It looks like sports bettors are going to have to wait a little bit longer to read former NBA referee Tim Donaghy’s tell-all book.
Triumph Books and parent company Randon House was set to publish Donaghy’s book “Blowing the Whistle: The Culture of Fraud in the NBA” later this month, but the company backed away because of “concerns over potential liability.”
“Somehow, the NBA got wind of the project and let Random House know in a threatening-type correspondence that they would object to the publication of such a book and they threatened that they would sue if they did go ahead and do that,” Donaghy’s liaison to the publisher, Pat Berdan, told ESPN The Magazine’s Sam Alipour. “Random House considered that and… just pulled the plug on it.”
Tim Frank, NBA vice president of basketball communications, wrote in an email to ESPN saying, “The NBA never threatened a lawsuit or anything else.”
Berdan also told ESPN that there are another five other companies interested in publishing Donaghy's book.
Donaghy pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in wire fraud and transmitting wagering information through interstate commerce in August of 2007. He also admitted to taking thousands of dollars from a professional gambler in exchange for inside information on NBA games, including the ones he officiated.
He was released to a halfway house last June but was sent back to jail in August because of a violation of his federal probation.
The sports blog Deadspin.com has some of the excerpts from the book and there is some juicy stuff there. Donaghy dishes the dirt on game-day bets, the league’s preferred referees and grudges between players and zebras such as Allen Iverson and Steve Javie.
Make sure to check out our NBA referee stats page after you read Donaghy’s take on his former colleagues’ tendencies.