UP AT 6: THE NBA'S A SURVIVOR

Harry Potter ended up with Pam Beasley... WTF?

• The best way to form a coherent thought with regard to disgraced NBA ref Tim Donaghy -- who "threatens to bring down the NBA with him," as Yahoo! Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski wrote -- seems to be to refer to the 10-point "hierarchy of grief" Bill James once created for the crimes of an athlete/gambler.
  
  Donaghy, based on the allegations the FBI is investigating, might be around Level 7 ("Being complicit in the fixing of a game or other outcome, or betting against one's own team") or Level 8 ("Actually assisting in fixing a game or other outcome"). Levels 9 and 10 involve "being complicit" or "actively participating" in the fixing of a championship and no one knows if that happened here. If it did, look the hell out.
  
  This is serious stuff, but the NBA will survive. Hardcore hoops nuts just accept the game is a little rigged anyway. Superstars get all the calls. Refs carry vendettas against coaches and vice-versa. David Stern made sure the Knicks got to draft Patrick Ewing No. 1 in 1985 and he was behind Vince Carter attending his North Carolina commencement on the morning of Game 7 between the Raptors and Sixers in 2001 since it was good P.R. and also helped the big-market U.S. team's chances to making the third round of the playoffs.
  
  Donaghy, worked New Jersey's Game 6 clincher vs. the Raptors. We suspected all along there was no way a team that has Vince Carter could beat the Raptors legitimately in a playoff series.
  
  UPDATE: In all serious, Yardbarker is wondering about a Suns-Spurs game where Amare Stoudemire spent more than half the game on the bench with foul trouble.
  
  As for the Raptors and Nets, according to covers.com, Donaghy was among the top 10 refs in the league for having road teams cover the spread and for going "over" on the over/under. Both outcomes occurred that night, since the Raptors were seven-point 'dogs but lost by only one.)
• CFL: Eskimos 21, Roughriders 20. There's a sense that Riderville has a real love-hate thing going on with Kerry Joseph (and not to be left out, Andy Fantuz). Other than blowing a 19-point halftime lead, it's hard to figure out what might have caused this.
• Mirtle has a good pickup on e-mails that raise more questions over Gary Bettman's role in squelching Jim Balsillie's bid to buy the Nashville Predators.
• Our favourite Facebook group for the next couple hours: Lansdowne Park Protection Society. It was spawned in response to a Ottawa Citizen sports column that otherwise wasn't worth rebutting for risk of accidentally giving it credibility.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.