Explosive allegations by an ex-referee rocked the NBA today in the midst of an NBA championship series designed to reinvigorate the league. Tim Donaghy claimed that the NBA routinely encouraged refs to call bogus fouls to manipulate results as well as asking them to withhold technical fouls on marquis players to increase ratings. Quite an interesting development given the league’s historical opposition to sports betting on the grounds that it is a corrupting influence on the sport. For example, the International Herald Tribune wrote recently about David Stern’s opposition to awarding Las Vegas an NBA franchise due to sports betting activity in that city:

David Stern, the NBA commissioner, has made “integrity of the game” his battle cry and says that local gambling on the league, though regulated, would violate that tenet. He maintains that casinos must take all NBA games off their oddsmakers’ books before Las Vegas could be a viable site.

This would seem extremely hypocritical should Donaghy’s allegations turn out to be truthful. Let’s hope that the true story eventually comes out. In the meanwhile, here is an interesting interview with Professional NBA sports bettor Haralabos Voulgaris on his thoughts regarding this brewing scandal. A key quote:

The Donaghy scandal basically made me question whether or not I wanted to continue betting the sport. For one, after the details emerged I have heard from several people who knew about the games while this was going on.

This could get ugly.