Tim Donaghy was an NBA referee for 13 years before resigning in 2007 amid a betting scandal that rocked the sport and tarnished the league’s reputation. He served 13 months in federal prison after admitting to taking money from a professional gambler in exchange for inside information on NBA operations – including games he refereed – but maintains his characterization as a “rogue, isolated criminal” was a damage-control tactic meant to conceal problems more widespread and insidious.

The 48-year-old, who features in a new documentary out Friday about the human propensity to lie and cheat, spoke to the Guardian about the unavoidable interplay between organized crime and pro sports, and how the NBA should come clean for what it is: star-driven entertainment rather than on-the-level athletic competition.

You’re from Philadelphia as am I, so we both we grew up in a culture where sports are king. You were the son of a college ref as well. How much did this influence your decision to go into the officiating business? If you could do it over again, would you?

I would definitely do it over again, and I saw how successful my dad was in officiating, and I saw the friendships that he made through officiating and the fun that he actually had while working. So I knew it was something that I was going to pursue, and I just wanted to pursue it at a higher level.

How much of officiating is a business in the NBA and beyond, and in what ways?

It’s a business in the fact that, you know, it’s your job. So you want to do the best that you can do at your job, and you’re getting paid for it, so technically it’s your work. So, for the most part everybody looks at it as it is a business, but we all looked at it also as it was a form of entertainment, and we needed to make sure that the players were able to be put on a stage and succeed.

In some ways, there’s a way in which the audience of the spectator looks at it, and they have a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong and what the rules are. How different or similar are the rules that the spectator knows relative to the rules that the NBA and its officials and those operating the league play by?

I think now that the fans are pretty educated on the fact that there’s going to be star treatment in the NBA, that certain players are going to get the benefit of calls that other players aren’t, and it’s obvious to them that certain players are going to be able to get away with a little bit of a traveling versus other players. So there’s a set of rules, and it’s a rule book, and you’re supposed to go out and enforce those rules as they’re written, but it just doesn’t happen. Special players getting special treatment, and that’s just the craft of officiating in the NBA.

[The NBA] should come out and say it’s a form of entertainment, not an athletic event like in college. Tim Donaghy

To set the record straight, there have been conflicting reports about your own athletics career. You went to Villanova. Did you play on the baseball team there or not?

No. I was not. I was on the club team my freshman year.

There seems to be a strong connection between Philadelphia and basketball officiating. Why is that, and how insidious is this sort of civic nepotism when it comes to the slippery slope of operations in pro sports?

I think there’s a lot of successful referees to come out of the Philadelphia area because the basketball is so good. Also there’s a long history of top officials, whether you’re college-level or NBA-level. So, when you start officiating, you hear about all of these guys, and you set your sights to be like them, which is to be very successful at the top level, so, if you go about doing it the right way and attend a lot of camps and get seen by the right people and pushed in the right direction, you can become successful. I think that’s why a lot of people out of Philadelphia get to the NBA or get to the top college game.

So it’s really just a matter of exposure?

I think it’s a matter of exposure and knowing the right people. A lot of times you need that door opened for you, but when you go through that door, you have to have the talent to do it, so, I think that in the Philadelphia area, a lot of doors are opened for a lot of people, but you have to be able to do the job in order to get it.

Let’s talk about the NBA. You could say it is the most star-oriented league in the business, and there are certain athletes who have talked about this. How much of a role does the league play in propelling those stars and protecting them?



A huge amount. The craft of officiating is taught that people come and pay top dollar to see people like Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, all the stars, and you have to make sure when you blow the whistle against those individuals that it’s a foul that you basically can’t let go. And if there’s another player in that area, and you can dish that foul off to them, do that, because people come to see these guys play, and that’s what they want done.



How much of that happens off the court, in terms of protecting the image and the stars of the game?



I’m not sure what you mean by “off the court”.



Meaning, we see the game on the court, but folks who are stars in the league also are now public personas. Obviously there a number of folks who have come out and said, “It’s not my job to be a role model,” but with media saturation these days, it’s hard not to have an eye on these folks. How much involvement does the league have in protecting those folks off the court?

That’s something I really can’t answer because I’m not in those meetings or around that. I can only attest to what was said in the locker room and amongst other referees: to protect the star players and make them look as good as you can make them look. So as to what’s going on off the floor, in marketing, with the NBA, I really don’t know.

So if we pulled back the curtain on the NBA, and looked behind it, how much of a role does the league play in helping teams or fixing schedules or guaranteeing that certain teams make it to the playoffs and go far?



Again, the only thing that I can talk about is what the officials had a part in. What the league office does, they don’t consult the referees. They just kind of tell us how to call the games. And when you tell somebody how to call a game, at times it puts one team at an advantage or a disadvantage. But in regards to scheduling and that other stuff, that’s really something that we didn’t have any knowledge of.



Certainly organized crime played a role in the storyline here. How much of a hand does organized crime have in professional sports?



Any time that you have a sporting event with a Vegas line to it, there’s always going to be somebody involved in organized crime trying to make a dollar off of it. So I think that they constantly are trying to get to that referee, to get to a player, to get to somebody, a trainer, or a coach who can give them inside information to where they can take advantage of it. So, I think it’s always going to be there, and it is there.



So then, what are your thoughts on NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s stance on the legalization of sports betting?



I think if they do that it’s going to be watched more closely. I think that they’re going to have a better grip on it, and people are going to concentrate more on what’s going on on the floor to make sure things aren’t happening. And it’s something where the NBA needs to take advantage of this extra revenue that can be generated because behind the scenes gambling is a billion dollar a year business. So in order to get money for extra contracts or for extra revenue, they’re going to take advantage of it.

Are there “officiating favorites” in the league, and if so, what are the benefits and the curses of being a favorite?

There definitely are favorite referees on the staff that get All-Star Games, extra All-Star Games, or better preseason games oversees or more playoff games. There definitely is their bunch of five or six guys that they tend to give everything to.

How much of your own fall do you think drew attention away from things that might still be going on or frankly things that the NBA might have known about?

The NBA knew about a lot of things, and their defense of this whole thing was to paint me in the worst light possible and act like it was one bad apple in the bunch. But as soon as the story broke, David Stern said legal gambling will cost you your job, illegal gambling will cost you your freedom. And what he meant by that was that in the official’s contract, you weren’t allowed to place a bet of any kind, so he said that if you were betting illegally, that would cost you your job. But they did an internal investigation and found that 50 out of 60 officials bet, in the casinos, on the golf course, pro football or whatever, and he knew he couldn’t fire 50 out of 60 people, so what they wanted to do was just put this whole thing on me and act like I was the one bad apple in the bunch, and that’s how they dealt with it.

If you could go back, where would you pinpoint to the single moment where maybe you could have made a different decision?



I think when I got caught up in the big money golf matches and going to the casinos and betting on pro football, I think I should have not been involved in that, not crossed that line to where I was closer to the other line that I crossed. Just gambling and the excitement I got from it cost me my job.



So even prior to specifically betting on the NBA ...



Yes, definitely. Way prior to that it was way out of control with the golf and the casinos and the cards. It just was at a point where I was enjoying it too much, and it was consuming my life.



Who was your hero growing up? Do you have a hero now, and if so, who is it?

Growing up I loved the Philadelphia 76ers: Doug Collins, Mo Cheeks, Dr J, Moses Malone. So those guys were guys I wanted to be like. I wanted to be a part of the NBA because I enjoyed the Sixers games when I was young. My heroes today are my kids. They’re doing great in life, and they weathered this tough storm I brought upon us. So, to me, to see them successful and doing the things they’re doing, they’re who I look up to today.

Famously, you and fellow Philly native Rasheed Wallace got into a row after a game back in 2003. We always imagined it was a fight about the best cheesesteak in Philly.

[Laughs.]

Any light you want to shed on that conversation? What really happened?



What really happened was Rasheed was upset that I had called a technical foul on him for throwing the ball at another official during the game … he had thirty-some points, they won by 20, and he was waiting for me out in the parking garage, and when I came out, he said something to me, and instead of me walking away, the Philly in me came out, and I said something smart back to him, which led to him just losing his temper a little bit. And he came after me. Thank God that somebody ended up grabbing him so that he couldn’t get to me or we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Yeah, the Philly comes out sometimes, in this case in both of you. But really, what’s your favorite steak?



I like Geno’s.

Who would win in a footrace, you or Dick Bavetta?



Oh God! Not even close. The guy I think now is 75 years old.

You appear in a new documentary about lying called (Dis)Honesty: The Truth About Lies. Once everything got exposed in your professional life, how much lying in your personal life was brought into the light, and what was that experience like?

Well, I think a lot of the stuff that I did was kind of hidden from my ex-wife and my kids in regard to sneaking around and sneaking to the casinos and doing different things that I shouldn’t have been doing. So, when I was cooperating with the FBI, I mean, your life’s an open book. They turn over every stone, so it’s not something I would wish on your worst enemy. So a lot of things came out, and it’s quite embarrassing, and humbling, and, again, something that you wouldn’t wish on anybody.

What’s the biggest lie in the NBA and in professional sports?

I think the biggest lie is that they try to say that everybody plays by the same set of rules and that there’s not star treatment. But whether it’s LeBron James in the NBA or Peyton Manning in the NFL, these guys are getting star treatment because they’re the ones that generate the revenue for the league. It’s just a situation where they should come out and say that there is star treatment so that there’s nothing that’s hidden from the fans.

With the Tom Brady situation as well, there are some who say if he had just come out and said, “Hey, listen, everybody plays with their footballs in different ways. It’s just part of the game,” then it wouldn’t necessarily be lying, it would just be changing the way that the game is played, and that might have been OK. It’s really a question for a lot of people if it’s lying or deception if the audience thinks that it’s one thing, but the people who are a part of it know that it’s another, and whether it’s ok to come out and say, “This is a spectacle. It’s entertainment,” versus, “This is a pure athletic event.”

I agree. I think that they should come out and say it’s a form of entertainment, not an athletic event like in college. Tom Brady definitely should have been smart enough to foresee this and just say, “Hey, listen, I like the footballs at the low end of the scale. I like them soft, and that’s the way I prepare them. What happened behind the scenes I don’t know about, but I can tell the guys that are in charge of them to make sure that they’re at the low end.” He really would have been better off to say that from the beginning rather than getting caught the way he did.



You mentioned college, and there’s certainly a lot of talk about whether to pay collegiate athletes. What are your thoughts on whether college athletes should be paid and about the purity of sports at that level?



I think they’re much purer than professional sports, and I don’t believe they should be paid. I think that they’re given a free education, free room and board, food, books, they have a pretty good deal, so in a way, to me, they are being paid. I think if you started to pay them, then you have to really regulate who’s getting what and why is one guy getting more than other guy. It just opens another can of worms.

Anything last thoughts or message you’d like to share?



I think the film (Dis)Honesty, the reason I wanted to get involved in it with Dan [Ariely] and everybody is because I think it’s a great message for the youth of today that basically choices are very important in life. To make good choices moving forward is going to keep you from going down that slippery slope that I went down that turned my life upside down for a period of time.