Gaming the Game The Story of the NBA Betting Scandal and the Gambler Who Made It Happen

by Griffin, Sean Patrick

• ISBN13: 9781569804445
• ISBN10: 1569804443
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-03-16
• Publisher: Barricade Books

Summary

An affable man with remarkable communication skills and an uncanny ability to process numbers, he worked with and for the sharpest gamblers around the globe. For Jimmy Battista, being a pro gambler meant that he purchased and sold highly sensitive inside information relating to sports events, and placed bets for several exclusive clients who often wagered in staggering amounts. His partners and clients were the ones sportsbooks feared most, and were such big deals they routinely altered betting lines with their plays. His work often took him to predictable places like New York, Atlantic City, and Las Vegas, and included forays in more exotic locales such as Antigua, Curacao, and The Bahamas. Battista was not among the world's top bookmakers or bettors or financiers, but he was arguably the key person in that universe who connected otherwise disparate parties and provided a multitude of services for all sorts of noteworthy figures. He served as a hub of activity with spokes ultimately leading to all sorts of characters, from hardcore gangsters to mob wannabes to heavy-hitting bettors and financiers to mid-level runners to stringers and edge players of all types, each of whom (even if unknowingly) relied upon him and his variegated expertise. It was this assortment of characters that attracted the FBI and which led them to Jimmy Battista and then to NBA referee Tim Donaghy. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Sean Patrick Griffin, Associate Professor in Criminal Justice at Penn State Abington, is the author of two books on African-American organized crime including Black Brothers Inc., The Violent Rise and Fall of Philadelphia's Black Mafia from which BET based an episode of its "American Gangster" series, and has been optioned to be made into at least one motion picture by Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way Productions for Warner Brothers Studios. He resides in a suburb of Philadelphia.

Table of Contents

Cast of Characters	p. xiii
Prologue	p. xix
Humble Jim	p. 1
Baba the Black Sheep	p. 5
Taking His Lumps	p. 13
The Gambling Grocer	p. 23
Eye of the Tiger	p. 33
Sharpening Up	p. 45
Go West, Black Sheep	p. 63
Shady People in Sunny Places	p. 77
Parting Ways, Glory Days	p. 89
Standing on Top of the Sports Betting World	p. 97
The Sharps	p. 113
There's Someone in Stripes on My Side	p. 127
Jimmy, Tommy, and Timmy	p. 137
Trouble Shooting	p. 153
The Harder They Fall	p. 167
The Dance	p. 177
Gambling Investigation Rocks NBA	p. 187
The Dog Days of Summer	p. 197
Former N.B.A. Referee Pleads Guilty	p. 207
What Characters	p. 219
Team Donaghy's Assault on Justice	p. 237
An Hour to a Little Kid Is a Long Time	p. 253
Epilogue: State of the Sheep	p. 263
Appendix: NBA Scandal Betting Analysis	p. 275
Source Notes	p. 297
Glossary of Terms	p. 309
Acknowledgments	p. 315
Index	p. 321
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