D.A. in the Boston Globe for Tim Donaghy Interview

The D.A. Show lands in the Boston Globe again, luckily not the police blotter. Chad Finn reached out after we landed disgraced former ref Tim Donaghy for an interview.

Officials keep mucking up games and outcomes and goals, so now they’re in the crosshairs. Tough noogies. Jim Joyce blows a perfect game. An official costs the U.S. a win against Slovenia in the World Cup. And the NBA Finals had a faint whiff of… Donaghy.

The NBA playoffs are always an exercise in restraint when it comes to going postal on referees. But this summer it seemed to be kicked up even another notch.

Finn did an excellent piece on how both our show and WEEI reached out to Donaghy in the wake of the hand-wringing.

From Finn’s piece:

“Most recently, Donaghy spoke with 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Damon Amendolara at halftime of the Celtics’ series-clinching Game 6 victory over the Magic in the Eastern Conference finals.

While his expertise on lousy officiating — intentional or otherwise — is well-established, isn’t having him on to analyze referees essentially the equivalent of asking Bernie Madoff for financial advice?

“Well, I can see it that way,’’ said Amendolara with a laugh. “But I can explain easily why we had him on — there’s no one else willing to talk about the skepticism regarding the officials in the NBA. It’s that simple.

“The story after Game 5 was so about the officiating. We got so many calls with such an overwhelming sentiment that ‘the NBA is fixed, the NBA wants a longer series, the NBA [stuck it to] the Celtics,’ that you couldn’t ignore it.

“I don’t know if I buy into that, but it was this overwhelming sense. When people gripe about officiating, I’m usually like, ‘Come on, let’s talk about something we can really break down.’ Complaining about the officiating is sort of a loser’s mentality, for the whiners.’’