Over the past few years, there have been some big scandals in the NBA over referees gambling. This has been a huge controversy because if it would have been detected earlier it easily could have meant that different teams would have made it to the finals and won a championship. Knowing that referees were gambling on games means that they were throwing them one way or another. Any die-hard sports fan cringes at the thought of certain games or series going a different way had the referees not cheated.

The biggest scandal to happen in recent years is that of Tim Donaghy. He was caught a couple years ago, but his gambling began much earlier, around 2003. He began placing general bets around this time but by December of 2006 he was releasing sensitive information to gamblers. He and his buddy Jimmy Battista began a gambling strategy that included Donaghy getting $2000 - $5000 for every bet he guaranteed with his calls. He would tip off high-stakes gamblers with some inside info and careful recommendations on what teams to gamble on. If he was right he was paid around five thousand dollars a pop. Once he was convicted, he was released on a $250,000 bond and faced up to 25 years in prison if the maximum charges were prosecuted. His sentence was not nearly that long but it was nice to know the government was taking it seriously. Along with that, he was responsible for paying a $500,000 fine to the NBA as well as $30,000 to the government. This event rocked the entire league, and many questioned the integrity of the sport as a whole.

Commissioner Stern has gone to great lengths to try and fix the wrongs that have been made, and the league is taking precautions to try and make sure that something like this doesn't happen again. The sad thing is that these kinds of things not only happen in professional basketball, but have gone on in almost every sport. If the money is worth the risk, many referees of different sports are willing to throw away their integrity for a few extra bucks.

It is the hope of every sports fan that referees will call game from an unbiased perspective, and let athletes compete at the highest level without playing favorites. This Tim Donaghy scandal opened a lot of people's eyes to the shortcomings of men in power, and hopefully stricter regulations will prevent these kinds of things from happening again.

Donaghy, along with Battista, pleaded guilty to two felony charges and spent around 15 months in prison. While these were the only two to be convicted and sentenced to jail time, it was suspected that 13 other referees were involved in the scandal.