Operation Flagrant Foul

Well done documentary about a crooked official working for a league of crooks. My main takeaway is confirmation that the NBA is the dirtiest league in all of professional sports. David Stern was a master manipulator who blatantly fixed games to get the best results. If you are a diehard NBA fan don't watch this, because it show you are just watching basketball's equivalent of the wwe. The producers do a really good job of showing just how dirty everyone, including David Stern, truly was in this era. Now that the NBA and other leagues have embraced legal sports gambling, the game fixing is going to get worse.

After watching this episode, one feels that the makers have only grazed the surface of something much bigger, tying into the depths of both the NBA and the Philly mob. Betting on major basketball matches while you're an official in said matches does amount to fixing at least, in my books. As a referee, you can make and/or control certain decisions within the game to suit your betting favor, and that makes all the difference. The story of the trio - Timmy, Tommy, and Jimmy - unfurls through compellingly shot interviews, but very soon, it turns into a scenario of who takes the lion's share of the blames. When it involves a powerful institution like the NBA, which was obviously more interested in distancing themselves from the leakage of this entire incident, many things in this documentary are left hush-hush.

Overall another well told "Untold" sports drama. The story was interesting and unfolded in an unexpected way. Though maybe a bit repetitive I was still hooked through to the end. Interviews relevant and at least some attempt and following up on claims with the FBI/NBA. Though a fairly unbiased documentary, the people give the vibe that something fishy definitely happened... but I guess we'll never know.

Cheers to a very, very, very, very long review thanks to the new rules presented by the IMDb staff. I'm glad to report that you can trust this review is credible and relevant since it contains at least 600 characters.

This doc is a complete sham. Go read a real investigation completed by Sean Patrick Griffin called Gaming the Game or listen to him on any number of podcasts. He explains the whole sordid story in detail after thorough interviews and research. His evidence and research completely blows up the Netflix narrative.

Donaghy is a liar and fixed games. The NBA helped cover it up to make it seem like a lone wolf. Netflix dropped the ball here by trusting a liar. There should have been some level of investigation into his narrative that didn't happen.

The conclusion that the NBA and FBI aitted Donaghy didn't fix games is a lie. The NBA directly refutted that conclusion in 2019.

I've enjoyed past episodes of Untold, but this is one of the worst documentaries I've ever seen. The way this information is presented makes me believe the filmmakers are either incredibly gullible or did zero research outside of talking to Tim and taking his word for it. It's so egregious that while I was watching this I was wondering if Tim was related to the filmmakers in some way. I don't know why you would waste time and money on this only to show such a narrow scope/point of view (the point of view of a liar who has been desperately trying to repair his image over the past few years). Read "Gaming the Game" by Sean Patrick Griffin if you want an actual understanding of the events and investigation.