The Spurs Should Give Tim Donaghy a Championship Ring

If the Phoenix Suns and their fans didn't have enough reasons to be bitter about how things went down in the playoffs, they certainly do now. With the news that referee Tim Donaghy was using his position to influence the outcomes of games, everyone is looking to see which games he worked and how much damage he might have done. Bill Simmons was able to pinpoint the incredibly questionable officiating from Game 3 of the playoff series between the Suns and the Spurs, and (surprise!) Donaghy was on the court. Here's what Simmons said about the officiating at the time:

Congratulations to Greg Willard, Tim Donaghy and Eddie F. Rush for giving us the most atrociously officiated game of the playoffs so far: Game 3 of the Suns-Spurs series.

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Other than the latest call in NBA history (a shooting foul for Manu Ginobili whistled three seconds after the play, when everyone was already running in the other direction), my favorite moment happened near the end, when the game was already over and they called a cheap bump on Bruce Bowen against Nash, so the cameras caught Mike D'Antoni (the most entertaining coach in the league if he's not getting calls) screaming sarcastically, "Why start now? Why bother?" What a travesty.

So Simmons --and Suns fans everywhere-- knew there was something off about that game, and now we know what it was. Incredible. But true Spurs fans shouldn't be happy about this either. I mean, this effectively drops an asterisk on another one of their championships: the first being the 1999 season, which didn't even start until February 5 due to a lockout.

Let's review the video of some of this game's most questionable crooked calls, after the jump.

I don't know about you, but I watched most of those calls with my jaw on the floor and a queasy feeling in my stomach. The worst calls made by Donaghy in this clip were the first two, uh, highlights: the very late call of a non-foul on Ginobili that Simmons mentioned, and Tim Duncan absolutely butchering Stoudemire, with Donaghy standing right there refusing to blow the whistle.

There was something else that I found extremely interesting while watching this video, and that's the fact that Eddie F. Rush made some calls that were just as horrifying as the ones made by Donaghy that we now know to be crooked. Calling Stoudemire for his fourth foul on a charge away from the ball? Please. And towards the end of the clip where Nash gets hit by Horry on that reach-in (which results in a turnover), Rush was right there and chose not to make the call. Maybe Shaq was on to something when he ripped Rush earlier in the post-season for some similarly shady calls.

See, right there we have the biggest problem with this entire scandal. Now, every fan who feels that their team ever got screwed in a game of any magnitude will go back, look at the tape, and point to a few calls that could have swung the game in their team's favor had they gone the other way. The questions will always be there. I'm sure videos of all of Donaghy's games will start to come out, and people will go back and watch them like they did with the movie "The Sixth Sense." Once you know how the story ends, you can see what's going on from a whole new perspective.

Previously on FanHouse:
Tim Donaghy is the NBA's Alleged Dirty Ref
FBI Investigating NBA Ref in Point-Shaving Scandal
How Referees Can Affect the Point Spread: Three Examples from 2006-07
Suns @ Spurs Game 3: 1st Quarter Live Blog