Stream It Or Skip It: ‘UNTOLD: Operation Flagrant Foul’ on Netflix, The Story of The Corrupt Referee Behind The NBA’s Biggest Scandal

If a referee is doing their job right, no one knows their name. Everyone knows Tim Donaghy’s name, though. In Operation Flagrant Foul, the latest installment in Netflix’s stellar UNTOLD series of standalone sports documentaries, we get an inside look at the NBA’s greatest scandal: the revelation that one of the league’s referees had bet on games–and quite possibly fixed them. It was an earth-shattering story when it first broke, but for the first time, we get Donaghy’s version of the story straight from the horse’s mouth.

UNTOLD: OPERATION FLAGRANT FOUL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The news rocked the sporting world in 2007: a veteran NBA referee had been betting on games, including ones that he’d personally officiated–and he may well have influenced the outcome of those games. Soon the name Tim Donaghy was on the lips of every newscaster in America, and the story quickly took a familiar, well-known shape: one bad apple, a rogue referee who’d committed the cardinal sin in his profession and paid the price for it.

Was that the whole story, though? Operation Flagrant Foul suggests that there might be more to it than that. There’s no argument made here that Donaghy is innocent–interviews with both Donaghy and his organized-crime affiliates more than confirm his guilt–but there’s a plausible case built that there’s still a lot we don’t know about what happened during Donaghy’s time in the NBA.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: For Netflix documentaries on point-shaving scandals in basketball, there’s recent precedent–the “Hoop Schemes” episode of Netflix’s Bad Sport series focused on one such scheme at the University of Arizona, but Donaghy’s crimes happened on a far larger stage.

Performance Worth Watching: It’s essential to get Donaghy’s first-hand perspective on the events that he was at the center of, but he’s not the true star here. That honor belongs to Martino and Battista, two different flavors of low-to-mid-level mob goons straight from central casting, and Phil Scala, their ideal foil as the no-nonsense, tough-as-nails FBI investigator.

Memorable Dialogue: “Everybody always asks, did he fix the games, did he fix the games?” recalls Thomas Martino, one of Donaghy’s two collaborators in the scheme. The other, James Battista, isn’t coy. “He fixed them like a motherfucker. He was the greatest. That’s the only positive thing I could say about him–nobody could control a whistle like Timmy D.”

Sex and Skin: There hasn’t been any in the UNTOLD series to date, and there’s none here.

Our Take: Tim Donaghy was practically born to be an NBA referee. He didn’t just love the game; he grew up the son of a college ref in Delaware County, Pennsylvania–a place that’s produced a disproportionate number of professional referees. So it wasn’t surprising when he quickly rose to the top of his profession, and he made waves from the very beginning. In his first game as an NBA official, Donaghy made a gutsy, game-changing call against the Indiana Pacers’ star Reggie Miller, one that caused fans in Indianapolis to pelt the court with trash in outrage–and one that turned out to be absolutely the right call.

Despite this apparent streak of do-right vigilance, though, Donaghy quickly gained an understanding of the unwritten role of referees in maintaining the NBA’s lucrative business model. Don’t make the same calls against the stars that you’d made against the scrubs. It’s better if a playoff series goes longer. The game has to be entertaining above all. He became an expert at managing games the way people wanted them managed, and rose to the top of the league’s officiating ranks.

That skill would prove lucrative.

An old friend of Donaghy’s asked for advice on placing a few bets on NBA games; using his insider knowledge of the dynamics between various players, coaches and other officials, Donaghy offered advice, and his picks were all right. The friend’s sudden success at gambling drew the attention of Jimmy Battista, a childhood acquaintance of Donaghy’s and member of an organized gambling ring; a mutual friend of the two, Tommy Martino, arranged a meeting. Soon, Donaghy was working directly with the gamblers, offering picks for numerous games.

This is the first place the story diverges; Donaghy maintains his cooperation only came under duress, that Battista had made threats to compel his involvement. Battista, for his part, laughs at that notion. “Timmy was fucking thrilled to work with us, to make money.”

Before long, Battista and his associates were moving millions of dollars on every game Donaghy worked, and Donaghy was finessing the games, calling obscure rule violations against key players to subtly (or unsubtly) push games in one direction or the other. Donaghy steadfastly disputes this; he maintains that he only offered information, not assistance. Again, Battista laughs. “Get out of here. Tim Donaghy was Elvis; he was the king of fixing games.”

This success drew in another form of attention, this time from the FBI. Agents monitoring organized crime figures in the Gambino family picked up chatter of an NBA referee fixing games, and they quickly zeroed in on Donaghy. Word got back to Donaghy, and he quickly turned himself in, hoping to cooperate with the investigation to soften his punishment. A plan was hatched to have Donaghy work as a wired-up informant, potentially exposing a wider culture of corruption in the league, but as soon as then-NBA commissioner David Stern got wind of the story, it was leaked to the media, and the official version took shape: one bad apple. Nothing more to see here.

This is the most compelling part of an already-fascinating story: the ambiguity about how big the scandal might’ve become. Was Donaghy just one bad apple, and his willingness to cooperate just an attempt to save his own hide? Or was there something much bigger to expose. Both sides make compelling cases. We may never know the whole truth, but Operation Flagrant Foul is the closest we’ve come to date, by a long shot.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you’re an NBA fan, you might know a lot of Donaghy’s story already, but there’s no more comprehensive or compelling version of it than this one. It’s a complex story in many ways, but also a simple one: “A lot of money was exchanged, and we had fun, and we got caught”, Martino reflects, laughing.

Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky who publishes the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter.