Not everybody's buying the NBA's ref investigation conclusion

If you’re having a hard time believing federal and NBA reports that are claiming imprisoned ex-referee Tim Donaghy didn’t play a factor in games he officiated during his gambling spree, you aren’t the only one.

RJ Bell, president of a sports/gambling prep Web site, says statistics contradict the NBA, and he wonders how the league can explain away a combined 25-0 record by bettors against Las Vegas.

That’s just part of the info he shared in a press release sent to my e-mail inbox about the NBA’s conclusion regarding Donaghy. Bell also questions how the NBA could conclude that ref Scott Foster was not guilty of being involved in the betting scandal.

The president of Pregame.com, Bell has what he’s calling “some extremely damning statistics” that dispute the NBA’s conclusion. Consider these points taken verbatim from his press release:

– The first 15 games of the 2006-07 refereed by Tim Donaghy that had big enough betting to move the point spread by at least 1.5 points were UNDEFEATED against Las Vegas – meaning that the big-money gamblers won 15 of 15 times on his games. The odds of that happening randomly are 32,768 to 1.

“To conclude Donaghy did not fix the games you have to believe that a person troubled enough to provide inside information to criminals was able to referee games in which he had a financial interest without any bias. Plus, you have to believe that information alone allowed big bettors to beat Las Vegas 15 straight times,” said RJ Bell of Pregame.com.

The release continues:

Donaghy called Foster 134 times from October 2006 through April 2007. The investigation was satisfied with the reason behind the calls being friendship between the men, even though – according to Fox Sports – the calls “stopped abruptly” when Donaghy is believed to have stopped gambling.

During the 2006-07 period under investigation, TEN games refereed by Scott Foster had lopsided enough betting on one team to move the point spread by at least 2 points; those ten teams were UNDEFEATED against Vegas – meaning that the big-money gamblers won a perfect 10 of 10 times on Foster’s games; the odds of that happening randomly are greater than 1000 to 1 against!

Combined, the two questionable referees had big line moves in 13% of their games. A random sample of the first 100 NBA games of December 2007 resulted in only 6% of games having a line move of 2 points or more. RJ Bell of Pregame.com said: “Donaghy and Foster’s games had big line moves over double as often as a random sample of NBA games.”

(End of release.)

An unscientific ESPN web poll also leads me to believe NBA fans aren’t buying the league’s analysis. Nearly 83 percent of 13,200-plus responding said they didn’t believe Donaghy was the only ref involved in the scandal.

Are you buying it or do you think the report’s conclusion is faulty and that some games were fixed to some degree?