tell us, just briefly,
(05:25):
I want to be careful not to spoil too much,
just briefly, what whistle Blower is about. How this story begins.
Speaker 6 (05:34):
The story begins with a former whistleblower, and not the
one that we know about now. He has nothing to
do with Russia or China or anywhere else. He's a
former NBA referee named Tim Donahy and Tim Donahey for
sports fans. Sports fans know Tim Donahey as the most
disgrace official in American sports history. I think he has
(05:56):
that title, and whoever's in second place, it's a pretty
distance second. Tim Donnahe is looked upon as a pariah,
and rightfully so. However, when he got into trouble, he
blew the whistle on That's where we're going with this, Ben.
He blew the whistle, the proverbial whistle on a much
(06:18):
bigger systemic issue within the NBA, and that issue was
a culture of refereeing in which players, coaches, and team
personnel were fraternizing with referees, creating relationships with referees where
just referees as the police of this game, we're not
(06:39):
being policed at all. And it led to, in my opinion,
corruption on an unbelievable scale, both with donnahe himself and
with other referees at the time.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
And so that's what we dive into.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
It's okay, the narrative has always been Donna, he was
a rogue criminal. It was just this guy, He's the
only one. And for me, I just never believed it.
I've watched so many NBA games that something just didn't
feel right. And so that's where we dive in from
is what happened, what happened with donnahe himself, and then
(07:12):
part two is what happened with his with his former employer,
what happened with the NBA, What actually happened behind the scenes.
What now can we look at thirteen years ago and
peel back layer by layer and understand on a much
deeper level. And that's where this story gets really crazy,
because thirteen years later, more people are willing to talk,
more information has come to light that might have trickled
(07:35):
into the news at some point, but that even the
most ardent sports fans don't really know. And so that's
where we're going with this, and that's the crux the podcast.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
So one thing that's fascinating to me about this is
your inspiration because it sounds like you, you know, being
a fan, very familiar with the bones of the story,
or at least the headlines we saw reported back in
oh back in two thousand and seven. I believe it
(08:05):
started really the rubber really started hitting the road. But
it sounds like you had a tingle of your spider
sense almost right, a discrepancy. Something was rotten in Denmark.
There was a glitch in the matrix. One thing that
fascinates me about this is there's a line in the
(08:26):
very beginning of the first episode where you talk about
how referees are supposed to be kind of shadows, right,
almost non entities on the court. Referees don't get noticed
until they make a call that you don't like, Right,
isn't that how it usually works out?
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Exactly?
Speaker 6 (08:49):
And what a weird profession, right, You get booed out
by thousands upon thousands of people every single night. You
only get noticed when you mess up. You get no
accolades when you're the best of what you do, and
being the best to what you do means that you're invisible.
It means that people have no idea who you are.
It means that the game they just watched was they
(09:10):
watched it without any inkling that there were officials, right,
it was just the players playing the game. And that
means that you did the best job you could have done,
the game was being played in its purest form.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
However, for basketball fans.
Speaker 6 (09:23):
We know that every single game that we've ever watched,
there's been at least three or four times you're going
to scream with the TV that that call was bull right.
That's we all do it as sports fans. We can't
help it. We're all couch coaches or whatever you want
to call us. And in the NBA, that's what exists
(09:45):
on every single night. And for me as a fan
growing up, I love basketball. I played basketball my entire life,
and so I've been cognizant of the effect that a
referee can have on a game since I was five
years old. And when I was a kid, I used
to have a really bad temper and I used to
scream at referees. I used to get so mad at
(10:05):
referees when they didn't make the call that I thought
was right in direct league, right, these guys are getting
paid ten dollars an hour back in the early nineties,
and they don't want to be there, and last thing
they wanted some little asshl screaming at him. I was
that kid, And then as I got older, I realized
that these are human beings that you can manipulate them,
right that if you're nice to them, if you chat
(10:26):
with them before the game, if you make them feel special,
they are going to give you the benefit of more calls.
So I've been fascinated by that, by the ability to
influence a referee for my entire life and for this story,
though I having played basketball my whole life and having
been in love with the sport forever, watching some of
(10:47):
these games that took place in the early two thousands
and mid two thousands before the scandal came out, before
it was exposed that donnihe before donnihe exposed the idea.
I can't say that he exposed everything, right, He just
gave us an inkling of the culture and of how
things operate behind the scenes. When that all came out,
(11:07):
it made sense to me. And because I watched some
of these games, some of those games were not right.
They weren't officials having a bad day. In my opinion,
there was no way there was motive. There was something
behind it, and that's what we're exploring in this podcast.
Ben that you mentioned I'm pretty transparent about like that's
where I'm coming from. I'm not coming from I'm a journalist,
(11:28):
but also I have eyes and I've watched these games,
and so I'm not shy about the fact that I'm
entering this investigation with bias, because you can't tell me
the two thousand and two Western Conference Finals were three
officials just having a bad game. I won't believe you.
It didn't happen. It wasn't just one or two bad calls.
(11:49):
It was an incredible amount an entire game, and especially
in an entire fourth quarters worth of egregious miscalls. And
for me, that's where I approached this destigation, where something
was something was amiss, what was it?
Speaker 3 (12:03):
How did it work?
Speaker 6 (12:05):
And that's what we really explore on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
You've raised a fascinating point here. It's something that I immediately
thought of when you and I were first talking off
air a few weeks ago about whistleblower and you were
telling us some of the nuts and bolts of the situation,
which are frankly disturbing. I started thinking about the tremendous
(12:28):
paradox that's inherent and being a referee, one of the
most powerful people on the court, is one of the
least compensated. They're making peanuts, you know, you get what
is it. I think it's an average of one hundred
and fifty thousand on the low end per year to
(12:50):
a little over five hundred thousand or so. And that's like,
depending on how you break down the math, that's what
some of the players are making. You know, that's like
a fraction of what they're making in a game. And
so I could see very easily the opportunity for someone
(13:10):
who is unethical to whether through character or stick, incentivize
the referee to make a little bit more scratch. And
we know you know this. This reminded me a little
bit of the conspiracy theories regarding Michael Jordan and gambling, right,
which is which is something we've explored a past episode.
(13:34):
I'm ted talking a little bit here, but I wanted
to outline that because I think a lot of people,
myself included, to be transparent, didn't really consider the discrepancy there,
the fact that like you know, I'm I'm making two
hundred and fifty grand for the whole year. That's what
I'm gonna make unless I'm moonlight right somewhere else. And
(13:59):
these folks that I'm calling that I'm making calls on
no matter what happens to them win or lose. They're
multi millionaires, so it doesn't seem like it would take
much for the push. But okay, So the idea of
rigged sports, it's tremendously controversial because any fan of sports,
(14:24):
any fan of any sport, wants the rules to be
followed right. Ostensibly, we want the game to be competitive,
we want the athletes at the top of their abilities,
and we want the rules followed so that a win
is a real win and not invalidated and not turning
into some like mafia esque con job. Could you tell
(14:48):
us a little bit about what Doneghey was going through
that pushed him to this like before, like okay, so
he clearly was a crooked ref There's no question about that.
Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
No question?
Speaker 6 (15:03):
And to your point, think about it, right, if going
back to the Michael Jordan Bulls, think about how much
power referee has Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen stuff from
the court. A referee could give both of them two
technical fouls for no reason right when they walk on
the court, eject them both from the game, and the
Bulls have to play the rest of the game without
Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen. No referee has ever done that,
(15:25):
and probably ever will. That's a little bit too obvious,
But think about how much power a referee has, right
because he can also call two ticki tack fouls on
Scottie Pippen and two ticki tack fouls on Michael Jordan
and force them to watch the rest of the first
quarter from the bench. And if you're betting against the spread,
that's hugely advantageous. If you're a referee and you have
money on the game, right, so are against the bulls
(15:47):
in that game. So a referee has incredible and incredible
amount of power. And for those for sports fans who
don't want to believe that there's any possible corruption in sports,
just using basketball as an example, the referees, to your point,
make tenth, one twentieth, sometimes one fiftieth as much as
the guys who were yelling at them, screaming in their
(16:09):
face night after night after night. How can they not
over time or immediately create how can they not be biased?
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Right? These guys aren't robots, they're humans.
Speaker 6 (16:19):
And with guys that have ego like Tim donahe that
and again I don't think donnahe's the only referee that
was fixing games over the course of history basketball. I
think that would be incredibly naive to believe that.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
The question for me is how many were there and
how high up did it go?
Speaker 6 (16:38):
So in episode two, we interviewed Michael Franzis, you might
have seen in Netflix's Fear City, one of the most
brilliant members of the Mafia of all time. A guy
who is running schemes that were making millions upon millions
of dollars a day and just a very He was
a criminal, but he was a damn good one. And
he talks about how he had two NBA referees on
(16:59):
his payroll in the nineties that weren't Tim Dannihi, Right,
So there's just this is one monster with two NBA
reps on his payroll that were not the guy that
we're focusing on. And that gives you an idea of
a And this is what Fretsy says. It was easy
to fix a game. It's not hard when it's against
the spread. It's hard if you need one team to win, right.
(17:20):
So some of the games that I'm referencing from the
playoffs and finals where there was the foul discrepancies you know,
there's one team is shooting sixty free throws, there are
teams shooting thirty.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
That that's where it gets egregious.
Speaker 6 (17:32):
And as fans, you know, those are the games that
we still talk about to this day because we a
lot of us don't feel that those were on the
up and up. But when it comes just to the spread,
that's easy. If the Bulls are supposed to win by
by ten and you got a bet on the other
team to cover that spread for you know, if the
Bulls need to win by nine or less for you
(17:52):
to win your bet, yeah, call two quick fouls of
Michael Jordan, put them the bench, and you're probably in
really good shape for the rest that that right there
probably affects the point spread by three or four points immediately.
And if the Bulls are up by eleven and in
the fourth quarter, start calling more thousand than Bulls, and
you as a referee can really dictate whether the Bulls
(18:14):
win by eight points or twelve points. So that's exactly
and where that's where it gets interesting. And that's where
we as fans have to look at the system and
look at how easy it is for these guys to
manipulate a game and put in The NBA has put
in checks and balances since Donahey, they've done an okay
job of improving the system. There are a lot more
(18:36):
referees who are anonymous, who are invisible, who do a
great job. However, there are still referees that have been
refereeing for twenty five plus years who one of them.
Scott Foster was Donnihe's best friend, and him and Tim
Donna He talked one hundred and thirty four times in
the phone at the height of the scheme from October
two thousand and six to March two thousand and seven,
(18:59):
on the phone that donnae He used as what the
FBI said, Donna he used this phone for gambling, primarily
for gambling or later purposes. And Scott Foster's the top
official in the NBA, right, So there's all this circumstantial
evidence that points to Scott Foster and Donnahe having a
relationship that it minimally needs to be explored further. And
this guy's being when we watch the NBA Finals this year,
(19:22):
Scott Foster's gonna ref two of those games. And that's
the guy that I'm supposed to trust has integrity and
then I'm supposed to trust, you know, it's going to
create an even playing field for both these teams and
not let his ego or bias or anything else infiltrate.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah, okay, I don't. We got a long way to go.
Speaker 6 (19:39):
But yeah, when it comes to the scandal this time
in two thousand and seven, I think it went and
this is what we explored in the podcast. I believe
that it went really, really deep, and it's really fascinating
what Donnie he was doing. And then it's also for
me on the conspiracy side, way more interesting what the league,
what the NBA was doing to make this problem go away.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
So yeah, let's let's explore a couple of those points.
So first off, to me, it's still you probably hear
me laughing in the background, folks, It's still hilarious to
me when you tim were first telling us in our
earlier conversations about a gambling phone, Like, I've heard of
(20:22):
a burner phone, but I've never known someone who gambles
so frequently that at some point they're like, I need
a different phone for this, and it's like.
Speaker 6 (20:33):
Yeah, several burner phones and this one was like primarily
the gambling phone, but he hit donahe himself. There were
so many tentacles he was betting with at least two
people that we know about that were part of the
scandal that were the FBI found at least two. We
speculate that he was probably betting with three, four or
five other people. Right, Hey, Ben, can you place you
(20:55):
know this is the pick tonight? Put five hundred bucks
on the bulls for me and kick me back, you know,
three hundred Just bring the cash next time I see you.
That's where it gets crazy, and you got to wonder
with if you look at Donnahe's phone records, think about
how easy it is for that money to move without
a trace, if it's just cash, if it's at levels
(21:17):
that aren't in the millions, which are what was being
bet on Donahe's games. In the professional betting markets, when
Tim Donahue refed a game, there were millions of dollars
being moved by the mafia, by the Gambino crime family,
and by various professional betting syndicates on each game that
he refereed. Tim Donnahey referee two hundred and sixty games
over the course of the scheme, So you do the math.
(21:39):
Were there hundreds of millions wagered in one on Tim
Donahy's games by organized crime and other shady outlets. At least,
right we know it's hundreds of millions where they're billions maybe,
And that's crazy. That's one referee games. So now expand
that there's fifty three referees in the NBA, and let's
look at college college is even easier. Hofstra is playing Northeastern.
(22:02):
Anybody watching that game, anybody gonna notice if a couple
grands placed here and there and all over the country
and Northeastern shoots sixty two free throws and Hofstra only
shoots twenty five.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Probably not.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
So that's where, again, as basketball fans, I think the
big thing I would love to see from our podcast
is just a demand for better checks and balances, a
demand for greater transparency, and just a demand that our game,
the game that.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
We love, is.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
Improved from an officiating standpoint. Because we're still not there yet.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
And we'll pause here for a word from our sponsor
before we return to examine this strange tale of conspiracy,
corruption and sports with Tim Livingston, and we're back. This
(22:57):
is to me, what are the roots of the dilemma? First,
though I have to ask, and I know there's a
question A lot of our fellow listeners are wondering. Now
the process you describe is so subtle, right, and it's
so easy to make, uh, you know, to make ten
(23:19):
million dollars through a series of relatively innocuous seeming bets
instead of one big ten million pot. This stuff being
so easy to miss. It makes me wonder how someone
got wind of this. How did this guy go from being,
you know, one one of the top most established referees
(23:40):
in the business to this pariah to this person who
was I believe I believe one of the descriptions used
is uh is scapegoaded? Right like NBA wanted a bad guy.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
So to answer your question, Donnahie was Donnie was betting
on his own games, so we can assume if he's
betting on his own games. I think we proved pretty
definitively in the first couple episodes that Donnay was fixing
any game that he bet on and was refereeing, obviously, right,
I mean his the FBI made him admit that he
(24:16):
at least subconsciously might have manipulated games that he was
referering and had money on. But I think we prove
again without a I don't think there's any doubt after
the first couple episodes of our podcast that Donnie he
knew what he was doing, and then he was fixing
those games. So, donnahe is fixing games for four years.
(24:37):
And what I think is interesting in two thousand and
seven when he got caught, if it wasn't for the
scheme getting too big, if it wasn't for this guy,
Jimmy bob A Batista, Donnahe's not really friend from high school,
but a guy that he grew up with and known
his entire life and became a professional gambler. It wasn't
for Jimmy Bautista getting involved. Jimmy Batista was at the
(24:59):
time addicted to pills, cocaine, and everything else under the
sun that you could smoke, swallow or inhale in any
in any way I'm trying to think of. I haven't
done drugs in a while, so this is I hope
my wife is listening for that reason, to for the
fact that I started over how to how to do drugs.
But Batista was an admitted addict. I mean he went
(25:19):
to rehab towards the end of the scheme. And if
it wasn't for Batista being in that state and he
went into debt, he was he was getting He's winning
eighty ninety percent of his picks, which is a professional gambler.
That's how you print, That's how you make that's how
you go buy an island. Right, you're printing money, like
you know, invest It's like, hey, in nineteen ninety he
(25:39):
invest in Apple. There's gonna be coming to Google. That's
gonna ipo in like two thousand and three, I invest
in that. You know, it's it's not fair. You're not
playing on an even playing field. But Batista, because of
his addiction and because of his hubris, went into debt
and started talking and he mentioned it to too many people.
The scheme got too big, there was too much money moving,
(26:00):
and ultimately it just came down to him talking to
an informant. It was an informant for the Gambino crime family,
and they caught it on a wire tap and boom,
your FBI is like, wait what you have a referee
in your in your pocket and they started listening and
they started, you know, they did their due diligence and
(26:20):
they're the FBI. They figured it out in a week
or two, and Donnahue was the guy, and they knew.
What's interesting, been to your point is if Donahue kept
it relatively small, if it was what he was doing
the first couple of years with a couple of friends,
and the circle was small, circle was tight, would he
still be refereeing in the NBA today? And I believe
(26:41):
the answer is yes, unequivocally. I think if a referee
was doing this today, we'd have no real way of knowing.
It's just it's completely undetectable. And that's a problem. That's
a big problem. And so Donahe and if you listened
to Tommy Martino, who was the middleman between Donahe Andatista,
Tim Martinez says, they're having the time in their lives.
(27:03):
They were making gobs of money, and there were criminals,
but they never thought they'd get caught. And when criminals
don't think they're going to get caught and think that
they're just going to make this kind of money and
live this kind of lifestyle forever, they have fun. And
so Donnahy eventually realized the FBI started knocking, and he
quickly went and confessed. Everything became a cooperator, because that's
(27:27):
how he only got fifteen months in prison from all this.
But that's what's interesting. Could this have gone on in perpetuity?
And again I think the answer is yes.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
And does it go on today, which it seems like
there's I don't know, no no for everybody listening. Of course,
the entirety of whistleblowers is not out yet. The story
is ongoing and you should check it out today. But
(27:57):
having listened to the show, what I can say is
I am per like I live in the world of conspiracies, man,
and there are a ton of conspiracy theories that are
just easily easily debunked or disproven or don't add up.
But I would say, this is not a conspiracy theory.
This is an actual conspiracy. Donnie conspired to do these things.
(28:20):
And as I was listening, you know one thing that
struck me is I massively appreciate you saying at the
very top, look, I'm a journalist. I came in with it.
I'm convinced something is up here, something's amiss, because as
I was listening, I ended up completely agreeing. So there
(28:42):
might not be like the FBI's equivalent, there might not
be something that meets the FBI's equivalent of a smoking
gun or a fire with Foster with some other close relationships.
But there's a lot of smoke. You show a lot
of smoke in this show, and it makes me think
that the money and the opportunity is probably too good
(29:09):
for some people to walk away from for a number
of reasons, like human ego, like you said, but also
just the financial aspect. I wanted to ask, you know,
as an outsider, I, like many people, many of our
fellow listeners, am not a professional referee. How well did
these guys all know each other? That's one of the
big questions I think a lot of people have. Is
(29:30):
it like a clock in, clock out job? Are you like,
once you get in the rarefied air of being a
professional NBA referee, don't you kind of know of all
the other people in that sphere.
Speaker 6 (29:47):
Absolutely, these guys have all been working together forever. They
exist in a very strange bubble and right now for
those that are actually in Orlando, that's a funny term
to you is considering that the NBA right now is
in a literal bubble, but referees, there's only about fifty
five NBA referees refing per season, most of them for
(30:08):
the most part. I mean it's some of them only
last two or three years and get canned. The ones
who make it though, they referee forever. They're in the
league for fifteen, twenty twenty five, sometimes twenty five plus years,
and they become synonymous with the show. And that's what's interesting, right,
And that's what we what we're exploring, is how much
of this is entertainment and how much of basketball professional
(30:30):
basketball is legitimate competition and where did those lines blur.
But the referees all know each other very well for
the most part. Some of them hate each other. Some
of them think that, you know, referee X might think
Referee why is the worst referee ever, and you know
he's a show off and he makes the game all
about himself, and you know those some of those things
(30:51):
came to light. Actually after the danahe scandal, the NBA
commissioned its own report, you know, like we're gonna we're
gonna really nail down and look at our system and
look at our culture and fix what's wrong, right, and
we're going to pay a lawyer to do it. So
this lawyer is going to be he's an independent. He's
been completely independent. This investigation is not going to try
(31:13):
and you know, cast cast doubt on some of the
more salacious things that have been alleged during the scandal.
This is an investigation we can all trust. And so
the Peduitz report, which is the NBA report that I'm
referring to after the Donnahie scandal, it still says it
looks at NBA referee relationships and it talks about some
(31:35):
of this stuff. Right, How some of these guys look
at Dick Pavetta, who's the most senior official during this time,
and think that he was.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Far too How do we say? How should I say?
Speaker 6 (31:47):
I mean intertwined in the game, that he made the
game about himself, right, which, according to my definition of
what makes a good referees, exact opposite thing that you
should do. Dick Paveta CORNEYA Donnie. He had an American
Airlines pilot that he call after every game in this Again,
according to Donnie, I can't prove this and never talk
with excuse me, the stewardess American Airline stewardess, but he
(32:09):
used to call stewardess friend of his after every game
and to get a report on how much airtime he
got during that game. So if that's true, that's really bad, right,
that's really really bad. But another interesting thing been to
your point, fifteen or so referees again tight fraternity, Not
that many. Fifteen hail from Delaware County, Pennsylvania, hail from
(32:30):
the greater Philadelphia area, which, over the course of refereeing
in the eighties, nineties, two thousands, and now into twenty twenty,
a lot of referees hail from this one area of
Philadelphia and which, as we find out in the podcast,
is a gambling hotbed. And that's where Donnie's from, and
Steve Jaffy and Joey Crawford and if you know NBA
(32:51):
referees could I could go on and on, but they
all hail from this one area in and around Philadelphia.
So it's certainly suspicious. It's not really a meritocracy. It's
incredibly Donna. He's a product of nepotism. His uncle was
an NBA referee, his father was a college referee. So yeah,
(33:11):
all these guys, it's gotten better, I think referees now
it's definitely more of a meritocracy as far as I
can tell. But really, at the time it was who
you knew and who your dad was or who your
uncle was.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
I mean, that's insane, because we know that nepotism often
wins the day over meritocracy and any number of fields
or pursuits. But the appeal of the appeal of sports
in general is the idea that through one's own hard work,
(33:44):
focused practice, and natural talent, you can leave everything else
that's outside of the court off the court when you
play the game. And for that not to be the case,
it's got to be just a profound punch in the gut,
you know, especially for a lot of kids who, like you,
were growing up living, breathing, loving basketball, you know, and
(34:07):
now to find that this may very well be rigged.
I mean, it's understandable that people would say, well, this
is a bad Apple situation, right, this is a bad actor.
It's a one off in the NBA. You know, as
you've explored, the NBA goes into crisis mode kind of
in their pr and their damage control. But one of
(34:30):
the big twists that comes about, there are two big
twists I think that are going to be startling. Is
first the NBA's damage control, their pr their report it
it didn't do the best job persuading people that this
was a one off. And I think Donna Gie himself
(34:53):
didn't agree with their findings. And I know this because
of another big twist in our story, which is that Tim,
you talked to him. Everybody should look if you're not
familiar with this character. We want to establish this. Tim
Donaghue is alive today and you, Tim have had like
(35:16):
multiple conversations with.
Speaker 6 (35:18):
Him, multiple And this is we start off. And what
I'll say now that we're a little farther because people
have asked me since we started, when we started this podcast,
the reason I had access to Donahe is because Donnie
and I were very friendly. I'm the only when I
was writing for The Post Game, which was a Yahoo
site back in twenty twelve, I'm the first one, I think,
(35:38):
the only person, at least, you know, according to Google
search results, which I've done. You know, I've google searched
this ardently over the past eight years. I think I'm
the only one who said that publicly right that I
believe what Tim Donahey's saying about about the culture of
the NBA. I said, in so many words, donnahe We
know what donnahe is he's not the best guy, but
(35:59):
he's also so I think he's a scapegoat for a
bigger systemic issue. And I think that the reason I'm
the only one to have written those words or something
far more eloquent in my actual article.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Hopefully.
Speaker 6 (36:14):
I think the reason I'm the one who was able
to say that is because I wasn't employed by the NBA. Right,
if you're an NBA beat writer and you believe what
Tim Donna he's saying, you can't say that you're not
going to get access to any locker room, You're not
going to get access to any player, You're going to
become a pariah. You can't say that. And most crime reporters,
and I'm sure a lot of the stories that you
guys explore from a journalistic perspective, you know, crime in
(36:37):
sports is not usually something we look at for that
crime reporters look at. Most crime reportters don't gravitate towards
sports to say, oh, what's the deal here, what's the
scandal here, what's.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
The corruption here?
Speaker 6 (36:50):
So, I, just as a freelance sports writer without any
ties to the NBA, found myself in this very odd position.
And then after I wrote the article, Tim Donne. He
reached out to me and said thank you so much
for writing this, and that's where we became friends and
now after. But look, at the same time, I'm a journalist, right,
so I did my research. I've done I've investigated this
(37:10):
story over basically from that day, over the course of
eight plus years, and what I found when it comes
to Donnae is that he in fact is lying about
a lot of things, in my opinion, and because of that,
we were forced to reveal those things over the course
of the podcast. So Tim Donnie, I don't think it's
my friend any longer. Ben unfortunately or not unfortunately, I
(37:31):
don't really care. But Tim Donnae is no longer doesn't
like me anymore, and that's fine because I still liked Tim.
I have no issue with Tim, and all I want
is to find the truth at the heart of this scandal,
at the heart of this conspiracy, because I really appreciate
you saying that it's not conspiracy theory. There's no theory.
It's really just a question of how deep the conspiracy goes.
(37:54):
And that's what our podcasts about, and that's what unfortunately,
for thirteen years, people in my world, the sports world
have been too hesitant to investigate for reasons that are
completely rational. If you're an NBA writer, you want a job,
you got a future family.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
I get it.
Speaker 6 (38:10):
At the same time, this is the darkest moment in
the history of basketball, and to make this fort better
and too, you need to understand its fault and why
you know what needs improving, And so that's where this
journey kind of kicked off from. But yeah, Tim Donnahie
is is a central part of our story, and I
think what's interesting for myself and the audience is deciphering
(38:32):
what's true and what's not true.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Let's pause for a brief word from our sponsor before
we return with more and the still developing tale of
whistle Blower with Tim Livingston, and we're back. These shows,
(38:56):
both both whistle Blower and Stuff they Want you to Know,
have have something in common, which is pursuing the truth,
even when pursuing the truth is not a popular or
even safe thing at times. One thing that stands out
to me that surprises me. I haven't thought about really
(39:16):
until exploring Whistleblower, until speaking with you, is the idea
that the NBA could wield such profound, pervasive influence over
what is supposed to be objective reporting. So is it
true that the NBA can just stonewall or blackball blacklisted journalists,
(39:41):
or they can they shut down and silence a story,
or is it more that the journalists themselves are kind
of proactively self selecting and avoiding things they think will
get them in trouble.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
That's a great question.
Speaker 6 (39:55):
And again, the media side of this is super, super
interesting and something that we explorer in the second half
of the podcast. So I don't want to give away
too many spoilers, but I will say that, in my opinion,
during the David Stern era of the NBA, and David Stern,
for those who don't know, is the commissioner from nineteen
eighty four to twenty fourteen, David Stern is and this
(40:16):
is what where if you're just if you're listening to
Whistleblower right now, you haven't heard this, or you're we're
about to start revealing in episodes five, six, and seven,
which you're coming out over the next you'll have heard
five and six and seven are about to come out.
But the NBA was an entity you did not mess with.
And that is not me saying that that's other journalists
(40:37):
that I've spoken with. Murray Weiss, a former New York
Posts reporter who broke the story in the NBA, said
those words very clearly, right you're about to hear You're
about to hear Murray Wyss say that right where people
warned him, don't mess with the NBA, don't mess with
David Stern. David Stern did not mess around. David Stern
was a monarch. He really was, and he was brilliant,
(41:00):
and he's a fascinating character in this.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
That we really.
Speaker 6 (41:05):
Are going to die, going to dive into his psyche,
going to dive into how he ran the league and
the way he ran the league. It wouldn't work in
twenty twenty, but it worked very well in the nineties
and early two thousands. He was not a social media
era guy. He said things that would just be absolutely
destroyed with the way we disseminate news and at the
(41:25):
speed with which we disseminate news today. But the NBA,
in my estimation, in my opinion, which hopefully at this
point your your audience values at least somewhat as somebody
who has spent eight years. If you guys, don't if
you think I'm an idiot. That's fine as well, but
my opinion is that, yes, the NBA was somebody was
(41:47):
a company, right, was a thing that you did not
mess with and that people were very scared of. And
it wasn't just they would go to great lengths to
make stories like this go away. And we explore with
the Donahue scandal the great lengths that they made for
this story to go away, and it's fascinating. Now.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
I do have to say I've been personally impressed by
the uh, the the thoroughness of the reporting, especially when
you know in a very real way you are telling
a story that doesn't want to be told right, even
in the modern day. And one thing we have to
let you know if you're listening to the show today,
(42:30):
is that me and Matt and nol in Mission Control
and Doc Holiday code named Doc Holliday. Uh. Tim, Tim
isn't giving us a preview of the episodes. So all
the stuff that that you just said, Tim with my question,
it's it's stuff that I have to wait for the
(42:50):
next episode to hear, which I think is it's fantastic.
I just want to say that, you know, unlike some
players of the NBA. We're not getting special treatment here,
so we are listening along with you, folks. Perhaps one
way to close today's episode, before everybody goes and checks
(43:12):
out whistleblowers for ourselves, is to go back to something
that you post that I think is of crucial importance here.
So there's this idea of checks and balances, right, and
how best to institute them, But it seems so complicated.
(43:34):
It seems like it's a very tall order. Do you
have things like checks and balances that you think would
mitigate this problem? I mean, is there a solution? Because
I you know, I'm not an expert. I'm not like
the King of referees or anything like that. And I
was thinking through this and yeah, I don't know, and
(43:55):
out smart than me. It's just so easy to get
away with it, you know.
Speaker 6 (43:58):
Yeah, And I think the first step is right now,
the referees are employed by the NBA. So, for example,
during the David Stern era, David Stern somewhat facetiously replied
during a Dan Patrick interview in two thousand and four
about his dream NBA Finals matchup. He said, Lakers versus
Lakers is the league. That's that's what the Laker. That's
(44:20):
what the league wants to see. And as a Lakers look,
I grew up a Lakers fan, right, The Lakers got
that hat on, I got the La hat on, and
I it's interesting because the Lakers were for ratings, which
the NBA cared a lot about. The NBA makes a
majority of its money via via television. The TV contracts
(44:41):
they've signed over the last twenty years have just gone
up by the billions. It's gone from hundreds of millions
to billions to multi billions. And last year the NBA
did almost nine billion dollars in revenue. So if you're
valuing the NBA as a company, their give or take
a thirty five billion dollar company, they're a huge corporation.
(45:02):
They're a very very powerful corporation. And so the first
thing you need to do is make the referees.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
You need to.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Create a separate employment agency.
Speaker 6 (45:12):
You can't have the NBA employee referees because if the
Lakers are playing whichever team in the Western Conference Finals,
and that referee has in his head that David Stern,
his boss's boss's boss's boss is rooting for the Lakers
to reach the next game, that's a problem.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Right.
Speaker 6 (45:28):
So that's step one is and Phil Jackson, formed Lakers coach,
the one who suggested that first, or at least, I mean,
I'm sure a lot of people had suggested before Phil Jackson,
but I think Phil Jackson, of the time NBA champion's
he knows, he's a smart guy. He knows his teams
have been privy to different officiating than a lot of
other a lot of other teams. And that's one anecdote
(45:52):
that donnae He provides in our opening episodes where Phil
Jackson or he calls Michael Jordan for travel, Michael Jordan
and Phil Jackson flip out and Phil Jackson, you know, Donnie,
he says, you watch the same training tapes as I do.
And Phil Jackson says, yeah, they might want that call
to travel, but not on Michael Jordan. So it's the
same kind of bias and talent discrimination that exists throughout
(46:16):
the league, and a call, the right call should be
the right call every single time, and it's not.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
In the NBA.
Speaker 6 (46:23):
There's biases and different rules for different players, and it's
it's not an even playing field. And to get there,
the first step is to create make referees part of
a different organization that has no ties with the NBA,
and that's that's step one, and that's a big step.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
Do I think it's going to happen. I don't know.
Speaker 6 (46:42):
I don't think anytime soon, because definitely during the David
Stern era, I think the NBA enjoyed having that control,
and I think they giving that up would be something
that they would really really have to be pushed into
a hole to do. But that's the that's the first
step the solution. And then you've got to make sure
that that agency, that organization is is run well and
(47:05):
run with integrity. But right now, the NBA having control
essentially over the employment of its officials creates a conflict
of interest. It's too wada chasm to to overcome.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Yeah, this is you know, this is reminding me of
all those memes where you see like a tiny hero
standing up against some gigantic colossus in the on the horizon.
That's an enormous conflict of interest. And you know what
what I like about this point and what I like
about I called some of my friends who are living, breathing,
(47:47):
God bless them for their optimism, Atlanta basketball fans and
uh and so they so so, uh, you know, a
lot of I think a lot of folks here or
somehow familiar with the problem you're addressing just at the
very offset of Whistleblower, and it's this I think. You know,
(48:11):
if you love basketball, then of course you feel like
there's been several terrible calls, as you said, Tim, two three,
four per game. So I think a lot of our
listeners are already excited to see it's a very real
proof that they weren't just being you know, sore loser
(48:33):
fans or something like that. And so we turn it
over to you, folks. Don't take my word for it.
Do check out whistle Blower. It's available wherever you find
your favorite podcast on any platform. As we said, we
actually waited a little bit on this interview because we
(48:53):
didn't want to have the interview here while episode one
was just out because there's so much stuff on the
horizon that we can't get talk about. And Tim, thank
you for being patient with me. I know you totally
caught me trying to slide in getting a little more info.
I guess I'll just have to wait. I'll have to
wait till next week, but.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
I appreciate it. Ben Now was great.
Speaker 6 (49:15):
I could talk about this stuff all day, So after
episode ten comes out, I'll come back on and we
can dive even deeper. But do you appreciate it? It
was a lot of fun, and yeah, check out Whistleblower.
I think you guys will like it.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
In the meantime, Tim, for anyone who would like to
learn more about your overall work, where can they find
you online?
Speaker 6 (49:36):
I'm on Twitter at Tim likes sports. To handle that,
I think I'd got like twenty twelve or twenty thirteen
that I'm going to stick with because I still like sports,
even after learning about all the terrible things that have
happened in the world that I love. So yeah, Tim
likes sports on Twitter, and that's where you can That's
where I'm most active on the social media's.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Again, you can also find Tim on the No Chill
podcast if you are like me, waiting for the end
of Whistleblower. In the meantime, while you're on the Internet,
you can also find stuff they don't want you to know.
We're on Instagram, We're on Facebook, We're on Twitter. If
you have listened to our multiple episodes about big data
and you are still on Facebook, then check out our
(50:22):
check out our group page. Here's where it gets crazy.
You can leave us a phone number if you don't
sip the social needs one eight three three STDWYTK. Let
us know if you want us to use your name
on air or not. We can't wait to hear your input,
your feedback on whistleblower? How deep do you think this goes?
(50:44):
How high and wide do you think this conspiracy breaches?
If you don't like phones is twenty twenty, I get it.
Real friends text and you don't like social media, there's
one way you can always contact us. We have a
good old fashioned email address where we are conspiracy at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
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