Research: NBA Scores Consistent with Occasional Point Shaving

With the NBA point shaving scandal front and center in the news, a senior thesis paper by Jonathan Gibbs of Stanford is getting a lot of attention. In his thesis, Gibbs found that the betting line does seem to have an effect on the final margin in games with large point spreads. And if you are going to fix a game, the easiest way to do it is to make sure the heavily favored team fails to beat a large spread.

Gibbs found that teams beat the Las Vegas sportsbooks' spread almost exactly fifty percent of the time over the 16,000 games in the study (7,802 compared to 7,855). But in the games where point shaving would seem to be most likely, where the spreads were 12.5 points or more, the betting lines were not accurate.

Gibbs and others have looked just at the games where point shaving would seem to be most likely -- the games with spreads of 12.5 points or more -- and a really weird thing became clear. Suddenly the betting lines were not accurate. Favorites fell way short of the spread at a normal rate, and beat it by a long shot at a normal rate. But if the score was close to the spread -- in short, if it was a game that would be easy to shave points in the final minutes -- then the favorite fell short of the spread more often than they beat it at a significant rate.

That means that if the spread closed at, say, 13, the favorite tended to win by something like 11 or 12 more often than they won by 14 or 15."

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Are Other Sports Leagues Safe from Gambling by Officials?

In wake of the NBA referee gambling scandal, ESPN.com questioned other sports leagues to ask what they do to protect against gambling in their sport. In NCAA basketball, for example, all officials eligible to be selected to work the championship are subject to random, thorough background checks. Furthermore, the NCAA does not bring the referees who work the national title game into the city until the day of the game. MLB, which previously experienced both the Pete Rose and Black Sox scandals, monitors baseball gambling trends to look for irregularities.

At his televised news conference on Tuesday, NBA commissioner David Stern presented a lengthy list of safeguards the league had in place to prevent the sort of disgrace brought on in the last week by a federal investigation of suspected gambling by a referee.

The safeguards, clearly, weren't fail-safe.

"I can't believe it's happening to us," Stern said about the alleged gambling by referee Tim Donaghy on games he officiated.

Among other firewalls the NBA thought would protect it from gambling scandals are the presence in the league office of security representatives with experience in the
FBI, the Secret Service, the U.S. Army, the New York Police Department and New York State Police Investigation. The league, Stern said, maintains constant communication with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. It subjects its referees to extensive security checks, and it retains a security rep in Las Vegas to monitor unusual movements or trends on betting on NBA games in that city's legal sports books.

It wasn't enough.

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A Scandal for Every Sport

In the past few weeks, there has been a major scandal in almost every major sport. The NFL has the Michael Vick indictment, the NBA has the referee point shaving scandal, MLB has the Bonds steroids issue, the UFC lightweight champion tested positive for steroids, and the WWE is dealing with the Chris Benoit tragedy. The PGA even got into the action last week when Gary Player said that golfers are taking steroids.

The only sport that is missing a major scandal is the NHL. Oh, that's right, it was only a couple months ago that Chris Simon used his stick to try to take the head of off Ryan Hollweg of the Rangers. It's funny how quickly we forget these things.

NBA Referee Scandal: Several Suspicious Games Discussed

In his article in today's Newsday, Ken Berger discusses several examples of games officiated by Tim Donaghy that appear suspicious. Berger points to the high percentage of games officiated by Donaghy in which the point spread changed as possible evidence of tampering. Berger also notes that there were 16 games Donaghy officiated in the last two seasons in which the home team shot at least 14 more free throws than the visitors.

Of the 139 games officiated by Tim Donaghy during the past two NBA seasons, the opening point spread moved at least two points in 28 of them, or 20 percent, according to a source within the Nevada sports betting industry.

The trend, along with dramatic free-throw differentials in several of Donaghy's games, could provide important evidence to the NBA and federal authorities investigating whether the referee bet on games he officiated or furnished information to bettors as part of a possible point-shaving or game-fixing
scandal.

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NBA Referee Scandal Nothing New For League

The allegations that veteran NBA referee Tim Donaghy may have shaved points in games he officiated the past two years has rocked the sport. In her column today in Newsday, Johnette Howard points out that conspiracy theories have been around the NBA for years. For example, she tells of two star players back in the 1980's who charted the point spread versus final game score for every league referee because they had some suspicions back then. Other whisperings include the so-called "frozen envelope" that Stern picked out of a bin to give the Knicks the right to draft Patrick Ewing in 1985, and rumors that Michael Jordan's father was killed by the mob because of some Jordan gambling incident gone awry.

from Johnette Howard of Newsday

Back before his own players started attacking him as racist, before his spats with Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and the brawl at Auburn Hills, before the dress-code flap and the on-court behavior crackdown and the TV ratings flops for recent NBA Finals -- in short, before the NBA descended into the sort of trouble it knew when David Stern first took over a few decades ago -- Stern used to be known as the "genius" of pro sports commissioners.

Stern will need to channel the old David, the Other David, now that his league has been rocked with the darkest incident in pro basketball history -- an ongoing FBI investigation into a possibly mobbed-up referee, 13-year veteran Tim Donaghy, who may have shaved points in an unspecified number of games the past two seasons, allegedly because of gambling debts he couldn't repay.

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Potential Evidence NBA Referee Bet on Games Uncovered?

NBA referee Tim Donaghy is under investigation for allegations that he bet on games he officiated. By analyzing Donaghy's profile on gambling site Covers.com, Matt Watson of The FanHouse has uncovered some very interesting facts about the games Tim Donaghy officiated last year.

Donaghy officiated 74 games last year, and out of 60 referees, he ranked third in the league for officiating the most games where the final score topped the projected over/under. In addition, the home team's record against the spread in games he officiated was just 30-41-3, which ranks 52nd out of 60.

Bear in mind that by themselves, these rankings don't mean anything -- after all, someone has to rank high or low in these categories -- but it's certainly interesting that he ranks among the extremes in these categories instead of in the middle of the pack. I'm sure it'll be just a matter of time before we can point to specific calls in specific games, but astute gamblers already knew that most of the games Donaghy officiated were high-scoring affairs in which the home team lost by more than expected.

NBA Referee Under Investigation for Betting on NBA Games

NBA referee Tim Donaghy is under investigation by the FBI for allegations that he bet on games that he officiated over the past two seasons and that he made calls affecting the point spread in games, multiple sources told ESPN.

Donaghy, a 13-year veteran of the league, is aware of the investigation and resigned from the NBA recently.

The NBA issued a brief statement Friday, saying: "We have been asked by the FBI, with whom we are working closely, not to comment on this matter at this time."

According to a law enforcement official, authorities are examining whether Donaghy -- whose identity was not revealed until Friday afternoon -- made calls to affect the point spread in games on which he or associates had wagered.

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