An excerpt of an email from a TrueHoop reader:

I thought you might like to see this. I'm a Suns fan, which is the main reason I did this study. Being a Suns fan I wanted this to come out that there was even more to show how unfair that series was. After reviewing the game it's simply not there. If anything Donaghy called the fairest game.

What I did is log every foul called by referee, and what team and he player he called it on. When multiple refs called the same foul I called it a shared foul. (That is also why, when I tally up how many total calls the refs made it will be higher than the actual game number.)

Eddie F. Rush called six fouls on the Spurs and nine on the Suns. Greg Willard called seven fouls on the Spurs and nine on the Suns. Tim Donaghy called ten fouls on each team. When Donaghy was involved in shared calls, three were on the Suns, and two on the Spurs.

I don't think you can really take anything from this game that would suggest he wasn't doing his job properly.

The reader acknowledges that one late call on Ginobili was bizarre, but his analysis is pretty clear that in the big picture the story here was not one referee going bananas on the Suns.

All those who theorize Donaghy might have been trying to get scores higher by sending players to the line, however, will note that in this study he blew his whistle a good deal more than the other referees.

So, yes we can use this scandal as evidence of a lot of NBA trouble. But we can't blame it for everything.