FanHouse Scott Foster

Let's face it, one of the reasons the NBA is trying to push out some of its older officials is because of the perception that some of those older officials tend to view themselves as bigger than the game or that they interject themselves too much into the action.

While there is no doubt most of the league's best officials don't lack for self-confidence, it's also true that this notion is overblown. Further, it's worth mentioning that the NBA always has had strong-minded and strong-willed officials ... and the league was better for it.

Great officials are just like great players in terms of confidence, competitiveness and wanting to be the best. To officiate at the highest level and for the world's greatest athletes, you have to have a presence and a tangible aura of authority.

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Circumstantial, as it may be, there is a lot to be uncovered in these NBA referee scandals when it comes to the action that Las Vegas receives on particular games. Obviously, the 130 phone calls from Tim Donaghy to Scott Foster are in and of themselves very bad news. Donaghy = guilty, and those swell-piece hits define "by association".

As R.J. Bell of Pregame points out, there might be a lot more to the Foster business than just the phone calls too.

During the 2006-07 period under investigation, seven games refereed by Scott Foster had lopsided enough betting on one team to move the point spread by at least 2 points; those seven teams were undefeated against Vegas – meaning that the big-money gamblers won a 7 of 7 times on Foster's games; the odds of that happening randomly are less than 1%.

Statistics alone cannot convict, but it's certainly noteworthy that seven times in Foster's games one team was bet extremely heavily, and all seven times that team won," said RJ Bell of Pregame.com.

Two of those seven games stand out: