Disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy, a former official who spent time in prison for his role in a betting scandal, told The Athletic that he regrets the way his friendship with current official Scott Foster ended. and wants to apologize to him one day.
“We were like brothers,” Donaghy said of Foster in an interview for The Athletic’s profile of Foster, a lightning rod among NBA officials who has endured years of criticism but remains one of the league’s preferred referees for games. of exhibition.
Foster is the godfather of Donaghy’s daughter, and Foster named Donaghy godfather to his son.
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What do you think of Scott Foster after reading this?
The two have not spoken since 2007, Donaghy said, when Donaghy knew he was about to be arrested and called Foster to tell him he couldn’t play in a golf tournament because of the investigation into Donaghy’s gambling ties.
Donaghy was subsequently sentenced to 15 months in prison.
In 2008, a report by former federal prosecutor Lawrence Pedowitz and his law firm into NBA arbitration revealed that Foster and Donaghy exchanged 170 phone calls during the period of Donaghy’s involvement with his co-conspirators.
“That’s how we communicated in 2007,” Foster told The Athletic. “Every time someone wants to discredit me or question my integrity, they draw this conclusion from this article about phone call 134… and say, ‘That’s the proof!’ No test. Because it didn’t happen.”
“Nowadays, when people hear someone call someone 134 times, it’s like ‘Wow! That’s weird.’ Because it’s weird. I didn’t have text messages in 2007. I had a Motorola Razor, which if you wanted to text ‘Yes’ was 23 keystrokes or something like that.”
Pedowitz’s report concluded that Foster’s phone records “in our opinion do not raise concerns about their integrity.”
Foster has maintained his innocence in the Donaghy scandal and insisted to The Athletic that he had no idea what was going on. He did not deny that he and Donaghy were friends.
“One of my biggest regrets is that he and I were very, very close,” Donaghy said. “It bothers me to know that he is getting a lot of shit because of our relationship at the time. “So, that’s hard… just hard when I think about that relationship.”
“I hope that at some point, when Scott walks away, we can talk. And I can apologize to him. You never know, maybe that friendship can be rebuilt. I’m not sure.”
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