Whistleblower · Tenderfoot TV & Audacy

Bonus 2: Foster Relationships

February 20, 2023·33 min·2 clips

Batista argues Donaghy could not have intentionally lost $30,000 on Foster's games to 'throw off Vegas' because Donaghy was, in Batista's words, 'only concerned about making money.'

July 14th, 2008 is the hinge. The host returns to an article from that date about Tim Donahue's relationship with Scott Foster, then asks Donahue if the report section feels familiar. Donahue says it does not. The episode then moves into the phone records. Foster explains most of the calls as friends killing time in hotel rooms during the season. Simple enough, on the surface. The host keeps pushing on whether Foster's games, player biases, or specific game questions came up, because Donahue says they sometimes talked about player situations that could affect games. Then the report becomes the story. Pedowitz, hired by the NBA after the scandal, gave six pages to the Foster-Donahue relationship and called it innocent in nature. The narration does not buy the tone. It says the writing feels intentionally dull, like the NBA did not want people to keep reading. So the host reads it aloud. The passage begins in the middle of page 29, part 4, section A2, under Scott Foster. The first defense is basically absence. Pedowitz says no information suggests the government believed Foster acted improperly with Donahue, and that no document requests or NBA questions pointed to suspicion. That is carrying a lot of weight. The FBI contacted Foster once, in August 2007, and interviewed him by phone about a friendship Donahue had already described. The second defense is also narrow. Donahue's attorney sent June 2008 letters alleging referee misconduct, but those letters did not accuse Foster of improper conduct or any referee other than Donahue of betting. The host slows down there. Out of eight factors, the first two mostly say what is missing: no stated government suspicion, no accusation in the court letters, and no direct allegation against Foster in the material read.

As heard by us

A dry report is treated as evidence, and the weak spots do not stay hidden.

Episode returns to Petro's report and the calls between Scott Foster and Tim Donahue, then presses on the report's own claim that those conversations were innocent.

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Why you'd press play

Want the NBA's own report on the Foster-Donahue calls picked apart?

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