Michael Ventre

Armageddon has arrived. David Stern crawls toward the gutter, desperately searching for his last remaining shred of human dignity. Referees try to scamper through the streets in disguise, but angry rabble see through the ruse and stone them. Mark Cuban is so overwhelmed by events that he can’t even speak, although he still blogs. Allen Iverson scours skid row in hopes of assembling a posse. Bling snatchers run rampant. Kobe Bryant changes his number again.

Yes, this terrifying scenario has been on everyone’s mind lately, or at least those plugged into the NBA. The revelations that referee Tim Donaghy bet on games he worked — which he will plead guilty to on Wednesday — and may have even blown his whistle to manipulate the point spread have shattered the league. Now it’s just a dystopian wasteland, vying for television ratings with the latest Joey Buttafucco reality show and a YouTube video of an old man plucking hairs out of his nostrils.

Well, not so fast.

True, Ref-Gate is not exactly a public-relations boon. It makes the Malice at the Palace seem like a group hug on “Oprah.” Generally speaking, nobody likes a crook. But someone who did what Donaghy is accused of doing isn’t just a garden-variety scoundrel. He’s a deviant. He’s a molester of the game’s integrity. Wherever he resides after this, he should have to report to authorities as a registered sports offender.

Yet as far as everyone knows, he acted on his own. He was a lone rabid wolf. Just about everyone interviewed who knew him spoke of him lowly. In order to recruit other striped shirts into his scheme, he would have had to make friends with some of them. That seems as unlikely as Shaq leading the league in free-throw percentage.

The NBA will be fine. It is reeling now. It has been damaged. But it will recover, and life will go on as before, only presumably with a replacement for Donaghy who isn’t in debt to the mob.

And maybe everyone involved will be better off, because maybe everyone learned a good lesson.

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This is, as Stern pointed out in his press conference the other day, the worst thing to happen to the league since he became commissioner in 1984. It also comes at a time when attention spans are at their all-time shortest, and getting shorter by the minute.

Mass media moves along fiber-optic highways in nanoseconds. Stories can’t seize the stage for long because other stories are behind them, honking furiously for the right of way.

Everybody has had a chance to weigh in on the topic. Current players have expressed shock and dismay. Columnists have opined on the wreck of the foundering NBA.

In the coming weeks, more details surely will emerge about Donaghy’s scam, and bits of news will trickle out about his legal developments. But that’s it. The impact has already come and gone.

Lindsay Lohan got arrested again. Before the light from the flashbulb on her mug shot had dimmed, news broke that Britney Spears acted like a pig on a photo shoot. That’s how it works in our society. Before a story can have legs, it gets cut off at the knees by another.

Soon Kobe will speak again about whether or not he wants to be a Laker. The Kevin Garnett mystery tour will heat up. The Spurs will continue to be low-key and great. LeBron will make more commercials in an effort to catch up to Peyton Manning.

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