Circumstantial, as it may be, there is a lot to be uncovered in these NBA referee scandals when it comes to the action that Las Vegas receives on particular games. Obviously, the 130 phone calls from Tim Donaghy to Scott Foster are in and of themselves very bad news. Donaghy = guilty, and those swell-piece hits define "by association".

As R.J. Bell of Pregame points out, there might be a lot more to the Foster business than just the phone calls too.

During the 2006-07 period under investigation, seven games refereed by Scott Foster had lopsided enough betting on one team to move the point spread by at least 2 points; those seven teams were undefeated against Vegas – meaning that the big-money gamblers won a 7 of 7 times on Foster's games; the odds of that happening randomly are less than 1%.

Statistics alone cannot convict, but it's certainly noteworthy that seven times in Foster's games one team was bet extremely heavily, and all seven times that team won," said RJ Bell of Pregame.com.

Two of those seven games stand out:

The NBA addressed Monday's Fox News report that disgraced referee Tim Donaghy called fellow official Scott Foster a suspicious amount of times during the period in which Donaghy has admitted to betting on games he worked.

"The government had complete access to Tim Donaghy's phone records and thoroughly investigated this matter, including conducting an interview of referee Scott Foster," the league said. "The government has said that they have found no evidence of criminal conduct aside from that of Mr. Donaghy."

The Foster story failed to pick up steam Monday, which is either an indication the connection (based on 134 brief calls over six months directly before or after games Donaghy or Foster worked, often interspersed with calls to Donaghy's middleman) isn't as strong as it looks to the naive eye, or it's an indication reporters and pundits are too hesitant to pass judgment following that Game 6 debacle ... which ended up embarrassing everyone.

Still, isn't there a bit more meat here? Is anyone involved going to explain the calls?

Fox News has a rather incendiary report by Jana Winter digging into disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy's phone records. Winter reports Donaghy made 134 phone calls to fellow ref Scott Foster over a six-month spread during which Donaghy has admitted betting on games. Donaghy made no more than 13 calls to any other ref, and only phoned betting middleman Thomas Martino more frequently.

Based solely on Winter's account, it's hard to imagine there isn't something here. The bulk of the calls were shorter than two minutes in length and came directly before or after either Donaghy or Foster worked a game. Some of them are bookended by calls to Martino. The calls "stopped abruptly in mid March 2007, when Donaghy is believed to have stopped his gambling," Winter writes.

Foster worked two games in the NBA Finals (Games 1 and 5), and has reffed in the NBA since at least 1996-97. He's not one of the referees from Donaghy's hometown of Philadelphia.