Stern's upcoming anti-betting dragnet rings hollow

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Six weeks have passed since NBA commissioner David Stern let us all know that he was shocked -- shocked! -- to find that gambling was going on in his league, in his initial public comments about rogue referee Tim Donaghy's criminal activity.

Not much has happened since then, other than Donaghy pleading guilty to his role in the illegal betting scheme and agreeing to turn over the names of other NBA refs who allegedly bet at golf courses, in casinos, at racetracks and in assorted football pools or March Madness brackets. None of that might rise to the level of a crime, but almost all of it would violate the league's prohibition on betting (save for some summertime wagers on the ponies or the dogs) for its officials, as laid out by Stern in late July.

Oh, wait, both sides have lawyered up in recent days, too: The NBA has signed on Lawrence Pedowitz, a former federal prosecutor, to review its gambling policies and monitoring of on-court officials, while the National Basketball Referees Association -- fresh off an annual conference in Los Angeles last weekend -- brought in Philadelphia lawyer Greg Magarity, a former chief of the criminal division and first-assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Magarity's help was enlisted because, NBRA spokesman Lamell McMorris said, the refs' union supports "any balanced and meaningful review'' conducted "without any preconceived notions or preordained outcomes.''

In other words, Magarity is around to sniff out any witch hunt or PR spin job that the league might try to pull at the referees' expense.

We probably should assume, also, that Stern has taken a few behind-the-scene steps to beef up his cadre of former FBI, CIA and Secret Service agents, along with all the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine veterans and pensioned cops already sniffing out suspicious activity among the whistle-blowers. The folks at Interpol, the Elks Club, the Guardian Angels and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth might be able to spare a few bodies as well, with help from that wire-tapping, Tony Soprano-sympathizing federal agent with the Pakistani stomach parasite. That guy needs work these days too.

In the meantime, we should all have faith in the league's gambling dragnet and take the commissioner's advice that "the NBA will be similarly accorded the benefit of the doubt based upon what we have done, what we stand for and what we pledge to continue to do.''

Remember, this is the league in which:

• Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas bet teammate DeShawn Stevenson $20,000 last season that he could make more college three-pointers one-handed than Stevenson could make from NBA range with two hands. Video of the event has been viewed about a zillion times on YouTube, and Arenas later wrote on his blog that he had been beating other teammates, too.

• Arenas got reprimanded by the NBA for making $10 bets with fans in sideline seats in March, boasting that he would make a game-winning shot in Portland. He got their e-mail addresses to pay them off and wrote about that, too, except that the NBA scrubbed the references to the bets from Arenas' blog.

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