NBA Insider with Ken Berger

Like everyone else, I would love some answers.

I would love to hear from Commissioner Stern about this little gambling/point-shaving scandal, a thorough embarrassment that has shaken the NBA.

I’d like to take a break from poring over every game Tim Donaghy refereed in the past two years to see if anything strange happened. Chances are, it did, because something strange happens in almost every NBA game – a missed call, a Rasheed Wallace meltdown, some give-and-take between superstar and official. It is part of what makes covering the NBA so entertaining, particularly in the not-so-distant past, when reporters got a courtside seat at every arena.

Whatever happened with Donaghy happened right under the noses of reporters who, even now, have the best seat among any professional sports writers. It also happened without misplacing a single hair on a single head of a single bookmaker or oddsmaker in Las Vegas, which is hard to believe.

That is why the gambling sources I have – suddenly, I have gambling sources – are warning me to be careful not to leap to conclusions. A lot of conclusions are being leapt to, such as civilization is about to be brought to its knees by a single crooked referee, but let’s be patient. The feds will let us know what they know soon enough, and then we’ll know how serious the damage is.

There is speculation about Donaghy blowing the whistle on players, team officials, and other referees. Funny, no one involved in the investigation has mentioned anything of the sort to our news-side reporter who is occasionally pitching in to help me with this story. And his information from law enforcement sources has been ironclad so far. So on that count, too, let’s wait and see.

If this scandal goes beyond Donaghy, it could bring total devastation to the NBA’s credibility. But if this is just one troubled, misguided ref, as my esteemed Tribune Co. colleague, Sam Smith, writes, we will have to turn the hysteria down a notch.

Everything is always hysterical when it comes to the NBA. Carmelo Anthony punched someone? Heavens, no! Ban him for life! Never mind that Barry Bonds is suspected of being juiced up and Michael Vick stands accused of something as disgraceful as electrocuting dogs. If those two clowns were in the NBA, the league would have folded last week.

I am told we won’t be hearing from the Commissioner today, which means that the NBA has to endure another day of every enterprising reporter in the country and beyond digging beneath every rock imaginable in search of the bottom of this story. But we won’t hit bottom until we hear the evidence the feds have in its entirety. Then, and only then, will we know how far the NBA will have to climb up to regain its credibility.

Now, excuse me while I return to researching whether Amare Stoudemire picked up two quick fouls in the second quarter of a Donaghy-officiated game that nobody remembers.