Tim Donaghy has no credibility. In addition to the fact he is a disgraced referee with a gambling problem who spent time in jail for his crimes, reasonable studies looking into his claims -- people that broke down the numbers -- showed he was full of crap. The claims he made turn out to be false.
So, the only way he can keep his name in the public eye is to make up more outlandish claims.
And now he has crossed all sorts of lines.
On the Celtics Late Night blog talk show, he said that referee Bill Kennedy is gay, and that he holds a grudge against the Celtics because Doc Rivers questioned his sexual orientation. (All this via Reds Army.) This led to calls against the Celtics, he claimed.
First, who cares who Kennedy sleeps with? I honestly have no idea and nor do I care. What matters is the quality of his officiating. It’s a non-issue.
Second, Donaghy’s claims have all been crap so far, there is no need to buy this one. It is going to get a lot of media attention (and frankly I had a crisis of conscious about running it and talked with my bosses). But know that it is crap.
Go and read the work TrueHoop -- Henry Abbott and Kevin Arnovitz -- did. His claims do not stand up to any rigorous test, and there is a lot more research that will come out saying the same thing. So we put out there what he said, but add that the source is crap and, frankly, we doubt that the bias would stand up to any real test.
