Former NBA referee Tim Donaghi has recently made some more explosive remarks, saying that the NBA has been trying to give big-market teams an edge against small-market teams. "They used to put us in a room, show us the game and let us focus on the moves and rounds that they didn't want us to miss," Donaghi said in an interview. It's always good for those big market teams and it's always good for small market teams, and while it's not fixed, they're definitely going to give a team an edge. We'd get out of those [pre-game] meetings and we'd be like, 'Oh my gosh, they really want the Lakers to win tonight.'" If you get paid $25,000 for every playoff game, then you're going to want the series to continue. ”
And before Donaghi claimed that the league favors big-market teams, he also shared how the NBA helped Michael Jordan. In the Netflix documentary Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul, Donaghi shared what the NBA and Phil Jackson told him after he said Jordan had violated the rules of walking.
"That's when I started to understand the unspoken rules of the NBA, when I was in Philadelphia officiating against the 76ers and Bulls. The League is cracking down on so-called turn-and-pass moves. In that game, Michael Jordan made this turn-by-turn move, and I blew Jordan for walking. Immediately after Phil Jackson got up from the bench and he started babbling at me. I said, 'Wait a minute, Phil, you know, I've done a great job, and that's what they told us to blow around.'" He said, 'While they might want that action to be stopped, they certainly don't want it to be stopped on Jordan,' he said, gesturing to Jordan who had just walked by and stared at me. Then I went into the locker room at half-time and the other referee said to me, "They want that blow, but they don't want to blow it to Jordan." ”
There is a general belief that the league likes a big-market team like the Los Angeles Lakers, so many people will believe Donaghi's claims, which are also more credible by the referee's interests that he mentions later, which clearly raises questions about the fairness of the NBA. But I was skeptical about everything the 57-year-old former referee said, because this man is not very good.
Donaghi began working as an NBA referee in 1994 and held the job for 13 years, officiating 772 regular-season games and 20 playoff games in his career, but in 2007 he was investigated by the league. It was also in that year that Donaghi resigned and eventually pleaded guilty to betting on multiple games in the 2003–04, 2004–05, 2005–06 and 2006–07 seasons and was sentenced to 15 months in prison.