tim donaghy – Rush The Court

07.25.08 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:46:58 +0000

Some things we’ve missed while lounging in a pool of indignant contempt (and mineral hot springs)with Lute Olson, Kevin O’Neill and friends the past few weeks…

It’s Extension Season! – Davidson’s Bob McKillop (3 more yrs until 2015-16), UCLA’s Ben Howland (7 yrs at approximately $2M per until 2014-15), Tennessee’s Bruce Pearl (1 more yr until 2013-14, but with a raise that will average out to $2.3M per over that span), Notre Dame’s Mike Brey (2 more yrs until 2014-15), Temple’s Fran Dunphy (2 more yrs through 2013-14), and Oregon’s Ernie Kent (3 more yrs until 2012-13) all got their wives a new car last week. UCLA’s AD Dan Guerrero [...]

09.19.07 Fast Breaks

rtmsf — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:38:25 +0000

Aside from Bruce Pearl’s newly-freed, um, pearls, what else is going on this week?

From the we-don’t-see-this-often file, Memphis’s home newspaper called out Tiger star and smack-ophist Joey Dorsey for being a piece of oversized dung troublemaker who deserves expulsion from the team. Speaking of trouble, former Oklahoma State all-american Byron Houston was sentenced to four years in prison for violating probation based on a public nudity charge. Memo to Byron: please stay away from railroad tracks. Rivals makes a pair of arguments that the Big 10 or the ACC will be the worst major conference this year. Our vote, just like last year: Big 10. Tim [...]

Monday Thoughts

rtmsf — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:09:48 +0000

A few different thoughts today, but none enough for its own post:

Circling back to the Donaghy saga, TrueHoop uncovered an academic paper on the NBA by a Stanford undergrad named Jonathan Gibbs that echoes the findings of the Wharton study on college basketball by Prof. Justin Wolfers that we mentioned last week. In summary, Gibbs found that there are a number of statistical outlier NBA games each season where heavy favorites beat the spread less often than they should, which, when controlled for confounding factors, is suggestive of pointshaving. This certainly comports with our prior stance that it happens more often than we all think. It seems that the [...]

NCAA Response to Tim Donaghy

rtmsf — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 15:53:46 +0000

As a short follow-up to the Donaghy scandal, the NCAA released the following information to espn.com regarding the measures it takes to ensure that its officials are clean (RTC’s comments below in bold):

NCAA (basketball) • The NCAA produces a video that is provided to each of the officials selected for the NCAA championship. The video warns of the dangers of gambling.

[Wow! A video! Reminds us of 9th grade.]

• All officials eligible to be selected to work the championship are subject to random, thorough background checks.

[Covered this yesterday. How thorough could these checks be? What predictive value do they have?]

• There are [...]

It Happens More Than We Think

rtmsf — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:10:41 +0000

Now that we’ve had a few days to mull over our thoughts with respect to this Tim Donaghy scandal, and after watching the Commish and High Priest of All Things Basketball grin and bear it through an excruciating (for him) press conference yesterday, we still find ourselves circling back to our initial thoughts when the news broke.

It happens more than we think.

Yes, it’s horrible and it shows a lack of oversight of its refs by the L and it calls into question the very integrity of the game that Stern and his predecessors have worked so hard for so long to ensure…

And it [...]

Tim Donaghy Scandal Fallout

rtmsf — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 02:44:30 +0000

Much is going to be made over the next week over the disclosure broken Friday by the New York Post that Tim Donaghy, a veteran NBA referee, allegedly became heavily indebted through illegal gambling and was using his position as an official to manipulate point spreads by proxy of organized crime. In other words… pointshaving, quite possibly the dirtiest word in sports. The only good news for the NBA was that the news hit on a summer Friday afternoon after a week of wall-to-wall Michael Vick and Barry Bonds-related outrage coverage.

“Kobe, do you think you could help [...]