Numbers indicate unlikely outcomes in games Donaghy officiated
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?page=expertstatsdonaghy
By Wayne Drehs
When noted sports gambling expert R.J. Bell began crunching numbers from the last four years of NBA referee Tim Donaghy's career Monday, what he discovered sent him on a public relations ride he never thought possible.
"It's been a crazy day," said Bell, the president of sports betting information site pregame.com. "But this is some groundbreaking stuff."
The biggest eye opener, Bell said, came when he compared the number of points scored in the games Donaghy officiated versus the number of points the Las Vegas sports books had expected.
In the two seasons in which the FBI is investigating Donaghy for allegedly fixing games for gambling purposes, Bell found that, in games when Donaghy was part of the officiating crew, NBA teams scored more points than Las Vegas expected (hitting the over) 57 percent of the time. With a league average of 49 to 51 percent, the odds of such an occurrence are 19 to 1.
When Bell analyzed the numbers from the two seasons before the two in question, he discovered that, in games Donaghy officiated, NBA teams scored more points than Vegas expected just 44 percent of the time.
Although the 13 percent difference might not seem that jarring to the casual observer, it's jaw-dropping in the world of sports gambling. Bell said the odds of a 44 percent probability happening 57 percent of the time are about 1 in 1,000.
"There's a 99.9 percent chance that these results would not have happened without an outside factor," Bell said. "Something abnormal was going on here."
ESPN.com's own research into Donaghy's last two seasons supports Bell's claims. In the 66 games Donaghy refereed in the 2005-06 season, the two teams in his games combined to score an average of 196.8 points. The average over/under, according to BoDog.com, was 186.6, a difference of almost 10 points.
In 2006-07, Donaghy refereed 73 games. In those contests, the two teams combined to score 201.37 points and the average over/under was 187.9 points, a difference of more than 13 points per game.
"Vegas is too good for that to happen," Bell said. "The standard range should be somewhere around five or six, maybe. Not 10 or 13."
The surprising trends aren't limited to total bets, when a gambler wagers on the total number of points scored in a game. Side bets, when a gambler picks one side or the other to win the contest, also raised some concern.
At the start of the 2007 calendar year, Bell said, there were 10 straight games in which Donaghy was part of the officiating crew and the point spread moved a point and a half or more before tip-off, indicating big money had been wagered on the game. In those 10 contests, according to Bell, the big money won all 10 times.
"They say follow the money, right?" Bell said. "Well, when the money is right 10 straight times, something is going on. To me, that's the gavel clicking down."
Just as interesting are the numbers from April 15 to the postseason. During that stretch, there were eight games in which Donaghy was part of the officiating crew and the line moved more than a point and a half before the tip, Bell said. And in those games, including over/under bets and win/loss wagers, the big money was just 2-7.
"It means one of two things," Bell said. "Perhaps in the playoffs, they felt too much scrutiny and they weren't trying to do anything and the results are just random. Or perhaps there was some sort of turnabout with the individual in question and he went the other way."
Yet despite such surprising numbers, in an environment in which every gambler is looking for every advantage he can find, Bell said it's highly unlikely anyone outside the individuals who had knowledge of Donaghy's alleged involvement would have been able to identify his tendencies.
"There's a strong indication that this was not going around on the buzz, as they like to say. Without the benefit of hindsight, two years wouldn't have been enough for these tendencies to reveal themselves," he said. "In three or four years, maybe. But not two."
According to FoxSports.com, over the last two seasons, Donaghy led the NBA in technical fouls, free-throw attempts per game and foul outs per game.
Bell said officials are studied to find possible gambling advantages in the ways they call a game. But the majority of that work, he said, is done in baseball; umpires are given ample attention because of their strike zone size. On any given night, the umpire can affect the over/under.
In the NBA, Bell said the only real attention paid to the referees is whether that official is a "homer," in other words whether he has a tendency to be influenced by a home crowd in a big game.
"There's research that if it's a nationally televised game or a rivalry game with a large, boisterous crowd, some officials will get freaked out," Bell said. "A sophisticated gambler knows that and will consider that when placing his bets."
(What's the spleen for anyway??)
