Here is a hell of a column by one of the best journalists in the country, David Aldridge who interviewed Bob Delaney last week:
On the NBA: Blowing two whistles
By David Aldridge
Inquirer Columnist
Robert Alan Covert has died twice.
He died in his infancy or childhood. And he had to die again more than a quarter-century later so that Bob Delaney could live.
Delaney killed him because Bobby Covert was taking over his life, making him morally indifferent, careless, dangerous. Had Delaney let Covert live much longer, he would have succumbed to the criminal element that swirled around him for more than three years.
"I was more comfortable with the bad guys than the good guys," Delaney said last week.
The bad guys were mobsters. Delaney, at this time in the late 1970s, was a New Jersey state trooper working undercover. His alias was Bobby Covert - the name of a child born in 1948.
(The idea - stolen from methods used by the '60s-era leftist group the Weathermen - was to find a child who died young with the same first name who would have been around Delaney's age at the time. That made creating phony documents like Social Security cards easier. The last name "Covert" was merely a coincidence and not a cop's inside joke.)
Delaney was a member of Project Alpha, a multi-law-enforcement operation that was one of the first to get hip deep into the world of organized crime. His cover was as an owner of a trucking company on the Jersey waterfront who didn't mind doing shady deals. Gradually, it was taken over by competing mob groups looking to suck every dime out of illegal transactions.
That life alone might make for interesting reading. That the Paterson, N.J., native has found a second career as one of the NBA's best referees creates an irresistible juxtaposition, which Delaney describes in his new autobiography, Covert, released last week.
As he began a book tour that was scheduled to bring him to Philadelphia yesterday, Delaney, 56, is ready to share the reality of what living the gangster life did to him physically and emotionally.
His work helped put dozens of crooks in prison. But it came at a cost. The pressure of wearing a wire every day, and the fear that he might be found out, wore on him. He started throwing up on the side of the road when he was driving home. He suffered night sweats when he tried to sleep, along with other physical problems.
Most alarmingly, though, Delaney acted too well, got too close to the criminals he was supposed to be building cases against. He started feeling sorry for them and their families. He started throwing money around like the big shots with whom he was associating.
"I was so comfortable that my guard was let down so much that I probably would have put myself at more risk, day by day," Delaney said. "Because I was just not feeling that butterfly in my stomach anymore."
His superiors noticed and ended the investigation in 1978. Delaney spent the next two years documenting his work in court and Congressional testimony. He created a teaching course for other police officers about organized crime, from the Mafia to Colombian drug cartels.
And he went back to officiating, which he had done before becoming a state trooper. Gradually, he worked his way from local CYO games to high schools, NBA pro-am summer leagues, the CBA and, finally, the NBA in 1987.
Officiating helped Delaney get over the post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered because of his undercover work.
"It was therapeutic," Delaney said. "It was a peace and a calmness that's on the court that I think it's difficult for people to understand if they have never refereed. Because they think it's so chaotic out there. Yet, no one can get to you. Anything that's going on in your life is not in your mind. The focus has to be so strong."
His prior life makes dealing with screaming coaches and players pretty easy in comparison. And while he received a death threat soon after ending his undercover work, he has lived his life in the open for the last two decades, not wanting to skulk around in fear.
And as word has gotten out over the years, Delaney has learned to laugh. He remembers making a call against Michael Jordan's Wizards in a key game during Jordan's last season as a player.
"The game's over," he recalled. "And it got quiet in the arena. And I had made the call. And this guy calls out, 'After that call, Delaney, they should put you in the witness relocation program.' You can't laugh on the court in those situations, but that was one of the more creative lines I've ever heard from a fan."
It's also helped him forget the man who almost consumed him.
"He's put to bed," Delaney said. "He's no longer part of me. He no longer exists in my body. Bobby Covert is still off to the side, like a distant, distant cousin that you love but never have time to be around. The reality is, he was born and then died. What would be nice for him to know is all the good that came because of him."
Oh, no, never.
***
And, here is Delaney's appearance on First Take...
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