FanHouse ScottFoster

Something we touched on briefly in discussing the explanation for the 130 phone calls between NBA referees Tim Donaghy and Scott Foster was the boredom of life on the road. In the independent report on the NBA's referee program, Lawrence Pedowitz goes into a fair bit of detail about the lonely nature of the job.

[M]uch of a referee's life involves travel, and travel involves a great deal of waiting time, so Foster often makes calls to "kill time." Foster is a creature of habit and a basketball and sports junkie. When he is on the road, he works out every morning at 10:00 a.m. He is also an early riser, which means that he has several hours to kill every morning. [...]

Referees have more time on their hands in the afternoon before a night game. Foster described this time as often boring and lonely, because referees rarely spend it together. Therefore, Foster usually returns to his hotel room after lunch and makes more calls to fellow referees. [...] The excitement of officiating an NBA game in the evening typically leaves him "wired" and unable to sleep right away when he gets back to his hotel room after the game, often after midnight. Because it is often too late at night to call his family, Foster calls his fellow referees to discuss the games they have just officiated.

Scott Foster needs a hobby he can take on the road. Online poker? Erm ... maybe not. The league should include some fix for this problem in its restructuring of the referee program. Why not hire a little buddy to hang out with and entertain each ref? Or give the refs supplemental jobs, like transcribing Gilbert Arenas' blog posts. Keep these guys busy. We all know an idle mind is the devil's playground.

In echoing the NBA's stance that Tim Donaghy was a "rogue, isolated criminal," Lawrence Pedowitz's team was forced to explain away some rather suspicious findings from a summer investigation of referee Scott Foster's call records.

The report from FOX Sports found that Donaghy called Foster more than 130 times over a six-month period, 10 times more than he had phoned any other co-worker. Worse, most of the calls lasted less than two minutes, and many of them preceded calls to Donaghy's betting buddies.

How did Pedowitz explain the odd behavior? By noting the long friendship between Foster and Donaghy and detailing how so many short calls could show up in records:

Foster told us that he frequently calls other referees and either hangs up when the call goes to voicemail or leaves a short voicemail message, and that other referees do the same when calling Foster. Foster's cell phone service agreement, which appears to be typical for cell phone carriers, provides that a call begins as soon as the phone being called rings, and a call as short as one second is recorded as a one-minute call. If the phone rings five or six times and the caller then leaves a message, it is likely that the call will last over one minute and will be recorded as a two-minute call. Therefore, it seems likely that many of Donaghy's short calls to Foster were in fact instances in which Donaghy and Foster did not speak to each other.

So basically, Foster never answers his phone. The report also discusses how lonely life as a referee can be, and notes that talking with other refs is a way to relieve boredom.

The lack of interest in Foster's involvement by the league, the FBI, federal prosecutors, and basically every media entity save for FOX ... that has also served to strengthen the skepticism of Foster's involvement. And while little the league has come up with in its defense has gained much public traction, it seems like this particular explanation could stick.

Everyone's been waiting for the independent report on the NBA's referee program from former federal prosecutor Lawrence Pedowitz. It's out -- big ol' PDF file here, NBA press release here. The major hook Pedowitz offers: Tim Donaghy's allegations that other referees and the league conspired to "fix" games to extend playoff series are without merit. From the report:

We have discovered no information suggesting that any NBA referee other than Tim Donaghy has bet on NBA games or leaked confidential NBA information to gamblers. In this connection, we reviewed a suggestion that referee Scott Foster was somehow involved in Donaghy's conspiracy (a suggestion raised in a press report about Donaghy's phone records) and found it to be meritless.

If you'll recall, a FOX Sports report over the summer raised suspicion of Foster when phone records revealed how often he and Donaghy spoke on game days ... and how often those calls were followed by calls between Donaghy and his gambling connections. An analysis of Foster's called games also indicated funny business.

Pedowitz also finds no evidence that Donaghy made calls to affect games he bet on, a claim backed up by federal prosecutors who pinched the ref. The report does offer recommendations to improve the NBA ref program, but to be honest they aren't very strong and have little in the way of public outreach or transparency for the fans.

Basically, the report backs the NBA's line that the hiring of a new oversight guy will fix everything, and that really folks, there's nothing to see here. I have a hard time believing the paying public will buy it.

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:

The NBA addressed Monday's Fox News report that disgraced referee Tim Donaghy called fellow official Scott Foster a suspicious amount of times during the period in which Donaghy has admitted to betting on games he worked.

"The government had complete access to Tim Donaghy's phone records and thoroughly investigated this matter, including conducting an interview of referee Scott Foster," the league said. "The government has said that they have found no evidence of criminal conduct aside from that of Mr. Donaghy."

The Foster story failed to pick up steam Monday, which is either an indication the connection (based on 134 brief calls over six months directly before or after games Donaghy or Foster worked, often interspersed with calls to Donaghy's middleman) isn't as strong as it looks to the naive eye, or it's an indication reporters and pundits are too hesitant to pass judgment following that Game 6 debacle ... which ended up embarrassing everyone.

Still, isn't there a bit more meat here? Is anyone involved going to explain the calls?

Fox News has a rather incendiary report by Jana Winter digging into disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy's phone records. Winter reports Donaghy made 134 phone calls to fellow ref Scott Foster over a six-month spread during which Donaghy has admitted betting on games. Donaghy made no more than 13 calls to any other ref, and only phoned betting middleman Thomas Martino more frequently.

Based solely on Winter's account, it's hard to imagine there isn't something here. The bulk of the calls were shorter than two minutes in length and came directly before or after either Donaghy or Foster worked a game. Some of them are bookended by calls to Martino. The calls "stopped abruptly in mid March 2007, when Donaghy is believed to have stopped his gambling," Winter writes.

Foster worked two games in the NBA Finals (Games 1 and 5), and has reffed in the NBA since at least 1996-97. He's not one of the referees from Donaghy's hometown of Philadelphia.