Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul is a sports documentary, released on Netflix on 30 August. It is directed by David Terry Fine and revolves around former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who, after an FBI investigation, was found guilty of conspiring to fix NBA games and was at the centre of a huge gambling scandal in 2007.
The documentary has a runtime of about 1 hour and 17 minutes and is executive produced by Chapman & Maclain Way. Untold Volume 2 is a four-week docu-series event that once again brings fresh eyes to epic tales from the wide world of sports on Netflix. The films premiere weekly and each film kicks off at a pivotal moment and then delves deep into what happened beyond the headlines, as told by those who lived it.
Netflix synopsis of the documentary film reads:
Years after serving time for betting on games he officiated, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy revisits the scandal that shook up the league.
-Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul Review Contain Some Spoilers-
In the summer of 2007, news broke that an NBA referee was being investigated for gambling on his own games, igniting a media storm and sending the NBA, FBI and sports fans into crisis. That referee was Tim Donaghy and the story didn’t just start and end with him but wound its way from the small town bookies of the Philadelphia suburbs to lining the pockets of the notorious New York crime families and worldwide sports gambling underworld.
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For the first time, all three co-conspirators discuss their involvement and, unsurprisingly, their stories don’t all line up. The documentary features revealing sit-down interviews with Tim Donaghy, Tommy Martino, Jimmy ‘The Sheep’ Battista plus FBI agent Phil Scala, Donaghy’s lawyer John Lauro, Donaghy’s ex-wife Kim Strupp Donaghy, and more.
The film starts with an introduction of the man, who was in the centre of it all, Tim Donaghy. He tells his story about how he grew up in Delaware County, Pennsylvania and tells about his father, Gerry Donaghy, who was a referee at the highest levels of NCAA men’s basketball for a long time, and his inspiration to get into the game.
His career was going well, he met his wife on a plane ride and even made it to the NBA after some struggles. He had everything he could ask for yet he made some decisions that destroyed his life, family and of course career. We get to hear the actual accounts of how everything started from the people who were involved in it.
Jimmy Battista even educates us on gambling terms, that they used and what they mean. A nickel means $500, a dime is $1000, a stick is $100,000 and if you are dealing in great numbers, just like he did, then you definitely gotta know about balloons which equal one million dollars. They started off small, for fun but when they saw how much money they could make, greed crept in.
Throughout the film, Donaghy maintains that he never fixed his matches, he just guessed his pick, based on insider information and the knowledge he had and passed on all the information. His partners called him Elvis because he was the king. And from the info that his two partners got, they used that to win themselves and even passed it on to the mafia.
It also makes you question the authenticity of the NBA and the people who run the organisation. Many fingers are pointed out to David Stern who was the commissioner of the National Basketball Association from 1984 to 2014. Donaghy commented that referees worked according to what the higher people would tell them to do and it involved favouring star players in the games, often.
Summing Up: Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul
The documentary is showcase of blame game that the people who got caught, try to put on each other. But it will be certain to say that the gambling case involved a much bigger group of people than the ones who were found guilty of it. Could NBA be possibly involved and aware of all that? Well, chances are high they could be and they did damage control before things got out of their hand.
The title Operation Flagrant Foul is the actual name that the FBI had given to the case where Tim Donaghy was to work as an undercover agent for them and get solid proofs that could persecute all the people involved. But unfortunately, I think the FBI got the lowest end of a big chain that wasn’t caught and continued their activities without any repercussions.
Untold: Operation Flagrant Foul is currently streaming on Netflix.
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