In the event you haven’t seen it already, you need to take a look at Deadspin.com’s excerpts in the new Tim Donaghy book. Within the passages, the disgraced ex – NBA referee makes several fairly preposterous, yet distinct, claims about how exactly officials would go out of their own way to have an effect on NBA games. Essentially, he admits that the refs had no integrity and would mess around with results on stuff as insignificant as who didn’t need to tip the ball boys!
At one point in the book Donaghy brings up Dick Bavetta who was a ref in what most fans consider the worst officiated game ever: game 6 of the 2002 western conference finals. Though it’s up for discussion, he makes a very particular allegation against Mr. Bavetta:
I bet the losing team simply because I was certain they would cover the spread, even if they played the game badly. This is when Mr. Bavetta shows up.
From my earliest involvement with Bavetta, I learned that he likes to keep games close, and then when a team gets down by double- digit points, he helps the players save face. He accomplishes this act of mercy by quietly, and frequently, blowing the whistle on the team that’s having the better night. Team fouls suddenly become one-sided between the contestants, and the score begins to tighten up. That’s the way Dick Bavetta referees a game – and everyone in the league knew it.”
Working off of the assumption this was true it should mean that if you bet on underdogs in all the games Bavetta officiated you should have positively cleaned up even with any sports handicapping issues. I’m not saying you would win every game; that would be ridiculous. But the way Donaghy describes it, he made a killing with this betting theory.
What makes me think that Donaghy is not telling the truth is simply because you must hit 52.7 percent of the wagers to makea profit if you are betting with ten cent juice; $110 to get $100. This made me want to dig further, so I looked back over the ten year period prior to Donaghy leaving and discovered something.
Out of the ten year stretch when Bavetta was officiating, there were only two (1998/99 and 2001/2002) that returned a profitable score if betting on the teams most likely to lose. During these two seasons, the underdogs came back at 55.7 and 57.1 respectively. For these two specific seasons you would have made money, but that’s about it. No other season made these kind of returns during Bavetta’s reign. In a nutshell, if you bet your shirt on this theory, you would have lost it.
I believe this small study destroys the ‘Bavetta Theory’ presented by Donaghy and calls into query the truth of his additional statements. I am not saying the NBA ought to be held unaccountable, and that the refereeing is extremely poor occasionally, or that you should disregard sports handicapping, however we need to question regardless of whether the remainder of Donaghy’s information is legitimate. If he lied in regards to this, we simply cannot consider his additional claims on face worth either.
Rich Allen is an expert in Sports Handicapping and his Sports Betting Professor Systems have sold over 250,000 units and cover all major sports including horse racing. Download a FREE copy of The Sports Betting Insider’s Guide at: http://richallensports.com/sports-handicapping