By 
Tim Donaghy Calls Out Ed Rush as Being a Racist, Discusses the Incident in the Pac-12
Ed Rush and the Pac-12 made headlines Tuesday when the story broke that Rush, the league’s coordinator of officiating, perhaps had offered an incentive to referees to give Arizona coach Sean Miller a technical foul. Miller ended up receiving a controversial technical during the Pac-12 tournament. Rush was a longtime NBA official who also became the league’s director of officiating. Tim Donaghy, the NBA ref who’s made plenty of his headlines himself in recent years, worked with and under Rush at times and gets pretty personal in describing the situation here. Tim Donaghy joined 790 The Zone in Atlanta with Mayhem in the AM to discuss the Pac-12 officiating situation involving Ed Rush, his take that Rush had problems with black people and gay people, if Rush should be fired and how the situation may have affected bettors.
On the situation in the Pac-12 involving Ed Rush and it being similar to some of the experiences he had in his officiating days:
“This is a prime example of what I talked about in my book, ‘Personal Foul.’ Ed Rush had a disagreement with this college coach and he also had disagreements with Mark Cuban. A lot of the white referees refer to Ed Rush as Archie Bunker, because he was somebody who didn’t like blacks and had problems with gays. And he used to tell us that Mark Cuban was gay. … It was just different things that he had in regards to personality conflicts with some of these people, and he used the referee staff in order to get even with these people.”
Are you saying that Ed Rush does not like black people?:
“Absolutely I am telling you that. He was my supervisor of officials and I can go as far as to tell you that he was screwing Hue Hollins, Derrick Stafford, Eddie F. Rush. He wanted to move them and demote them down, and he masqueraded that by moving blacks up from the bottom to protect himself, because a lot of the blacks on the staff started to complain that he was a racist.”
Does David Stern know all of this?:
“There’s no doubt about it. Email exchanges went back and forth. … His tenure as the supervisor of officials was one of the shortest tenures. … I don’t know for a fact [that Stern had to address it], but I would find it hard that he was not aware of that because I think it was so well-known in the league office that these problems existed.”
Do you think Rush should be fired from his position with the Pac-12?:
“Absolutely. How can you have a guy in the position that he’s in that has the ability to put three referees on the floor to officiate a game and those officials will get promoted or demoted based on what he thinks of them. And put them on the floor and instruct them to do certain things. … I don’t see how you can keep him in that position.”
It gets back to your story a bit and it’s ironic the Pac-12 tournament is in Las Vegas. This is the type of thing that can affect lines in Vegas and affect peoples’ lives:
“No doubt about it. This story leaked out and it leaked out because there were referees in that meeting that were offended by this, that maybe weren’t in Ed Rush’s good graces. Maybe they weren’t getting the assignments that he was giving these other people that were doing this. So obviously that leaks out, and if you tell a buddy who has a buddy who has a gambling partner, you can profit millions of dollars from this.”
On those who maybe won’t believe him saying this because he’s Tim Donaghy and why should we believe him?:
“I can accept that and I can deal with that, because I will tell you one thing: I wrote a book, and in that book, the FBI agent that was in charge of my case wrote the forward. And he would not write the forward for that book unless he read it and agreed with everything and felt that it was an honest appraisal of the story I was involved in.”
Comments