Earlier this week, we reported about the claims of former NBA referee Tim Donaghy about how the league would force referees to call more fouls on Kobe Bryant.
Donaghy, who was involved in one the NBA’s biggest scandals of all-time, now is back with some more controversial stuff. This time, he explained how Iverson’s history of hostile interactions with fellow referee Steve Javie, eventually led to Iverson threatening to kill Javie.
In response to this threat however, the officiating staff got revenge by calling numerous palming violations on him.
“Iverson had had some history with Steve Javie and they had had some issues going back and forth… Iverson had threatened Javi that he was going to kill him. And, you know, we as an officiating staff felt that Iverson should have been suspended. They didn’t suspend him. They just fined him.
So I had the next game that he was playing in, and the three of us, when we officiated that game, came to the conclusion that we were going to try to stick it to him by calling palming violations on him, something that he did every night and was let go. So we went out and each of us had called a palming violation on him that night.”
