“I would say, unfortunately, I know he’s on your team right now, but Rasheed Wallace was someone I don’t believe anyone cared for. Looking back, it’s probably because he’s one of the smartest players in the league. He was outspoken about how there were biases and how relationships affected the refereeing.”

“So they got mad at him because he was telling the truth about their biases?”

“Exactly.”

— Disgraced NBA official Tim Donaghy on the Dennis & Callahan program Tuesday morning.

So maybe Rasheed Wallace isn’t crazy after all.

Maybe after all of his pronouncements, all of his wild-eyed assertions that the NBA is filled with felonious floppers and all of his technical fouls, Wallace was actually right all along. Maybe he is the only honest man in the NBA, unwilling to be seduced by marketing smoke and mirrors and willing to stand on principal for the sake of truth.

Ironically, we come to this conclusion based on the unsolicited testimony of a convicted gambler and admitted liar.

“Man, he’s got problems,” Wallace said of Donaghy, who spoke to WEEI's Dennis & Callahan on Tuesday morning (click here to listen to the complete interview). “What I’ve been saying for years, what I’ve always said, there’s no way that the things that he did, he did them by himself.”

You think other officials might have been on it?

“Possibly,” Wallace said. “But when all this stuff comes out, it’s going to be like the 1950s New York City basketball scandal. When that came out, how hard it hit, how hard it hit collegiate basketball, that’s how this is going to turn out. It’s going to hit hard. I’m just glad that I’m not him.”

The truth will always set you free, and perhaps Donaghy actually is being truthful when he says that he acted alone and that he didn’t actually “fix” the outcome of games. If that’s his story and he sticks to it, then the NBA may walk away from this whole thing a little bloodied, but more or less unscathed.

If not, well, Wallace has a point. Jack Molinas will have nothing on Tim Donaghy.

Wallace has no such concerns because unfettered by convention and unwilling to be censored, he is a free man. We always knew that watching him all those years in Washington, Portland and Detroit, but after a couple of months in Boston that point has become abundantly clear.

“I’m not going to change him,” Doc Rivers said before the Celtics beat the Bucks. “I’m not going to change him with the refs and I’m not going to change the way he plays.”

He is a jump-shooting big who can be effective in the post. He is a selfless team player who seems to take technical fouls like a kid taking candy on Halloween. Once upon a time he could have dominated the league if he so chose, but he chose instead to be the consummate team player.

He would be a complex conundrum if he wasn’t so refreshingly candid and simple. Not simple as in unlearned because Wallace is obviously a very intelligent man. Simple as in basic. When he sees something is wrong he challenges it, whether it’s on the court or in the locker room breaking it down with the reporters.

This has got him into trouble with the league office on more than a few occasions, and if Donaghy is to believed, with officials in nearly every city. But he won’t stop because it’s hard to stop someone from saying what they believe, especially when they believe that they are right.

And maybe he is.

He is a work in progress as Celtic. He acknowledges that, and so does his coach. After all those years and all that time spent in the same system he is still learning.

“It’s always like that,” Wallace said. “It was like that when I first got to Detroit too, playing under Larry [Brown]. I had to learn his system coming from Portland. It’s just a part of basketball.”

After scoring 13 points on an efficient 5-for-8 shooting night, including a trio of huge 3-pointers Wallace was asked for the umpteenth time about fitting in with the Celtics system.

“It’s a good offense,” he said after scoring 13 points in a win over the Bucks. “It’s a complex offense. It’s just a matter of playing team basketball. There are times where I could take all the shots every time I touch the ball, but that’s not me. I play a team game. It will get to the point where we’re just running the offense, I’m not thinking about where I need to go. It’s not 100 percent flowmatic yet, but it’s coming.”

We can only await whatever comes next from Rasheed Wallace, because the only thing more dangerous than a lie is the truth.