I need to announce at the onset that this is not meant at all to be exhaustive, especially since it is really just a sidebar to my research and I am not looking for things to do. It is possible if not likely that I am leaving out other problem areas and omitting other examples which further my points below (and thus I may return to this effort at a later point in time). Following two-plus years of research on the scandal, however, I felt compelled to at least highlight the significant flaws in Donaghy’s many claims. I should also note that that the context for practically everything discussed and analyzed below and elsewhere on this blog is explained in great detail in Gaming the Game: The Story Behind the NBA Betting Scandal and the Gambler Who Made It Happen (Barricade, 2011). Importantly, however, an outright assessment of Donaghy’s many claims would have been an unnecessary distraction to Gaming the Game readers, and such analysis therefore appears on my blogs exclusively.
Because my preoccupation upon researching the scandal was the supposed role of organized crime in the conspiracy, that area is featured in my review. Please see here for a stand-alone critique of Donaghy’s numerous “mob” claims. Similarly, the remainder of my analysis is dominated by matters involving the Criminal Justice System (i.e., origins of the FBI’s probe, the investigative process, the prosecution of the case, and its ultimate resolution). I have spent practically no time vetting Donaghy’s claims about matters beyond the betting scandal and the CJS response to it, even though such an assessment might offer further insights into Donaghy’s credibility.
One could approach this critique of Donaghy’s book and related public utterances any number of ways. For example, there are numerous unsupported claims, there are many others for which there is direct evidence to the contrary, and there are broad themes that are begging for closer inspection. As such, several narratives from the book and/or quotes from Donaghy’s media appearances may fit into more than one area of concern. What appears on this blog in the two posts which immediately follow this one is an evidence-based analysis of Donaghy’s claims, offered by type of concern in the hopes of making this somewhat manageable. I have broken the critique into two parts (claims contradicted by the official record and claims unsupported by the evidence) and yet even these are still fairly long for blog posts. My apologies for the length and related burden, but it’s not worth the time attempting to format these. I simply want the information to be widely available.
