NBA Insider with Ken Berger

After a month of soul-searching and fear throughout the NBA that the Tim Donaghy betting scandal could bring the sport to its knees, the league appears to have gotten the best possible news this morning.

Donaghy pleaded guilty to two felonies in Brooklyn federal court, copping to charges that he provided inside information to gamblers to help them profit from bets on NBA games he was officiating.

The court documents detailing Donaghy’s guilty plea aren’t available yet, but it appears that once they are, the only smoking gun will be in Donaghy’s hand. If that’s the case, it means there was no vast referee conspiracy – only one corrupt ref.

And if that is still the case once all the legal dust settles today, then everyone from Commissioner David Stern on down at the NBA headquarters in Olympic Tower should be doing two things: breathing an enormous sigh of relief and immediately outlining the steps the NBA is taking and will continue to take to guard against such a potentially catastrophic embarrassment ever happening again.

Not knowing what details are contained in the criminal information yet to be made public, here are the questions we still need answered:

How many games did Donaghy corrupt, and which ones? Were any playoff games compromised?

Did he affect the outcome, or merely the margin of victory?

How did he avoid detection by NBA security?

Who else is he bringing down with him?

How much did gamblers pay him for his services, which according to prosecutors included providing information on officiating crews and the condition of players?

Now that the federal probe of Donaghy’s activities essentially is over, the NBA can move full-speed with its own internal probe, which should include video scrutiny of every call he made in every game he officiated during the past two seasons. But the most important questions facing the league today involve how it is going to move forward to ensure better oversight of its officials.

This will be no easy task. NBA refs already have a strained relationship at best with the league office. Even before the Donaghy scandal broke on July 20, many refs were disgruntled with the secretive nature of their performance reviews. Some had become utterly frustrated with mixed signals from the league regarding their on-court conduct – for example, being asked to suddenly enforce the so-called zero tolerance policy with regard to player conduct toward them after having been forced to take most everything the players dished out for years.

The worst-case scenario for the NBA would’ve been other referees getting caught in the feds’ net. But the worst-case scenario for the clean referees – presumably all the rest of them – is going to happen regardless. They are going to be under more scrutiny and suspicion than ever before. Every bad call is going to be scrutinized as a possibly crooked call.

I’m told Stern is likely to provide only a prepared, written statement to the vast majority of media outlets in the country today, which is disappointing. He will, however, appear on at least one national radio outlet this afternoon. Here’s hoping he is ready to come forth with his plan for making sure this never happens again.