NEW YORK — NBA referee Tim Donaghy made repeated phone calls to a second referee at the same time he provided inside information to professional gamblers during the course of the 2006-2007 season, according to court documents and phone records obtained by FOXNews.com. The records show Donaghy placed 134 calls to referee Scott Foster — more than the 126 calls Donaghy made to his bookie — between October 2006 and April 2007, the period during which he has confessed to either betting on games or passing on game information to gamblers. The majority of the phone calls lasted no more than two minutes and occurred prior to and after games Donaghy officiated and on which he admits wagering.
With the exception of 150 calls Donaghy placed to Thomas Martino, to whom he says he provided “picks” to win games and who was the middleman between the disgraced referee and a bookie named James Battista, the ex-ref phoned no one more than he called Foster. During this period, the most calls Donaghy made to any other referee were 13.
This is bad. Actually it's stunning. David Stern has been quoted as saying, "Donaghy was a rogue, isolated criminal acting on his own, without the cooperation of any other referees or league officials."
If the NBA had done it's investigation as thoroughly as they claimed, this phone call information would have been some of the first data they acquired. The league has fallen into WWE territory and letting this story leak out over several years is going to do nothing to rebuild credibility.
Not identifying Foster last summer means that Stern is a fraud with zero credibility and he needs to step down immediately.
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