If the pick missed, the ref owed nothing Battista would eat the loss. If the pick won, the ref got his two dimes. 'Then you gotta cover the f-ing spread.' The bribe was only two dimes, $2,000 per game - an outrageous bargain. 'You wanna get paid?' Battista had said to the ref. Now he feared the scheme had become too obvious. A month or so back, not long before Christmas, he'd done something audacious: He'd sat down and cut a deal with an NBA referee. James 'Jimmy' 'Bah-Bah' 'The Sheep' Battista was a stressed-out, overweight, Oxy-addicted 41-year-old, in the hole to some underground gamblers for sums he'd sort of lost track of, when he settled in to watch an NBA game for which he believed he'd just put in the fix. July 9 is the anniversary of Donaghy's resignation from the NBA. You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browserįrom the archives: How former ref Tim Donaghy conspired to fix NBA gamesĮditor's note: This two-year investigation, which revealed how disgraced referee Tim Donaghy conspired to fix NBA games, whom he did it with and the millions of dollars that flowed from the conspiracy, was originally published on Feb.
