Gaming the Game

by Sean Patrick Griffin

  According to NBA Commissioner David Stern, Donaghy was “near or at top of calls made.” According to former pro gambler Bob Voulgaris, “If you track Donaghy’s reffing style, you’ll see he calls a lot of violations, travels, offensive fouls—as well as more than average illegal defenses and personal and shooting fouls. In short, he calls more of everything.”

  Recall that Battista and other pro gamblers were already betting on Donaghy’s games as early as 2003. Thus, substantial money was being wagered on Donaghy’s games throughout the three seasons prior to 2006-07, and line moves were taking place in these seasons as well. This must be considered when assessing the spike in betting line activity that took place in ’06-07.

  Similarly, 14.5% of non-Donaghy games had line moves of 2 points or greater versus 26% of Donaghy’s games that moved 2 points or more.

  As Battista says of Donaghy in this regard, “He had no idea how much he was affecting the market. He was an NBA referee who was just getting his five grand a game.” I should note that one respected pro gambler not prone to hyperbole believes a colleague of his was somehow privy to Battista’s picks on games Donaghy was officiating as early as 2003, was wagering in the neighborhood of $2 million every game, and earned more than $200 million by the end of the scandal.

  There is another, less sophisticated way to assess Donaghy’s assertion that he essentially bet equally as often on games he officiated and those he didn’t during the Battista-inspired conspiracy, namely to revisit the code the three conspirators agreed upon at the start of the scheme. The reason they simply chose to use “Chuck” for home team bets and “Johnny” for away (which later became, respectively, “Mom” and “Dad”) was because there was no need to discuss cities or teams since they already knew what teams were playing. Since the plan was only to bet on Donaghy’s games, there was no consideration for more elaborate codes; they weren’t necessary. The code would have been ineffective if they wished to distinguish between an entire slate of games on a given day. That is, if Donaghy merely phoned in to tell Martino, “I am going to visit my Mom this weekend” to convey his pick on the home team, Martino would not have known for which of that day’s games Donaghy was picking the home team. Of course, if the parties needed to mention a city or a team’s nickname as part of the “code,” there was no need for the Mom/Dad or Chuck/John effort in the first place. That is, Donaghy could quite simply have said something like, “I love visiting Boston” or “The weather in Boston is great this time of year,” etc. if he was picking the Celtics. It would be pointless to say, “Chuck says he is visiting Boston this weekend” if Donaghy simply wanted to convey his pick of the Celtics.

  Some parties have assumed Tim Donaghy was betting game totals, often under the assumption that it would be easier for a referee to control the points scored by a team than to influence a game outcome. About this, Jimmy Battista says, “People always say, ‘The totals, the totals, the totals!’ The totals were a fucking drop in the bucket compared to what money could actually be moved on the sides. You couldn’t get more than a few hundred thousand down on totals. That wasn’t the money. The sides were the money, and he always liked a side.” It is widely acknowledged that sportsbooks have significantly lower betting limits on game total bets than they do sides bets. As Lou, the pro gambler, says regarding the issue of totals, “The reason so many people assumed Donaghy was betting on totals was that if you tracked Tim Donaghy’s games you’ll see a lot of his games go over the total. The reason for that isn’t because Sheep was betting the totals, it’s because Donaghy needed to have his fingers on so many di fferent aspects of the game to fi x a side that one of the offshoots was that the games were really high scoring because he was calling a lot of fouls.” I should note that a review of Battista’s wagers on Donaghy’s games included bets on totals, but I have not seen enough of these bets to offer insights regarding patterns. Battista says he does not recall specifics regarding these bets and assumes they were simply for his clients.

  Data for non-Donaghy games were not available from the other sportsbooks to conduct this comparison using their data as well.

  In addition to all the other damning evidence, Tim Donaghy doesn’t help his case when he says that he voluntarily took a lie detector test to prove he was telling the truth about various betting scandal matters, and yet incredibly says that he did not have the polygraph examiner ask him whether he influenced the outcome of games because, in Donaghy’s mind, “that wasn’t an issue.” Donaghy has also made many unsupported assertions following his prison stint that are far too numerous to address in this forum. It is likely I will offer my data-driven assessments of his myriad claims at some point, which would add to an already growing body of such deconstructive works. This will especially include a critique of those made in the former referee’s book and during many of his related media appearances. In advance of more on this topic, interested parties can consult my blog at http://nbascandal.blogspot.com.

  Lou finds the ending to the NBA betting scandal story ironic. “The real funny part about the scandal is that here you basically have a money-printing machine,” he says, “and the two guys involved are each in debt. Donaghy owes money to the NBA, and Sheep owes the NBA and a bunch of guys on the street.”

  THIS BOOK WOULD have been completed a long time ago if the project simply entailed numerous interviews of former pro gambler Jimmy “Baba” Battista. Documenting as much of Battista’s life story as possible, especially his involvement in the NBA betting scandal, required considerable legwork (traveling, pandering, cajoling, bartering), and data collection.1

  Gaming the Game is the result of numerous Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, more than one hundred interviews, numerous court transcripts, and hundreds of news articles. The agencies that created the law enforcement documents include the Philadelphia Police Department and other local departments, the Pennsylvania State Police, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Probation Service, and especially the regional offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Beyond the consequential body of documents and betting records that are the foundation of the NBA scandal-specific portions of this work, I have interviewed dozens of people, including numerous current and former law enforcement officials at the local and federal levels. Current and former prosecutors at the local and federal levels were also interviewed, in addition to other parties of interest (e.g., betting experts, professional gamblers, sportsbook managers, Vegas casino runners) and numerous journalists who have investigated certain aspects of the story. Importantly, many of these sources have direct knowledge of the situations they describe.

  In an effort to keep the book a mainstream (as opposed to a more plodding academic) read, I have tried to keep footnoting to a minimum. However, given the gravity of the subject matter, particularly in the case of the scandal, I felt obligated to offer at least some sourcing so readers can have confidence in the work. This also permits others to conduct follow-up research, and to offer informed analyses and conclusions. I have included below only those citations needed to appropriately credit sources explicitly quoted in the narrative . This has only been done if the citation is an author or media outlet (i.e., not a court document, a law enforcement document, or an interview I’ve conducted). Where applicable, I have also listed suggested readings.

  Before offering the source material, I must explicitly comment on a matter some may have noticed about the work. Readers will note there are few, if any, references to former NBA referee Tim Donaghy as a direct source of information (via law enforcement files, court documents, media accounts, or interviews). The research for Gaming the Game began in March of 2008, with numerous and extensive interviews of former pro gambler and scandal progenitor Jimmy “Baba” Battista, known at the time throughout the betting industry mostly as “Sheep.” In the more than two years of researching the scandal that followed, I vetted as many of Battista’s claims and versions of events as possible. The labor-intensive and often sensitive proces
s included interviews of Battista’s former superiors, partners, colleagues, underlings, competitors, and outright adversaries (some of whom remain upset over substantial financial losses resulting from The Sheep’s betting line manipulations, and others still peeved over unpaid debts following Battista’s rehab stint and “retirement” from the gambling profession). Perhaps more importantly, by the time the work was done, the NBA betting scandal cases had wended their way through the criminal justice system yielding numerous documents and interview subjects that were used to further vet Battista’s story.

  Because I had access to interview subjects and data to which authorities and the media were never privy, my original plans to interview Tim Donaghy were eventually scrubbed.2 Unlike my experience with Jimmy Battista, whose credibility increased with follow-up research, Donaghy’s credibility decreased as the months wore on and data accumulated, and it became clear Donaghy’s story was demonstrably flawed in significant ways. That is, while there are many aspects of the scandal history that will forever be “he said—he said” matters, there are, however, areas for which there is a way to critically assess how something transpired, and Donaghy’s claims were repeatedly not supported by the evidence. I thus see relying on Donaghy as the basis for any matter of import as imprudent. This doesn’t mean, of course, that some of what he has said isn’t true, but the volume and seriousness of Donaghy’s “mistaken” claims is alarming.

  * * *

  SOURCES

  Chapter Four: The Gambling Grocer

  32 Regarding the sociology of high-end professional sports betting as evidenced by Tiger’s words and actions, please see the following because they each touch on the history and/or the sociology and logistics [e.g., betting line manipulation, arbitraging, off-shore betting operations, movement of money, probability science] of high-end sports gambling (in alphabetical order by author): Steve Budin, Bets, Drugs, and Rock & Roll (New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007); Richard O. Davies and Richard G. Abram, Betting the Line: Sports Wagering in American Life (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2001); James Jeffries and Charles Oliver, The Book on Bookies: An Inside Look at a Successful Sports Gambling Operation (Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 2000); Michael Konik, The Smart Money: How the World’s Best Sports Bettors Beat the Bookies Out of Millions (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006); Chad Millman, The Odds: One Season, Three Gamblers, and the Death of Their Las Vegas (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press [Perseus], 2001); and Wayne L. Winston, Mathletics: How Gamblers, Managers, and Sports Enthusiasts Use Mathematics in Baseball, Basketball, and Football (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

  Regarding the legality of pro gambling, especially in the internet age, the following was consulted: David G. Schwartz, Cutting the Wire: Gaming Prohibition and the Internet (Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 2005).

  Chapter Six: Sharpening Up

  47 strong and independent : Pennsylvania Crime Commission, 1988 Report (Conshohocken, PA: PCC, 1988), pp. 23-4. On Joe Vito’s significance early in his career, see, for example, Paul Taylor, “Rizzo says police acted like ‘KGB Agents’ in son-in-law’s arrest,” The Washington Post , April 21, 1983.

  47 The Mastronardo bookmaking : Pennsylvania Crime Commission, Organized Crime in Pennsylvania: A Decade of Change: 1990 Report (Conshohocken, PA: PCC, 1990), p. 71.

  48 fifty thousand : George Anastasia, Blood and Honor (New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, 1991), pp. 248-9.

  48 played a significant role : PCC, Organized Crime in Pennsylvania , p. 71. Also see Lindsey Gruson, “U.S. Accuses Shearson of Money Laundering,” The New York Times , June 27, 1986.

  The case generated some fascinating legal arguments, especially regarding money laundering laws. See, in chronological order, United States of America v. Shearson Lehman Brothers, Inc. et al. , Criminal Nos. 86-00293-01, 86-00293-02, 86-00293-03, 86-00293-04, 86-00293-05, 86-00293-06, 86-00293-07, 86-00293-08, UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA 650 F. Supp. 490; 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16943, December 4, 1986, Decided; United States of America v. Herbert L. Cantley, Joseph Vito Mastronardo, Jr., Joseph Vito Mastronardo, Sr., John Vito Mastronardo, John Hector , Criminal Nos. 86-00293-02, 86-00293-03, 86-00293-04, 86-00293-05, 86-00293-06, UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA 1987 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6247, July 8, 1987, Decided, July 10, 1987, Filed; United States of America v. Joseph Vito Mastronardo, Jr ., Appellant No. 87-1525; United States of America v. Joseph Vito Mastronardo, Sr ., Appellant No. 87-1644; United States of America v. John Vito Mastronardo , Appellant No. 87-1526; United States of America v. Herbert L. Cantley , Appellant No. 87-1541; United States of America v. John Hector , Appellant No. 87-1561, Nos. 87-1525, 87-1526, 87-1541, 87-1561, 87-1644, UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT 849 F.2d 799; 1988 U.S. App. LEXIS 8161, May 2, 1988, Argued, June 13, 1988, Filed.

  For more information on Joe Vito Mastronardo and the mob shakedowns of Philadelphia-area bookies (and related matters), see, for example, the following: George Anastasia, Mobfather (Philadelphia, PA: Camino Books, 1993), and The Last Gangster: From Cop to Wiseguy to FBI Informant—Big Ron Previte and the Fall of the American Mob (New York, NY: Regan Books [Harper-Collins], 2004); Frank Friel and John Guinther, Breaking the Mob (New York, NY: Warner Books, 1990); and S.A. Paolantonio, Frank Rizzo: The Last Big Man in Big City America (Philadelphia, PA: Camino Books, 1993).

  50 Stanfa sent me : Susan Caba, “Transcript of a mob shakedown highlights federal bail hearings,” Philadelphia Inquirer , March 22, 1994.

  50 I work for somebody : Kitty Caparella and Jim Smith, “Accused mobster agrees to plead guilty, but won’t sing,” Philadelphia Daily News , June 21, 1994.

  For insights into the Stanfa racketeering and extortion cases (which include Jack Manfredi), see, for example, Susan Caba, “FBI nets Stanfa in mob sweep,” Philadelphia Inquirer , March 18, 1994; George Anastasia, “2d person guilty in Stanfa case,” Philadelphia Inquirer , June 24, 1994, and “He took the ride, ended up in prison,” November 30, 1997.

  54 Oh my God! : Marlene DiGiacomo, “ ‘Oh my God’—Shooting victim recalls bookmaker’s final moments,” Delaware County Daily Times , June 30, 1994.

  For insights into the Pirollo slaying, see, for example, Bill Ordine, “Norwood man accused in Darby Killing,” Philadelphia Inquirer , December 19, 1993; Marlene DiGiacomo, “Gambler: I shot bookie,” Delaware County Times , July 1, 1994; Nathan Gorentsein, “Bookmaker is found guilty in ’93 murder,” Philadelphia Inquirer , July 2, 1994; DiGiacomo, “Murderous gambler runs out of luck,” July 3, 1994; DiGiacomo, “Gambler gets life term for murder,” July 6, 1994; Gorenstein, “Man’s life spared in slaying of bookie,” July 6, 1994; and Charles M. Giordano, “Illegal gambling not a ‘victimless crime’ (letter to the editor),” Delaware County Times , January 9, 1995.

  Chapter Seven: Go West, Black Sheep

  75 For brief coverage of the charity event Jimmy Battista hosted at Marina’s involving 610 WIP co-hosts Howard Eskin and Mike Missanelli, see Pauline Pinard Bogaert, “Social Scene,” Philadelphia Inquirer , March 5, 2002.

  Chapter Twelve: There’s Someone in Stripes on My Side

  130 Vietnamese sports betting ring : Keith Herbert, “Brothers charged in $2.7 million ring,” Philadelphia Inquirer , June 1, 2006.

  131 who can afford to lose : Herbert, “Brothers charged.”

  132 They’ve been booking for : George Anastasia, “Gambling-ring brothers are folding,” Philadelphia Inquirer , June 11, 2006.

  Chapter Thirteen: Jimmy, Tommy, and Timmy

  140 Anytime there was a : Jack McCallum, “A retired ref believes that Tim Donaghy followed the rule book too closely for NBA’s good,” SI.com , August 1, 2007.

  142 almost adolescent in his : Lester Munson, “Jail break? Donaghy’s cooperation could make sentencing more lenient,” ESPN.com , July 22, 2008.

  142 cars, women, working, sports : Jana Winter, Samuel J. Goldsmith, and Dan Mangan, “Ref Pal F
ears He May Be Snared in the Same Net,” New York Post , July 27, 2007.

  144 Nobody wanted to play : James Fanelli and Jana Winter, “Ref ’s hit with some bad calls,” New York Post , July 23, 2007.

  Chapter Fourteen: Trouble Shooting