Ty Watches "Operation Flagrant Foul"

Yesterday I watched "Operation Flagrant Foul". This is one of the new Untold documentaries on Netflix. I am a big fan of the Untold series on Netflix. They do cool, interesting sports stories that I may not have been aware of, or even heard of before. That being said, I am well aware of the Tim Donaghy fiasco.

For people who may not know, Donaghy was arrested and sentenced to prison for gambling on professional basketball. To make matters worse, he was a professional referee. To make matters even more worse, he bet on games he was personally reffing. It was all bad when you really think about it.

What I enjoyed about this doc was the backstory we got. Donaghy has a very interesting past, one that I was unaware of when this story first popped. He was married, had kids, had good friends, was a highly rated ref, he lived a relatively normal life as a pro ref. He made some questionable calls as a ref, but he did pretty much everything by the book. He even called stuff on Michael Jordan when that was very much frowned upon. There is a great part in the doc when Donaghy recalls calling traveling on MJ. He called it, and after calling it, while walking down the court Phil Jackson approached him. He yelled at Donaghy and Donaghy told him that he got the same memo that everyone got. Jackson said he gets it, but pointed to Jordan and said, "you don't call it on that guy". That was a fascinating look into the NBA at that time. The NBA has always favored stars, and this was when it seemed to be at its highest. From there Donaghy went about his job. Then a few of his childhood friends, who considered themselves professional gamblers, contacted Donaghy about certain NBA games.

From there on out it got nuts. Donaghy would call other refs to see when they were working. He would look at the schedules and check out the crews for each game. He would contact ref friends and try to get info on certain games they were calling. He started out with his childhood friends, but from there it grew. He was making big money. He was able to buy things for his wife and kids that he was never able to do before. He was living life being rich. He was getting a taste of the supposed good life, and he liked it. He gambled on 47 games and won 37 times. That is too close of a coincidence. It is too fishy. I knew he gambled on games but I did not know it went this deep. It was getting bad enough that he started to get scared. He was afraid that he was going to get caught. But he didn’t stop. Then one of his buddy's said the FBI contacted him. The FBI had contacted him a few times actually. This was when Donaghy knew he was in trouble. He decided he had to confess. When he did he got majorly screwed over by some people, maybe some people named David Stern, RIP. The whole Stern situation was revealing. I did not realize how much of a boss he actually was when he was the commissioner of the league. It was as close to the mob as anything I have seen in a movie. I also found it pretty eye opening that the three main guys of this movie seem to still be lying constantly. They cannot stop themselves. They just vomit words out of their mouths until they believe what they are saying. It is crazy.

All in all this was a solid doc. I knew some of the stuff, but some other stuff was news to me. I like when I can learn something new about a story I thought I knew everything about. I recommend this to fans of basketball, especially fans my age. It was pretty cool.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

Come and support Ty and the podcast on Patreon.

Follow Ty on instagram and twitter.

SeedSing is funded by a group of awesome people. Join them by donating to SeedSing.