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Organized Crime and the NBA · Conspiracy! The Show

0:10
Speaker 1: Wance.
0:14
Speaker 2: I'm a checkup there is. Hey, everybody, welcome to Conspiracy
0:32
Speaker 2: The Show.
0:33
Speaker 3: I'm Adam Todd Brown.
0:35
Speaker 2: Hey, oh, why why are you You're You're buckling under
0:39
Speaker 2: the pressure. I don't know how to handle.
0:42
Speaker 3: Is this how you're going to talk the whole episode?
0:45
Speaker 2: I don't know. Wouldn't that be fun? That would be
0:49
Speaker 2: It would be if you just had a whole panic attack.
0:52
Speaker 3: I was conspiring to die on your shirt.
0:56
Speaker 2: That would have been a ratings bonanza. Quite second hole
1:00
Speaker 2: to say, for sure, Uh, have you ever been on
1:03
Speaker 2: an episode of Conspiracy The Show? No? Crazy, Yeah, this
1:08
Speaker 2: has to be one of the only network shows you've
1:09
Speaker 2: never been on, because Jeff's been on everything.
1:12
Speaker 3: You feel like it. I feel like maybe, well, because
1:16
Speaker 3: it was back in the day, it was just you
1:17
Speaker 3: and Connor's show right right, well, and then I had
1:22
Speaker 3: took a sabbatical, little break, and then I came back
1:26
Speaker 3: and we started doing our own stuff. And then I
1:28
Speaker 3: think you had like a rotating cast, but it was just, yeah,
1:31
Speaker 3: we were we still have busy doing our things that we.
1:34
Speaker 2: Still have a rotating cast. To co hosts on this podcast,
1:38
Speaker 2: shout out to Fizza, Olivia and Laura Not.
1:40
Speaker 3: Anymore neither today. Later, ladies, out of the room.
1:45
Speaker 2: Ladies, we're talking about sports. It's time a straight white
1:48
Speaker 2: man gets the mic. Goddamn right, Finally white men get
1:53
Speaker 2: their voice heard on the internet.
1:55
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty. We can't jump, so we just podcast
1:58
Speaker 3: exactly Jeff.
1:59
Speaker 2: And if anyone listening to this show is unaware, which
2:04
Speaker 2: they might be, this show has a whole other audience
2:06
Speaker 2: separate from the un pop's audience thanks to Spotify. If
2:10
Speaker 2: you go to Spotify and type in conspiracy, this is
2:13
Speaker 2: like one of the first.
2:14
Speaker 3: Things that comes up.
2:15
Speaker 2: It should, so we have a pretty robust Spotify following
2:19
Speaker 2: that I think is just people that found us through
2:22
Speaker 2: this podcast. So maybe we should just pretend those other
2:25
Speaker 2: podcasts don't even exist.
2:26
Speaker 3: Hello, fellow conspirators.
2:29
Speaker 2: But one of the other podcasts our podcast Me and Jeff.
2:34
Speaker 3: Well.
2:34
Speaker 2: Jeff also co hosts the main unpopular opinion podcast with
2:37
Speaker 2: me When a veil short for available saves me time
2:40
Speaker 2: when I talk. But we have a podcast called you
2:44
Speaker 2: don't even Like Sports.
2:45
Speaker 3: You don't even like sports, you don't even I would
2:49
Speaker 3: like to say that this is the most surprising reaction
2:54
Speaker 3: I've ever had to a podcast that I wasn't expecting
2:57
Speaker 3: the howso, the fanfare for this was very high, and
3:01
Speaker 3: I was expecting it to be like just around what
3:04
Speaker 3: it has always been. I didn't expect sort of the
3:07
Speaker 3: reviews to spike right from what I've been hearing as
3:11
Speaker 3: much like when I did the show with Sideshow. I
3:13
Speaker 3: think it's really good, and then the reactions are kind
3:16
Speaker 3: of what I expected. I wasn't expecting this to have
3:19
Speaker 3: the spike in positive comments that it's gotten. It's a
3:23
Speaker 3: good podcast. Oh, it's great. I think it's amazing.
3:26
Speaker 2: It's as the name implies, it's a podcast about sports
3:30
Speaker 2: for people who don't necessarily care about sports.
3:33
Speaker 3: So if you don't even like sports, you should listen
3:35
Speaker 3: to you don't even like sports, right, you'll with a
3:38
Speaker 3: great intro.
3:38
Speaker 2: By the way, it has a fantastic intro courtesy of
3:42
Speaker 2: jose Canseco. He did not know that he would be
3:45
Speaker 2: providing the intro.
3:46
Speaker 3: It's fine.
3:46
Speaker 2: If he never finds out, I'm okay with it.
3:48
Speaker 3: I'd be okay with that he does find out, though,
3:51
Speaker 3: I'm fine with that too.
3:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jeff can fight jose Canseco. I probably can't, probably not.
3:56
Speaker 2: He hit him in the nuts, but they're probably so small.
3:58
Speaker 2: Oh hey uh, And this I think makes for a
4:04
Speaker 2: good crossover podcast because we've talked about sports a whole
4:09
Speaker 2: lot on the Conspiracy podcast. Just off the top of
4:14
Speaker 2: my head, we've done two episodes about Michael Jordan conspiracy theories.
4:19
Speaker 3: I would it was one of them about the gambling.
4:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, one that he was actually suspended for gambling as
4:25
Speaker 2: opposed to retired for two years.
4:27
Speaker 3: Is the other one that his father was killed because
4:29
Speaker 3: of gambling? Yeah.
4:30
Speaker 2: We did one episode just about the gambling stuff, and
4:33
Speaker 2: then there's a whole other series of conspiracies about Jordan.
4:37
Speaker 3: Is it about his steakhouse? I don't think there's anything
4:39
Speaker 3: about his steakhouse.
4:40
Speaker 2: We should go to a steakhouse. I would go to
4:43
Speaker 2: a steakhouse right now.
4:45
Speaker 3: Actually, we should go to a Michael Jordan's steakhouse. Do
4:48
Speaker 3: they still exist. For Chris Weber's steakhouse, we should well
4:51
Speaker 3: done extra ketchup.
4:52
Speaker 2: No, he wanted a one a one, and he packed
4:55
Speaker 2: it up and took it home as a sandwich because
4:56
Speaker 2: they didn't have any God love you, Chris Weber. We
4:59
Speaker 2: also talked to a few sports conspiracies that are my
5:02
Speaker 2: own theory, one that Baseball engineered the steroid scandal to
5:08
Speaker 2: cover for the amphetamine scandal. And also a pretty wild
5:12
Speaker 2: one that Trump's entire presidency is motivated by a desire
5:17
Speaker 2: for revenge against the NFL. But my favorite, that.
5:20
Speaker 3: One must have seemed fun, that last one.
5:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was good. It was a I feel like
5:25
Speaker 2: I made a compelling case. He's got a long history
5:28
Speaker 2: with the NFL. My favorite sports episode of the Conspiracy Pod, though,
5:31
Speaker 2: it was one we did with Brett Raider about how
5:34
Speaker 2: the NBA almost certainly rigged the nineteen eighty five draft
5:40
Speaker 2: so the New York Knicks would get Patrick Ewing.
5:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, how'd that go for them? Won several almost championships,
5:49
Speaker 3: a lot of bridesmaid You just drafted a bridesmaid? Yeah, basically.
5:53
Speaker 2: And even on you Don't Even Like Sports, and the
5:56
Speaker 2: podcast that preceded it, which is called jose Cansey cast
6:00
Speaker 2: a little conspiratorial on there. The Coonseco podcast ends with
6:04
Speaker 2: a conspiracy theory about him and Roger Clemens yep, that
6:08
Speaker 2: I would love to look into more, but that that's
6:11
Speaker 2: gonna take like private investment, that's gonna take like fucking
6:15
Speaker 2: a requests.
6:16
Speaker 3: That's gonna somebody going through BALCO's trash, but Jose Canseco's trash.
6:20
Speaker 3: I don't think anybody wants to go through Jose Canseco's trash. No,
6:25
Speaker 3: maybe what would you find in Jose Canseco's trash.
6:28
Speaker 2: Just a bunch of his rookie cards. Probably throws a
6:31
Speaker 2: few out every day. Yeah, well sorry. And the NBA
6:36
Speaker 2: rigged Draft Lottery episode ties in pretty nicely to what
6:41
Speaker 2: we're talking about today, which is mob influence on the NBA.
6:47
Speaker 2: There it is, which is this is a rumor that once.
6:53
Speaker 3: The Italians were kicked out of the NBA when they
6:55
Speaker 3: started letting blacks play, they had to do something again exactly.
6:59
Speaker 3: You know, they were like, hey, we don't like it,
7:01
Speaker 3: but we can find a way to make money off.
7:04
Speaker 2: Yeah. Probably not far from the truth right off the bat.
7:07
Speaker 2: This is my favorite kind of conspiracy theory because it's
7:10
Speaker 2: the kind that eventually has proven to be true. Yeah,
7:13
Speaker 2: this is what we have factual evidence, Yeah, to prove
7:17
Speaker 2: It's like mk ultra. Yeah, was floated around as a
7:21
Speaker 2: theory for years and the government was always like nah,
7:25
Speaker 2: and then we found those documents that they were like
7:27
Speaker 2: oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we did all of that. Sorry,
7:30
Speaker 2: and it was kind of the same thing with betting
7:33
Speaker 2: in the NBA because there have been a lot of
7:36
Speaker 2: point shaving scandals.
7:38
Speaker 3: You mentioned one in college, but gobc BC the nineteen
7:42
Speaker 3: in the late seventies, I want to say, seventy seven,
7:45
Speaker 3: seventy eight, maybe seventy eight, seventy nine.
7:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the reason it's always been so
7:52
Speaker 2: tied to basketball is basketball is probably the easiest sport
7:57
Speaker 2: to fix.
7:58
Speaker 3: Well, of course it is. You can't fix football. No,
8:00
Speaker 3: you can't like run into the end zone and then
8:03
Speaker 3: realize that you're gonna blow it. You're gonna cover the spread,
8:06
Speaker 3: so you fucking turn around and leave the end zoneke
8:09
Speaker 3: trip or something like that. Yeah, that would be so obvious.
8:11
Speaker 3: But basketball, you can just miss a shot and nobody's
8:14
Speaker 3: gonna fault you, really for missing a shot if you
8:16
Speaker 3: still win the game.
8:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, And just to run people who are listening to this,
8:20
Speaker 2: who aren't really sports fans, just to run you through
8:23
Speaker 2: a little bit of how it works. Whenever there's a
8:26
Speaker 2: bet on a game, there's kind of two things you're
8:29
Speaker 2: betting on. One, you're betting on the outcome, but also
8:31
Speaker 2: there's the point spread. So if say the Lakers are
8:34
Speaker 2: favored by sixteen over the Cleveland Cavaliers. If you're betting
8:38
Speaker 2: that spread, the Lakers have to win by sixteen points
8:42
Speaker 2: or seventeen points or seventeen points, or you don't win
8:45
Speaker 2: even if the Lakers won. Looks like the other team
8:47
Speaker 2: gets a spiritual handicap, right, And the way it works
8:52
Speaker 2: in basketball is all you really need is either a
8:56
Speaker 2: player who's willing to miss a few shots to make
9:00
Speaker 2: sure his team does or does not cover the spread,
9:03
Speaker 2: or you need a referee who's willing to call a
9:05
Speaker 2: lot of shady fouls to make sure a team does
9:08
Speaker 2: or does not cover the spread.
9:10
Speaker 3: Optimally, you want players, but a ref a ref or
9:13
Speaker 3: it's not the worst. It's not the worst silver metal, right,
9:17
Speaker 3: you know? And the plus refs do not make the
9:19
Speaker 3: money that NBA play, Like bribing an NBA player several
9:24
Speaker 3: thousand dollars, that's not He's like, yeah, I make that already,
9:28
Speaker 3: Yeah you would.
9:29
Speaker 2: You'd have to go either NBA ref or college player.
9:32
Speaker 2: Like a college player would be probably much easier to
9:36
Speaker 2: convince with hundreds of thousands of dollars. So that that's
9:40
Speaker 2: kind of how it works, is when people are betting
9:45
Speaker 2: on basketball they're betting on teams to cover the spread,
9:49
Speaker 2: and that's where the manipulation and things come into play.
9:53
Speaker 2: And we're going to talk about definitely the most famous
9:56
Speaker 2: example of that. Well, the scoring is.
9:58
Speaker 3: So high too, that it also makes it easier to hide, right, Like,
10:02
Speaker 3: when you have that many shots being taken, you know,
10:05
Speaker 3: the statistics will get lost.
10:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I read another thing that I'll link to it,
10:11
Speaker 2: but it was just someone posting on a NBA message
10:15
Speaker 2: board back in two thousand and five, and this person
10:18
Speaker 2: was like, look, I do a lot of sports betting.
10:21
Speaker 2: I lost two hundred thousand dollars at one point during
10:23
Speaker 2: March Madness. Let me tell you how manipulation in these
10:27
Speaker 2: games works. And he described everything we described, but he
10:31
Speaker 2: said they also will target games during the week when
10:36
Speaker 2: people are paying a little less attention, and the games
10:39
Speaker 2: on the weekend, they'll just let them play out the
10:42
Speaker 2: way they play out, and then they'll influence games during
10:45
Speaker 2: the week that one team is.
10:47
Speaker 3: Favored by a whole lot.
10:48
Speaker 2: Because no, it's not going to raise any eyebrows if
10:52
Speaker 2: the Lakers win by fourteen instead of thirteen. Yeah, like,
10:56
Speaker 2: no one's going to question that. And that's where illicit
11:00
Speaker 2: gamblers make a ton of money. We should do that.
11:04
Speaker 3: We probably should start betting on like wide spreaded professional
11:09
Speaker 3: games and during the weeks. Yeah, she's become degenerate gamblers.
11:13
Speaker 3: That wouldn't be a bat.
11:14
Speaker 2: I've I've thought about, not so much a degenerate gambler,
11:17
Speaker 2: but I feel like it'd be alright as a day
11:19
Speaker 2: trader because I'm good at spoting a trend in connecting dots,
11:23
Speaker 2: and yeah, you should do that. I feel like I
11:25
Speaker 2: would be all right at that. But you also have
11:28
Speaker 2: to have a ton of money to invest upfront and.
11:30
Speaker 3: Not really no, you can get it. You can do
11:32
Speaker 3: like a couple hundred bucks to start and then.
11:35
Speaker 2: Uh not to do options trade. I've looked into it.
11:37
Speaker 2: You got to have a certain amount in your cats.
11:40
Speaker 3: Do like a let's do like a little fundraiser.
11:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we'll do a kickstarter to help us become
11:45
Speaker 2: a kickstarter gamble, help us become veiduciary gambler. Help Adam
11:50
Speaker 2: get a new addiction. Please cool it.
11:53
Speaker 3: Nah, you got to slow it down.
11:56
Speaker 2: Watch out a new addiction, not new addition.
12:00
Speaker 3: Jane says, done with Sergio.
12:04
Speaker 2: That's that's that right? That was ok?
12:07
Speaker 3: That was exactly what I was referring to famous day
12:09
Speaker 3: trader Perry Ferrel.
12:11
Speaker 2: And Yeah, rumors of mob influence on basketball go way way,
12:18
Speaker 2: way way back.
12:19
Speaker 3: And like rumors isn't even it's like easy speculation, right.
12:25
Speaker 2: One of the earliest examples I found was Bob Coozy,
12:29
Speaker 2: who is an NBA legend.
12:32
Speaker 3: I don't know anybody from Boston that is corrupt. I
12:35
Speaker 3: don't understand.
12:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's surprised that someone who played for the Celtics
12:38
Speaker 2: and lived in the Boston area would fall in with
12:41
Speaker 2: organized school. Our logo looks like a mob guy a
12:44
Speaker 2: little bit.
12:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is like a guy with like a cane
12:47
Speaker 3: smoking a pipe at a basketball game. Like that's it
12:50
Speaker 3: looks pretty fucking shady.
12:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as it turns out, Bob Coosey was super
12:55
Speaker 2: tight with the gene v C crime family. Oh like,
12:59
Speaker 2: very very tight. Like weeped during an interview while talking
13:03
Speaker 2: about his good times with a genevec crime family. Tight happy, weeped,
13:08
Speaker 2: not sad, he was reminiscent, wept, wept, weeped, weeped, web
13:15
Speaker 2: weapons weapon he weaponized the family.
13:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, he killed them. That's a real fixing.
13:22
Speaker 2: That's a real fix. I need you to break this
13:25
Speaker 2: guy's legs. Even worse, the guy he was reminiscing about
13:31
Speaker 2: hanging out with, and this is an interview from Time
13:33
Speaker 2: magazine from like nineteen sixty seven. The guy he was
13:37
Speaker 2: talking about was Andrew Pridella. Guess what his job was
13:40
Speaker 2: with the Mob? Was he a bookie?
13:42
Speaker 3: He was a book maker for the Mob.
13:45
Speaker 2: And he also Bobcosey also once bragged about going to
13:49
Speaker 2: a party with.
13:50
Speaker 3: Quote the whole mob Mob Deep.
13:55
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that guy died choking on an egg,
13:58
Speaker 2: the guy from Mob Deep. That's how on an egg?
14:00
Speaker 3: He choked on an egg in the hospital. I don't
14:03
Speaker 3: understand how eggs could harm anybody. I know, I know.
14:07
Speaker 2: That's like you're I'm surprised you haven't. Statistically speaking, that
14:10
Speaker 2: should be you and not Prodigy from Mob Deep.
14:13
Speaker 3: Yeah that's six eggs today, No way. Yeah, come on
14:17
Speaker 3: in these really great zucchini patties that you are frozen
14:20
Speaker 3: and you kind of cook them, they're really tasty.
14:22
Speaker 2: Okay, So there's that. But in that same interview, he
14:26
Speaker 2: just kind of openly admits to discussing games and players
14:30
Speaker 2: and like inside information with this crime family that would
14:34
Speaker 2: presumably go out and bet money on those games using
14:38
Speaker 2: information that they got from Bob Coozy.
14:40
Speaker 3: Like the sixties were like the NBA. I always think
14:44
Speaker 3: was it like, was it huge or was it just
14:47
Speaker 3: like around?
14:48
Speaker 2: It was pretty big in the sixties and seventies. It
14:51
Speaker 2: kind of dipped in the eighties and then Magic and
14:53
Speaker 2: Bird brought it back.
14:54
Speaker 3: It was pretty early in the eighties, I guess, right, Yeah, Yeah.
14:57
Speaker 3: It just seems so weird to me that he's like
15:00
Speaker 3: in fucking Time magazine.
15:01
Speaker 2: Everyone's like, Bob Coozie's great. Yeah, And I feel like
15:06
Speaker 2: no athlete transgression prior to nineteen eighty matters to anyone
15:10
Speaker 2: at all. Yeah, Like it was like, fuck it, we
15:13
Speaker 2: never talk about amphetamines and sports and all those players
15:16
Speaker 2: for decades and decades who had that it managed.
15:19
Speaker 3: Oakland Raiders or the Rams and the Saint Louis Rams that.
15:22
Speaker 2: Were all shacked up on Royd's Yeah, and Bob Coosey
15:25
Speaker 2: he was just awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in
15:28
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen.
15:30
Speaker 3: I mean, meanwhile, Mensha that really tracks a white NBA
15:34
Speaker 3: legend with mob ties was given a Medal of Freedom
15:37
Speaker 3: by fucking Donald Trump.
15:38
Speaker 2: No way, Yeah, it's probably the mob ties that got
15:41
Speaker 2: him the medal, not so much the basketball stuff.
15:43
Speaker 3: He can you get me an in, can you give
15:46
Speaker 3: me tickets to a Celtics game?
15:48
Speaker 2: Can you give me tickets to a mob game? But like,
15:51
Speaker 2: try suggesting that Pete Rose should be reinstated even though
15:56
Speaker 2: he gambled on sports, and every sports ride or over
16:00
Speaker 2: the age of fifty is going to clutch their pearls
16:03
Speaker 2: like it's the most insane suggestion.
16:06
Speaker 3: While hold who hold like racist ballplayers up right?
16:10
Speaker 2: Like that? The award for the best college point guard
16:15
Speaker 2: is called the Bob Coosey Award. Still, yeah it is.
16:18
Speaker 2: And this dude was probably like, there's no evidence he
16:22
Speaker 2: bet on games, but it's the sixties.
16:23
Speaker 3: What kind of evidence do you think you're gonna find?
16:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, what are you gonna find? Yeah? I saved my receipts.
16:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just log into my account. You can see it.
16:31
Speaker 2: Check out my check out my fan duel. Yeah, Bob
16:35
Speaker 2: coozy on fan duel in the sixties.
16:38
Speaker 3: Bekus, he didn't even hide his name.
16:41
Speaker 2: So the the moment when the idea that mob influence
16:46
Speaker 2: was still involved in the NBA all kind of comes
16:49
Speaker 2: to a head. In two thousand and seven, a real
16:53
Speaker 2: house of cards starts to fall, to say the least,
16:56
Speaker 2: and it all involves in NBA referee named Tim donaghy.
17:01
Speaker 3: Who's still alive, right, still alive. Real surprise. Yeah, like
17:06
Speaker 3: that's a huge surprise that he's still alive. He kind
17:09
Speaker 3: of reminds he was beaten in prison.
17:11
Speaker 2: Of course he was. There were articles about that by
17:14
Speaker 2: someone connected to the mob.
17:17
Speaker 3: No, yeah, imagine that.
17:19
Speaker 2: But as the official story goes, NBA referee Tim Donahey
17:24
Speaker 2: spent the entire two thousand and six season betting on
17:27
Speaker 2: games he officiated. And that's sort of where the NBA
17:31
Speaker 2: chose to leave the story that he was just this
17:34
Speaker 2: rogue ref doing rogue things and everyone else was on
17:38
Speaker 2: the up and up. But it's actually way way worse
17:42
Speaker 2: than their suggesting. For one thing, Tim donnay started betting
17:46
Speaker 2: on games he was refereeing at least as far back
17:49
Speaker 2: as two thousand and four. And there's a few different
17:53
Speaker 2: resources you can check out if you want the really
17:56
Speaker 2: in depth details of how this scandal worked. I think
17:59
Speaker 2: the best one is there's an ESPN investigation that's called
18:04
Speaker 2: how Tim Donahey Conspired to Fix NBA Games? If I
18:08
Speaker 2: did it by Tim Dunn and we'll link to it
18:12
Speaker 2: on the website. But they do a pretty good job
18:16
Speaker 2: running through all of the important timeline points and details
18:22
Speaker 2: about this case.
18:22
Speaker 3: It's funny where the corruption starts when you look back
18:25
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety eight, and it's like, oh, where most
18:28
Speaker 3: real crime is happening the golf course at a fucking
18:31
Speaker 3: country club.
18:32
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, core of fucking course, yeah, Tim Donahe in
18:36
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight joins some fucking golf club and one
18:41
Speaker 2: of the people in this his circle of golfing buddies
18:44
Speaker 2: is a guy named Jack Kinkcannon, which is kind of
18:47
Speaker 2: sounds name.
18:47
Speaker 3: It sounds like a pulp A pulp writer gave him
18:50
Speaker 3: that name.
18:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, con Cannon. Also in the group was a
18:54
Speaker 2: sports bookie named Peter Ruyery Ruggieri R Jerry Pet Peter.
19:00
Speaker 3: What's really funny is as we start going through the names,
19:03
Speaker 3: they become like each one amps up the mafia sounding right,
19:07
Speaker 3: Like every time a new name is introduced, it's like
19:10
Speaker 3: they leveled. It's like an involved it's like the Pokemon
19:13
Speaker 3: of mafia.
19:14
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, you're beating a new boss every time, and
19:17
Speaker 2: they just get scarier. Initially, Donahue and Cancannon pulled their
19:21
Speaker 2: money together to bet on NFL and college football games
19:24
Speaker 2: based on Rugeri's handicapping system. Pull their money together. That's weird,
19:30
Speaker 2: right right, No, because as an NBA official, Tim Donahue,
19:35
Speaker 2: well that's why, Yeah, only allowed to bet on horses. Yeah,
19:39
Speaker 2: you can't bet on any other sports, but you can
19:41
Speaker 2: bet on horse racing.
19:42
Speaker 3: And then he became a horse racing ref.
19:44
Speaker 2: He became well, he became a horse. Yeah, is what's
19:47
Speaker 2: happened to Beaten right? He wasn't he was being stubborn.
19:50
Speaker 2: It was a dressage accident. So that alone is a
19:53
Speaker 2: violation of NBA rules. He was not supposed to be
19:56
Speaker 2: betting on sports. But in two thousand and three, they
19:59
Speaker 2: just I had to start betting on NBA games, and
20:03
Speaker 2: not just that, they decide to start betting on NBA
20:07
Speaker 2: games that Donahey was refereeing, And that's a big no
20:11
Speaker 2: no obviously. Yeah, Like, if you have control over how
20:15
Speaker 2: that game might play out, you're not supposed to bet
20:18
Speaker 2: money on it. Ovs.
20:20
Speaker 3: There's a part of me that was always hoping that
20:22
Speaker 3: like Donnague would see someone was about to score and
20:24
Speaker 3: so we'd just like run up and like block them.
20:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, just he would accidentally fall and knock them over.
20:29
Speaker 3: Oh no, We're like literally just jump up and swipe
20:32
Speaker 3: it up in my house.
20:35
Speaker 2: Initially, the bookie Peter RUGGERI didn't realize the bets Concannon
20:40
Speaker 2: was placing or made in conjunction with Donahey. What he
20:44
Speaker 2: did notice, though, was that all of the sudden con
20:47
Speaker 2: Cannon was betting more and winning constantly, and he assumed
20:52
Speaker 2: there had to be a pattern.
20:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is funny, like once something doesn't appear random anymore,
20:57
Speaker 3: you're like, why are they cheating?
20:58
Speaker 2: And how how are they cheating? Yeah? Absolutely, And as
21:03
Speaker 2: luck would have it, he was part of a collective
21:05
Speaker 2: of sports gamblers who called themselves the Company and or
21:10
Speaker 2: the Animals.
21:11
Speaker 3: It's like one's their real name and one's their drunk name.
21:16
Speaker 3: Kind of.
21:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone in this group had an animal nickname. It's
21:19
Speaker 2: like the fun it's such a fratbro thing to do.
21:23
Speaker 2: It really is. I don't I don't even have it
21:25
Speaker 2: in the notes. But what they did is this group
21:28
Speaker 2: of gamblers called the Company. Remember there was that early
21:31
Speaker 2: two thousands kind of boom in online gambling where everyone
21:36
Speaker 2: was like going to a foreign country to set up
21:38
Speaker 2: a gambling website and to go on DraftKings. Yeah, and
21:42
Speaker 2: eventually all of those, most of those got shut down.
21:45
Speaker 2: But this this group of gamblers, they went to currishow
21:51
Speaker 2: I believe it's called currasau Curis and set up a
21:55
Speaker 2: gambling company. And Peter Ruggeri was running all of co
21:59
Speaker 2: Cannon's through this gambling company they set up, and since
22:03
Speaker 2: it was all online, that meant he had access to
22:07
Speaker 2: all of the bets, all of con Cannon's betting history,
22:10
Speaker 2: and so he starts analyzing it, and sure enough, they
22:15
Speaker 2: find out that all of these games that Concannon is
22:19
Speaker 2: betting are games that are refereed by Tim Donahey, and
22:22
Speaker 2: he's winning like eighty eight percent of those games, which
22:26
Speaker 2: pretty good numbers.
22:27
Speaker 3: That's a pattern.
22:29
Speaker 2: So what they did is they started following that pattern
22:32
Speaker 2: and they would bet on games that Donahey bet but
22:36
Speaker 2: instead of betting five hundred dollars a game like Jack,
22:40
Speaker 2: Concannon was, they were betting anywhere from like thirty thousand
22:44
Speaker 2: to one hundred thousand dollars per game. And they also
22:48
Speaker 2: started studying the box scores of the games. He refereed,
22:51
Speaker 2: and they noticed something interesting. He almost always called more
22:55
Speaker 2: fouls against the team he bet against, and less fouls
22:59
Speaker 2: against the team he bet on.
23:01
Speaker 3: What a surprise.
23:02
Speaker 2: And that part's really important because that's the whole point.
23:05
Speaker 3: Yeah.
23:05
Speaker 2: Well, the NBA has always asserted that he just bet
23:09
Speaker 2: on his own games, but he didn't fix games. And
23:12
Speaker 2: he clearly was fixing games by calling an inordinate amount
23:16
Speaker 2: of fouls. It's a fix.
23:18
Speaker 3: The fixes an the fix ladline is gentle. This whole
23:23
Speaker 3: thing is just smells rotten.
23:25
Speaker 2: Also important. At one point, someone within the Animals, a
23:28
Speaker 2: guy named Jimmy Battista.
23:29
Speaker 3: Hey, Hey, it's.
23:31
Speaker 2: Hey, Jimmy, Jimmy Baba Black Sheep Batista. That's his actual nickname,
23:36
Speaker 2: Baba Black Sheep.
23:37
Speaker 3: Yes, and he must have been pissed when he got
23:39
Speaker 3: out of that Mafia christening.
23:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like Rhino and all these other badass animals.
23:46
Speaker 3: The mister pink of that, he's bab Bab Black Sheep.
23:50
Speaker 2: And he decides they need to reach out to Donahey
23:53
Speaker 2: directly and set up their own arrangement, and a mutual
23:58
Speaker 2: acquaintance within the Animals sets up that meeting, and accounts
24:02
Speaker 2: differ as to how it actually went. According to statements
24:07
Speaker 2: Donna he made to law enforcement officials, it was basically.
24:10
Speaker 3: Extortion that you say that it's going to get you
24:12
Speaker 3: beat in prison.
24:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's what he claimed, is that you know,
24:17
Speaker 2: people knew what he was doing, and they showed up
24:19
Speaker 2: and they not only said that they would out him
24:23
Speaker 2: if he didn't work with them, but also that people
24:27
Speaker 2: from New York might come to his house if he
24:30
Speaker 2: didn't comply, like Patrick Ewing, Right, Patrick Ewing, John Stark's
24:36
Speaker 2: all the greats, all the Willis Reid, the.
24:38
Speaker 3: All the real classics of the New York victim.
24:41
Speaker 2: Yeah. Obviously, Batista claims it did not go that way
24:45
Speaker 2: at all. And Donna, he was really enthusiastic to go
24:48
Speaker 2: along with the plan.
24:51
Speaker 3: Yeah.
24:51
Speaker 2: If I can add some color commentary and analysis here, though,
24:55
Speaker 2: donnahe comes away from this meeting with an agreement that
24:57
Speaker 2: will give him two thousand dollars per game, which that's low,
25:03
Speaker 2: that's really low for the amounting more than that with
25:06
Speaker 2: the bets. Yeah. And the one thing that's kind of
25:10
Speaker 2: implied is that Jack and Cannon wasn't being completely honest
25:15
Speaker 2: with Donnie about how much money they were winning. So Donna,
25:18
Speaker 2: he might have been bothered by that, but two thousand
25:22
Speaker 2: per game, Like at one point, these this gambling ring
25:26
Speaker 2: is betting, like I said, thirty to one hundred thousand
25:29
Speaker 2: dollars on each game. So if they're winning those bets,
25:32
Speaker 2: they're getting a ton of.
25:33
Speaker 3: Fucking cash, a lot of money.
25:35
Speaker 2: And donnahe comes away with it with two away from
25:38
Speaker 2: it with two thousand per game. It feels like he
25:41
Speaker 2: might have been kind of coaxed into doing this.
25:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, but at some nice life there would be a
25:46
Speaker 3: shame if something would have happened to it.
25:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it seems like that's kind of the proposition
25:51
Speaker 2: he was given.
25:52
Speaker 3: Hello, you've got a call from people from New York.
25:55
Speaker 3: From New York on the other line, Just want to
25:57
Speaker 3: pick that up.
25:58
Speaker 2: The way the scheme worked was that Batista and Donna
26:00
Speaker 2: he would speak through a middleman named Tommy Martine. You've
26:05
Speaker 2: leveled up. Hey you doing.
26:08
Speaker 3: My name is Tommy Martino. It's good at doctor. Okay,
26:10
Speaker 3: real quick, we're going to talk about some basketball games.
26:12
Speaker 2: How you doing. That's probably how it sounded, and even
26:16
Speaker 2: the none of these people are directly involved with the mob,
26:19
Speaker 2: but we'll get to how the Mob is involved.
26:21
Speaker 3: Paully and Tommy aren't. Aren't mob mob?
26:25
Speaker 2: Well, they're not made. They have connections, but they're not
26:29
Speaker 2: like made family mob family members. And the way this
26:34
Speaker 2: scheme would work is every night or sometimes very early
26:39
Speaker 2: in the morning, Donnahey would call Tommy Martino and if
26:43
Speaker 2: during their conversation Donahey mentioned Martino's brother Johnny, that meant
26:48
Speaker 2: to bet on the home team, because Johnny lived in
26:51
Speaker 2: New Jersey, just like Tommy Martino. If he mentioned his
26:55
Speaker 2: brother Chuck, it meant to bet on the road team
26:58
Speaker 2: because Chuck lived out of state.
26:59
Speaker 3: So it's all this all boils down to Chuck, doesn't it.
27:03
Speaker 2: It sure does Chuck Chuck bobuk Banana fan fo fuck ha.
27:07
Speaker 2: You said, yeah, this like it's not like Nazi code
27:11
Speaker 2: breaker shit. But they came up with a scheme. Yeah,
27:16
Speaker 2: And Batista would do a few things with that information. First,
27:20
Speaker 2: I found this part fascinating. Apparently the betting sports betting
27:24
Speaker 2: market works a lot like the stock market, yeah, in
27:28
Speaker 2: that it opens early in the morning and the point
27:33
Speaker 2: spreads can shift fluctuate throughout the course of the day.
27:37
Speaker 2: So what Batista would do is he would take this
27:41
Speaker 2: information from donahe and first he would hit the Asian
27:44
Speaker 2: betting markets and place a bunch of bets against for
27:48
Speaker 2: the team he didn't want to win. Because what that
27:51
Speaker 2: would do is it would make the betting markets would
27:55
Speaker 2: get the impression that somewhere someone has information that has
27:59
Speaker 2: led them to leave the underdog is going to win.
28:02
Speaker 2: So then that point spread would start getting a little
28:06
Speaker 2: bit smaller, and the smaller the yeah, smaller, and the
28:09
Speaker 2: smaller it was, the cheaper it was to bet on
28:12
Speaker 2: the game. So they would manipulate that point spread bet
28:16
Speaker 2: when it was most financially viable, and then go in
28:21
Speaker 2: and place all these bets on the team they actually
28:24
Speaker 2: wanted to win. So they're like basically influencing the stock market.
28:27
Speaker 2: And he would he would do that, but then he
28:31
Speaker 2: would also take this information and spread it around to
28:38
Speaker 2: this huge group of sports betters. And this is where
28:43
Speaker 2: the mob connection comes in. Yeah, because no one directly
28:48
Speaker 2: involved in this is a made member of a crime family.
28:51
Speaker 2: But the people Batista was sharing his betting info with
28:55
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases very much were and I
28:59
Speaker 2: know you believe it, and none of them are in
29:01
Speaker 2: prison anymore. Go figure, poor guys. And they were all
29:05
Speaker 2: betting hundreds of thousands of dollars on Donahey games. No
29:09
Speaker 2: one knows for sure how much people won, but it's
29:11
Speaker 2: estimated that one individual could have taken in up to
29:15
Speaker 2: one hundred million dollars while this scheme lasted. All Right,
29:20
Speaker 2: that's a nice haul for just having inside information on
29:24
Speaker 2: NBA games.
29:25
Speaker 3: Like you're printing money.
29:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, we gotta start gambling, man, we do, how do we?
29:30
Speaker 2: But I don't want to do it fair like I
29:32
Speaker 2: want to. I want to win all the time.
29:34
Speaker 3: Like working to understand sports sucks. Yeah, you have to
29:38
Speaker 3: be like, oh, well, you know this guy's stats are
29:40
Speaker 3: like these fucking nerds. Yeah.
29:42
Speaker 2: I've gotten way more into sports since Trump has been
29:46
Speaker 2: in office because I used to I would just sit
29:48
Speaker 2: around and work all day, and I would have like
29:50
Speaker 2: CNN or something on in the background, and it got
29:53
Speaker 2: to a point where I just won.
29:57
Speaker 3: I don't.
29:57
Speaker 2: I don't trust CNN anymore than Trump does. So there's that.
30:02
Speaker 2: And also it just got to be so fucking depressing
30:06
Speaker 2: that now when I work, I mostly just have ESPN
30:09
Speaker 2: on in the background. So I'm actually great with sports now,
30:13
Speaker 2: except like hockey and shit, I still don't But ESPN
30:15
Speaker 2: doesn't care about hockey either.
30:17
Speaker 3: That's a Fox Sports situation right there.
30:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not watching Fox Sports, so yeah, I've gotten
30:22
Speaker 2: way more into sports recently.
30:25
Speaker 3: It's been nice.
30:26
Speaker 2: You don't even like sports.
30:27
Speaker 3: You don't even like sports.
30:28
Speaker 2: You don't even like sports, dick uh And yeah, speaking
30:32
Speaker 2: of the mafia connections to this, it all comes crashing
30:36
Speaker 2: down because of an investigation into the Gambino crime family.
30:41
Speaker 2: As it turns out, the five big crime families in
30:43
Speaker 2: New York, the Genovc's, the lu Case's, the Bananas, the Colombos,
30:47
Speaker 2: the Gambinos all have an entire FBI unit dedicated to
30:53
Speaker 2: investigating them full time, the FBA WNBA unit. Can you
30:59
Speaker 2: imagine like living under that kind of pressure, knowing the
31:03
Speaker 2: FBI has an entire wing dedicated to your family and
31:07
Speaker 2: they're just investigating you all the time, and you're still
31:10
Speaker 2: a crime family. Amazing goods, efficiency, right, the tenacity. It's
31:16
Speaker 2: intangibles like that that make a great criminal.
31:19
Speaker 3: That's really it really is all about the intangible. It is.
31:22
Speaker 2: It's about about the fundamentals. It's about the intangibles.
31:26
Speaker 3: These people know how to shave points exactly. But yeah,
31:31
Speaker 3: it is interesting that they're that they're like the full,
31:34
Speaker 3: there's full, like somebody get makes like a group of
31:37
Speaker 3: people make probably like seventy five to eighty five thousand
31:40
Speaker 3: dollars a year just studying what these yeah people are
31:44
Speaker 3: doing for the FBI.
31:46
Speaker 2: And the people keep doing it and getting away with it.
31:49
Speaker 2: They got like no one who was crime family related
31:53
Speaker 2: in this scheme ends up going to jail. But the
31:56
Speaker 2: way it happened in two thousand and seven, a guy
31:58
Speaker 2: named Phil Scala was the head of the unit in
32:02
Speaker 2: charge of investigating the Gambinos, and one day, one of
32:05
Speaker 2: his squad's informants, just out of the blue, delivered a
32:09
Speaker 2: tip about how an NBA referee was in the pocket
32:12
Speaker 2: of some people in the sports gambling underworld. Tips tips,
32:17
Speaker 2: you got chips kind of tips, Give me that map,
32:19
Speaker 2: give me those bets. Fuck you. None of the people involved, again,
32:26
Speaker 2: were mob connected, but a team of Gambino family members
32:29
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn had caught wind of the scheme and how
32:32
Speaker 2: it worked and started placing bets on their own millions
32:37
Speaker 2: of dollars in bets. Damn dude, and that connection got
32:42
Speaker 2: the FBI involved. An investigation ensued. Craziest part this all
32:48
Speaker 2: happened in October two thousand and six, two months before
32:51
Speaker 2: the meeting with donahe and Battista even happened.
32:55
Speaker 3: So imagine they were right.
32:58
Speaker 2: So they were onto the scheme before it even became
33:01
Speaker 2: a big thing. So he was definitely fixing games even
33:06
Speaker 2: before he had that meeting. Not long after that, the
33:09
Speaker 2: FBI figured out who the refing question was, arrested a
33:12
Speaker 2: bunch of people, Batista and Donna. He got fifteen months
33:15
Speaker 2: in prison, Tommy Martino got a year.
33:17
Speaker 3: I feel like Donna he should have gotten more. Probably, yeah,
33:21
Speaker 3: because he was also doing the thing. Yeah, he wasn't
33:24
Speaker 3: just he wasn't just conspiratizing and he was conspiring conspiring.
33:32
Speaker 3: It was just conspiring. He was also like, yeah, that's
33:34
Speaker 3: a good idea, we should do that. Yeah, and then
33:36
Speaker 3: he's like does it. Then he does it, you know, and.
33:39
Speaker 2: Then he goes to prison for fifteen months and then
33:41
Speaker 2: gets out and he's like, takes a couple of beatings.
33:44
Speaker 2: He's written a book. Since then, you know, he probably
33:47
Speaker 2: goes on the lecture circuit and does talks. There is
33:50
Speaker 2: a movie about this now. It looks terrible, starring Will
33:53
Speaker 2: Sasso and Scott Wolf. You know, I mean from Party
33:57
Speaker 2: of Five from Mad TV and Party of Five, Yeah,
34:00
Speaker 2: which that's actually what inspired this episode. I was scrolling
34:03
Speaker 2: through shit on Amazon and was like, Oh, that movie
34:05
Speaker 2: looks terrible, but I want to talk about this case.
34:08
Speaker 3: Uh did you get the movie? No?
34:10
Speaker 2: I didn't.
34:10
Speaker 3: Is it free on Amazon Prime?
34:12
Speaker 2: No? You have to rent it? Yeah, I'm not gonna
34:14
Speaker 2: pay money to watch it. That's that's crazy. And uh,
34:18
Speaker 2: the the ESPN investigation that we mentioned earlier, that literally
34:23
Speaker 2: ends with Tim Donahey having a conversation with someone right
34:27
Speaker 2: before he's about to go to jail, and Tim donnay
34:30
Speaker 2: he's freaking out about how his life is over, and
34:32
Speaker 2: the guy just goes, Oh, this just sounds like a
34:34
Speaker 2: movie to me. We'll just make a movie. And sure enough,
34:37
Speaker 2: it's a fucking movie now. So all these people are
34:39
Speaker 2: doing great, which that's how how white collar crime work.
34:44
Speaker 3: He's living in disgrace, but he's not not living right.
34:48
Speaker 2: So once there's a there's another sort of conspiracy within
34:53
Speaker 2: this conspiracy, because we know that Tim donahey stuff happened.
34:56
Speaker 2: But then there's the NBA's investigation.
34:59
Speaker 3: Here's the true part of the conspiracy, the part that's
35:01
Speaker 3: like the most because it's not so much a conspiracy
35:04
Speaker 3: when it's already been solved. Correct thing, we have that
35:08
Speaker 3: soir it is, where does the sort of there's a mystery.
35:12
Speaker 2: There's basically another conspiracy that happens right after this that
35:17
Speaker 2: makes much sense. Yeah, Phil Skala makes a pretty huge miscalculation.
35:23
Speaker 2: Once he has all this information, he goes to the
35:26
Speaker 2: NBA and sits down with David Stern and is like, look,
35:30
Speaker 2: one of your refs is betting on his own games.
35:33
Speaker 2: We think he's fixing games, and we're going to investigate.
35:36
Speaker 2: And the NBA was like, sure, yeah, you have our
35:39
Speaker 2: full cooperation. Don't you worry about it. We want to
35:42
Speaker 2: get to the bottom of this. And then his next
35:44
Speaker 2: step in that investigation was going to be to have
35:49
Speaker 2: Tim Donahey wear a wire and go to other NBA
35:54
Speaker 2: refs who were also fixing games or betting on games
35:58
Speaker 2: and get them to admit it on so they could
36:02
Speaker 2: take down everyone in the NBA who was dirty.
36:04
Speaker 3: And before he could.
36:05
Speaker 2: Do that, someone went to the New York Post and said, hey,
36:09
Speaker 2: the FBI's investigating a bunch of NBA refs, including Tim Donahey,
36:15
Speaker 2: and the New York Post publishes this story, and now
36:18
Speaker 2: Tim Donahue obviously can't wear a wire and go, hello,
36:21
Speaker 2: fellow corrupt officials, how do you do, fellow corruption? So
36:27
Speaker 2: it like blew up the FBI's investigation. And their suspicion
36:31
Speaker 2: is that the NBA is who leaked the story to
36:35
Speaker 2: the New York Post because they didn't want this story
36:37
Speaker 2: to go any further scandalous.
36:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's already scandalous. We're talking about it, right, So, like,
36:43
Speaker 3: imagine if it was like fourteen other.
36:44
Speaker 2: Refs, right, and it probably there were obviously a few
36:48
Speaker 2: if Tim Donahey knew he could wear a wire and
36:51
Speaker 2: go talk to these people and get the information out
36:54
Speaker 2: of them. And the NBA was from the start, or
36:58
Speaker 2: from the jump you might say, very concerned with limiting
37:03
Speaker 2: the investigation into this and making the ending narrative that
37:08
Speaker 2: Tim Donahey was a rogue official who just bet on
37:11
Speaker 2: his own games. The truth. So after they they blow
37:16
Speaker 2: up this investigation, the NBA ends up doing their own
37:22
Speaker 2: investigation into this, and one of the things they did
37:26
Speaker 2: to prove that he wasn't fixing games is they analyzed
37:30
Speaker 2: a sample of the games he officiated, and they were like, no, impropriety. Sorry,
37:36
Speaker 2: And the thing is they did a sample of like
37:38
Speaker 2: ten games. There's only like sixty games in question. Yeah,
37:42
Speaker 2: so like you could have easily just gotten all the games,
37:44
Speaker 2: you could have watched them all. You're the NBA, you
37:46
Speaker 2: definitely have access. In ESPN in their investigation, manages to
37:50
Speaker 2: track down all of his games and they come to
37:53
Speaker 2: the same conclusion that that sports betting ring did back
37:57
Speaker 2: when this all started, which is that Tim donahe was
38:00
Speaker 2: calling fouls improperly to influence the outcome of.
38:04
Speaker 3: The game at an insanely high level.
38:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you watch any of these games, or
38:10
Speaker 2: if you read the ESPN article, they have a bunch
38:12
Speaker 2: of different examples where he would call like fourteen fouls
38:16
Speaker 2: on one team and five on the other team, or
38:19
Speaker 2: like when it was just in garbage time, when refs
38:23
Speaker 2: kind of have a little bit of leeway, he would
38:26
Speaker 2: be very literal in his interpretation of what a foul was,
38:30
Speaker 2: and it if you analyze it, it's very obvious he
38:33
Speaker 2: was fixing these games, but the NBA has always asserted
38:37
Speaker 2: that he did not. We got to protect the brand, Yeah, obviously,
38:41
Speaker 2: but eventually, like once there's one ref wouldn't you want
38:45
Speaker 2: to just like, well, I guess not like you don't
38:48
Speaker 2: want it to come out there.
38:49
Speaker 3: Oh you want it one, you want a rogue, lone wolf.
38:51
Speaker 3: You don't want an entire conspiracy that makes your entire
38:55
Speaker 3: season nullified. Yeah, that's true. Like that's like very clear.
39:00
Speaker 3: It's why the NFL wouldn't cover a lot of like
39:02
Speaker 3: the CTE stuff, right, and it goes through or even
39:06
Speaker 3: when Baseball was dealing with steroids, like they wanted it
39:09
Speaker 3: so internal and.
39:09
Speaker 2: They were like, we will have our own thing.
39:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, not really because they don't want that black eye,
39:15
Speaker 3: you know.
39:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so that that's kind of where this story
39:22
Speaker 2: was left in terms of history, is that Donnahy was
39:25
Speaker 2: a lone wolf who was just betting not.
39:28
Speaker 3: Couldn't fix games. They even I think they went as
39:30
Speaker 3: far as to say that fixing games was like impossible.
39:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, they said there's too many moving parts and too
39:36
Speaker 2: many people watching an NBA game to fix it. But
39:38
Speaker 2: I think that's why you could fix it.
39:42
Speaker 3: I think we figured out how, like we have the.
39:44
Speaker 2: Map, yeah, and it's if it's not a ref who's
39:48
Speaker 2: calling fouls, Like I don't care how many moving parts are,
39:51
Speaker 2: You're not going to notice if a player intentionally misses
39:55
Speaker 2: three or four shots in a night to keep the
39:58
Speaker 2: spread manageable. There's no way you're gonna notice that. No way,
40:03
Speaker 2: no way, Jose, There's no way you're gonna notice that.
40:07
Speaker 2: Come on, man, don't be crazy. How would you even
40:10
Speaker 2: see it with your eyes?
40:11
Speaker 3: The NBA has so much integrity, man, it really does
40:14
Speaker 3: not people.
40:15
Speaker 2: I don't know if the the NBA Draft episode was
40:19
Speaker 2: a Patreon only thing, but we'll put it out publicly
40:22
Speaker 2: next time.
40:22
Speaker 3: The NBA Draft rolls around.
40:24
Speaker 2: It's fascinating, like the David Stern definitely there's video and
40:30
Speaker 2: you can see his eyes are just trained on the
40:34
Speaker 2: envelope that he needs to pull out the whole time.
40:37
Speaker 2: Those envelopes are being shuffled, like he knew what the
40:40
Speaker 2: fuck he was doing. But fuck you, David Stern. Come on, David,
40:44
Speaker 2: well he's dead now good fuck you David Stern.
40:47
Speaker 3: Fuck you ghost of David Stearn.
40:48
Speaker 2: Fuck you Deaded Stern.
40:50
Speaker 3: Oh fuck you Daniel Stern? Right, who's that?
40:54
Speaker 2: He's the actor.
40:55
Speaker 3: He was the voice of the narrator in the Wonder Years.
40:58
Speaker 3: He was Oh sure, he was a Marv in the
41:01
Speaker 3: Home Alone film. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was in camp nowhere,
41:04
Speaker 3: but no, no, that wasn't Yeah, you're right, fuck that
41:06
Speaker 3: guy too, And hey, I think that's well that It
41:11
Speaker 3: is worth pointing out that with the NBA saying, well,
41:15
Speaker 3: not only did he not fix games, you can't fix games,
41:18
Speaker 3: games are still being fixed by the mob.
41:21
Speaker 2: The most recent example in twenty nineteen. November twenty nineteen,
41:27
Speaker 2: so just a few months ago, members of the Colombo
41:30
Speaker 2: family were arrested over a scheme to influence the outcome
41:34
Speaker 2: of college basketball games.
41:35
Speaker 3: What do you show you got there?
41:36
Speaker 2: You got our basketball? Then?
41:39
Speaker 3: Is that a topical impression?
41:41
Speaker 2: That was pretty good? When you bounce the basketball up
41:43
Speaker 2: and now show me how you do that. So, yeah,
41:47
Speaker 2: this happens. It happened in the NBA. It probably still
41:50
Speaker 2: happens in the NBA.
41:52
Speaker 3: Of course it does.
41:54
Speaker 2: I don't even know.
41:54
Speaker 3: I wouldn't even say probably. It for sure still happens.
41:57
Speaker 2: And I'm sure it happens to some extent all the
42:00
Speaker 2: other sports. If we were to look into it, like
42:04
Speaker 2: sports betting is such a huge industry, it's harder.
42:08
Speaker 1: Like I would say basketball and baseball are the two easiest.
42:11
Speaker 1: Baseball you think, yeah, man, you just to have a
42:14
Speaker 1: fucking a player, fucking swing and miss. That's the whole
42:18
Speaker 1: Black Sox scandal. That was the whole thing.
42:20
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I suppose, like, you know, you.
42:22
Speaker 3: Get a productive player to have a bad day.
42:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's true. I don't know, Yeah, maybe we
42:29
Speaker 2: should look into that.
42:30
Speaker 3: Hockey corruption seems weird. Doesn't Hockey seem like a one
42:34
Speaker 3: where you're just like, oh, they're just all bad people,
42:35
Speaker 3: but they're not corrupt people. Yeah.
42:38
Speaker 2: It seems like you would go to hockey if you
42:42
Speaker 2: wanted to recruit people to help you another sports league.
42:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have enforcers, just like you guys. Yeah. The
42:50
Speaker 3: two things that are well known for having enforcers are
42:53
Speaker 3: hockey and the mob. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Football seems
42:57
Speaker 3: like it would be very hard to fix.
42:59
Speaker 2: The football feel like you would have to do through
43:01
Speaker 2: officiating again, and a kicker. Yeah, a kicker would help.
43:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, but then again, it's the other thing too,
43:07
Speaker 3: is like if you have a bad game as a kicker,
43:09
Speaker 3: like if you blow your four shots or whatever as
43:11
Speaker 3: a kicker, then you lose your job and you don't
43:13
Speaker 3: get paid, right. Yeah.
43:15
Speaker 2: Cody Parky for the Bears the season before last one
43:18
Speaker 2: game against Detroit. He missed four field goals and every
43:21
Speaker 2: one of them hit the upright. It's like those should
43:24
Speaker 2: have been four points each. That is impressive. Jesus, that
43:27
Speaker 2: is amazing. I remember, and we lost in the playoffs
43:30
Speaker 2: that way.
43:31
Speaker 3: In the replacements, the Keanu Reeves football team film, Sure,
43:36
Speaker 3: the kicker has a gambling problem and he's supposed to
43:41
Speaker 3: shag a fucking field goal, and he tells Shane Falco
43:46
Speaker 3: Keanu Reeves he takes the ball away two point conversion,
43:50
Speaker 3: oh or a touchdown instead of field goal or something,
43:53
Speaker 3: but he saves them. Yeah.
43:55
Speaker 2: I'm glad I've never gotten into gambling. It seems like
43:59
Speaker 2: the worst addiction. I like trash gambling. I like taking
44:04
Speaker 2: like two hundred dollars to like somewhere in Vegas and
44:06
Speaker 2: like playing shitty games and just having fun and then
44:09
Speaker 2: yeah and then leaving. Yeah, that's that's fine. But like
44:14
Speaker 2: I love trash gambling. Like I knew when I lived
44:17
Speaker 2: in South Dakota. There they just have video lottery machines everywhere.
44:23
Speaker 2: Like gas stations are also casinos in South Dakota. Fu. Yeah, dude,
44:27
Speaker 2: And there would be like dudes who would come in
44:30
Speaker 2: on a Friday and just fucking blow their entire paycheck
44:34
Speaker 2: and then have to go home and probably explain that
44:37
Speaker 2: to the wife and kids, and they just keep doing it. Yeah, well,
44:40
Speaker 2: it's gambling is an addiction. Yeah it is. It's a
44:43
Speaker 2: it's a crazy addiction.
44:44
Speaker 3: I have rules for going into casinos, like I will
44:47
Speaker 3: only bring in cash.
44:48
Speaker 2: I won't bring a card.
44:49
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so I can't go to an ATM and
44:51
Speaker 3: take more money out.
44:52
Speaker 2: I just don't like being in a casino. It makes
44:54
Speaker 2: me sad. I feel like I'm just I can feel
44:57
Speaker 2: the weight of all the bad decisions being made in there.
45:00
Speaker 2: I like a fun casino.
45:01
Speaker 3: I like I like sitting down at a Britney Spears
45:04
Speaker 3: slot machine and having.
45:06
Speaker 2: That I'm going to Vegas this weekend, telling you, man,
45:09
Speaker 2: maybe I'll do some gambling.
45:11
Speaker 3: I'm watching Mariah Carey.
45:13
Speaker 2: I hate the Goonies movie.
45:14
Speaker 3: That slot machine has treated me very well, very nice.
45:17
Speaker 3: Then NUS, then NAS.
45:19
Speaker 2: So that's our episode, that is our sode. Don't believe
45:23
Speaker 2: the NBA, Tim Donnay fixed those games.
45:25
Speaker 3: Don't believe any institution that needs to protect its integrity
45:29
Speaker 3: and and has to like self investigate. Yeah, the NBA
45:32
Speaker 3: is like the cops Oh, we're looking into it. Oh,
45:35
Speaker 3: I'm sure you are.
45:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's our sode. Yeah it is. We did it, Yeah,
45:39
Speaker 2: we did. We made it to the end. Everyone should
45:41
Speaker 2: check out you don't even like sports, you don't even
45:43
Speaker 2: like sports? With me and Jeff may Hey, that's me. Huh,
45:47
Speaker 2: that's who's been on this episode the entire time. Sure us,
45:50
Speaker 2: Ben Uh, Jeff. Do you have anything to plug?
45:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, I got a lot of shows in a
45:54
Speaker 3: lot of places.
45:55
Speaker 2: Man.
45:55
Speaker 3: You can check out obviously you don't even like sports
45:58
Speaker 3: on the Unpopular Opinion Network. You can also check out
46:01
Speaker 3: side Shows Side Show with Jeff may That is through
46:04
Speaker 3: Sideshow Collectibles. So if you're a nerd, that one's for you.
46:07
Speaker 3: You're a nerd. You can check out the Adam Todd
46:09
Speaker 3: Brown episode.
46:09
Speaker 2: It's real fun. It is, it's the best.
46:12
Speaker 3: You can check out Tom and Jeff watch Batman I'm
46:14
Speaker 3: Gamefully Unemployed, where me and Tom Ryman.
46:17
Speaker 2: Watch Batman and then talk about it. Real fun.
46:19
Speaker 3: And then if you like live comedy, mint on Card
46:21
Speaker 3: is the second Friday of every month that blasts from
46:24
Speaker 3: the past on Magnolia in Burbank, California. I don't like
46:28
Speaker 3: live comedy, you don't like live stand up, well, then
46:31
Speaker 3: you're a bad person. You don't even like comedy.
46:33
Speaker 2: You know what I do.
46:34
Speaker 3: Uh, let's go to a steakhouse. Let's go to a steakhouse.
46:37
Speaker 3: Go to a steakhouse. We're gonna go eat a fucking steak. Yeah,
46:40
Speaker 3: we're gonna go eat a steak or something dash steak. Well,
46:44
Speaker 3: you all get a gumbo steak, gumboat steak.
46:47
Speaker 2: Down.
46:47
Speaker 3: Now, let's get out of here. Jeff say goodbye.
46:51
Speaker 2: I'll see you later there, Bone Tall, good bye bye,
46:54
Speaker 2: we love you. Good day, bon toll road day.
47:00
Speaker 3: Another another, another aspect at another another at another aspect
47:13
Speaker 3: of another st