In my last post I linked to a rather benign possession on a play that may or may not have been a marginal call by Tim Donaghy. One could argue that if Donaghy really wanted to fix games he could have called been even more blatant and called an offensive foul on Shaquille. In general this isn’t how Donaghy operated, what Donaghy actually did do was to try and avoid the really blatantly bad calls as much as possible and instead focused on exerting a collection of very marginal or questionable calls in the favor of his team.
Later on we’ll see that he didn’t always succeed in avoiding making the really blatantly bad calls but for now lets focus on what I feel is a clear pattern of Donaghy making a collection of calls that favor the side he is betting on -
there are a number of games where Donaghy makes an unusually high ratio of calls favoring one team over the other - the common denominator in these games (aside from the fact that he bet them) is that his bet was in jeopardy. This is why when the Pedowitz report states;
In some of these games, Donaghy appeared to do a good job and made virtually no errors. In others, he made a substantial number of errors, but the errors did not seem to favor one team over another. In still other games, there were no errors at the critical points of the game, or there was an error that might in isolation raise some suspicion but that seemed to be offset by another error that favored the other team. One game ― Detroit at New Jersey ― raised concerns that Donaghy’s calls and substantial errors might have been aimed at favoring Detroit (which covered the point spread).
It’s a little disingenuous - for one how does an error not seem to favor one team or another, I am a little unclear on this. They they later state that “some calls may have favored one team, when later calls favored the other team” My response to this would be to ask if all there calls are equal?
When you look back at one of my previous posts where we discuss the ev of specific calls its pretty safe to say that all calls are not equal - in addition how did they reconcile a collection of make up calls late in games where the spread was no longer in question?
Lets first look at the raw call data in a few Donaghy games starting with the game mentioned in the Pedowitz Report,
Donaghy called 23 violations, infractions + fouls here is how they broke down;
17 favored DET
6 favored NJN
* note that this game is a prime example of how especially early on in Donaghy and Battista’s relationship its not enough to look at the opening line vs the closing line to determine which side Donaghy and his crew bet on. This game featured a 1.5 point line movement on the opposite side the crew bet.
Detroit Covered.
Donaghy called 17 infractions+violations+fouls in this game;
17 favored Minnesota
0 favored Charlotte
Minnesota came from 20 down to cover 2.5 point spread.
Donaghy made 32 calls
26 favored Milwaukee
6 favored Indiana
Milwaukee covered.
Donaghy calls 16 infractions+violations+fouls in this game;
14 favored ORL
2 favored HOU
* my next post will be provide an indepth review of this game, Donaghy and crew actually lost this game.
Donaghy calls 18 infractions+violations+fouls in this game;
14 favored NYK
4 favored MIA
this is another game which we’ll examine more closely.
Are these ratios normal? Not exactly - I’ll delve a little further on just how rare these types of games are future posts.
-
squirmjungle liked this
-
dingypeddle9 liked this
-
flashbackska liked this
-
unansweredfa liked this
-
assertionmes liked this
-
legsnnylonscrazycelebs liked this
-
rosario-windhorst liked this
-
nbathoughts posted this
