Which was roughly in the middle of the 33 month sentence he could have received from Judge Carol Bagley Amon. Even still Donaghy's time in prison is longer than most legal experts anticipated he would receive given his cooperation with federal authorities. Generally courts are more lenient in situations such as Donaghy's when his cooperation helped to lead to the sentencing of co-conspirators. Of course legal experts are generally lawyers who don't want to practice law anymore so take whatever they say with a healthy dose of skepticism. On the other hand lawyers who don't want to practice the law anymore are also the sanest of lawyers, so perhaps their opinions are more valid. Hell if I know. I'm a lawyer but I'm far from an expert in anything. Regardless, Donaghy will have to serve at least 85% of his sentence before being eligible for parole and upon his release from prison he will be under a three-year supervised program to monitor his gambling addiction. Now that the sentencing of Donaghy is complete, the more interesting question becomes how quickly the NBA can move to put this incident behind them. Is the Donaghy case going to fester or will it quickly disappear from media coverage like good old Mike Vick did for the NFL? Much will depend on Donaghy himself. Now that he's been sentenced and is serving his time, will he feel freer to expose NBA hypocrisy when it comes to gambling? Generally attorneys advise their clients to stay silent until the sentencing in the belief that silence leads to lighter sentences than defiance does. Now that the sentencing has come and gone, does Donaghy retain any information that could make his case more than an isolated situation? Personally, now that Donaghy knows what debt he has to pay to society, I feel like this thing is just getting started. Donaghy sentenced to fifteen months in prison scandal [ESPN]