Technically, I'm off from the column for a few weeks, and the blog will be less frequent, mainly when events dictate. But this event dictated it.

The last 45 minutes of David Stern's news conference today on the Tim Donaghy scandal was as riveting as anything you'll see on TV, not just during this dead time of year in sports, but any time. The first 15 or 20 minutes was hard to sort through -- the main points he made were that the NBA had questions for and about Donaghy before they were informed on June 20 that he was part of an FBI investigation into betting on games, and that he believed at this point that this was "an isolated incident.'' But it picked up dramatically once he finished filling the media in on the the background and started taking questions.

Unfortunately, he couldn't -- not didn't, couldn't -- allay any concerns that this doesn't run deeper than it has run so far, or that the league's credibility won't suffer terribly. One reporter did reference the old point-shaving scandals in college basketball in New York and other places in the 1950s, and Stern said that eventually, the game recovered and is red-hot now. But it's 50 years later, and the entire landscape of the sport changed before it took on its current popularity.

Left in the air was the true extent of the organized crime ties in this story -- Stern said there was only so much he could say about that, and did point out that he once had gotten a warning from the sports books in Vegas about questionable point spreads "20 years ago,'' and that while there was a subtle difference between legal betting in Vegas and the world of illegal betting, there was little difference in terms of how off-limits it all was in terms of officials. But there probably were more questions that could be answered by the FBI than by Stern.

He did use the term "rogue'' in describing how he felt it was only Donaghy, and that he felt the way any major institution can be victimized by a "rogue'' criminal despite all the safeguards in place (like a rogue FBI or CIA agent, or judge). He did have to acknowledge that his belief that it's only Donaghy is limited to what he knows at this very moment. That's all he can possibly know, and he didn't give a sense that he believed it did go deeper. But there's no way that can relieve any fears.

He said he was committed to being more "transparent'' about the refs, although he believed the way the NBA protected officials was not necessarily wrong, but just needed to be opened up more. Very frustrating, though, were reports that Donaghy had been questioned and disciplined for off-the-court incidents of anger and even betting. That goes to the core of one of my biggest issues with this whole thing: scrutiny and discipline of players is always and always will be painfully transparent -- in the interest of ensuring public confidence in the league's image and integrity, the NBA makes sure we know if, say, Rasheed Wallace or Ron Artest or Stephen Jackson are in any sort of trouble.

But that never is the case with officials -- they are defended relentlessly and their misdeeds protected from public view, and the heavy fines dealt out to players and executives (hello, Mark Cuban) who complain about officiating. Improving transparency shouldn't be hard when there really has been none so far; if the NBA raises it to the level of the transparency to the moves made against the players, that would be a start.

On that topic, it will bother me until the end of time that the NBA -- led by Stern, unabashedly responding to the outcry from the public, sponsors and advertisers who were just as short-sighted -- spent way, way, WAY more time worrying about the image and conduct of the players, and instituting dress codes and laying down the law after arrests and brawls, even putting a needless age limit in place, while a scandal involving an official betting on games and possibly fixing them in connecting with the mob floated right on by everybody. The players were demonized at the exact same time an official was flouting the integrity on which the game's very existence rests. Shame on all of them. The head of the players' union, by the way, was wondering the same thing, according to this column in yesterday's New York Times (subscription required). 

Also significant from today: While acknowledging the other allegations against Donaghy and the justification for allowing him to resign (Stern said he did not fire him because he did not want to play any role in compromising the FBI investigation), he did not go as far as saying he knew of evidence that games were fixed. He did not think at this point he needs to go to game film to find ways Donaghy might have compromised the game results, but he didn't rule it out, either. And he said he knows the basics of how Donaghy was able to violate the rule about officials betting on games, but didn't say how he did it.

Overall, Stern did about as well as anyone could be expected in a crisis like this, given that there really never has been a crisis like this in any other sport. Roger Goodell is still new enough that you can't guess how he'd handle something like this, but it's not a stretch to say that Bud Selig wouldn't have done 1/100th as well. Selig struggled last week to explain why he was at the ballpark in Milwaukee when Barry Bonds was playing, and he's exposed himself too many times in front of Congress to give us a reason to believe he would handle something like this well.

The start of the news conference showed us Stern as uncomfortable in a public situation as anyone has ever seen him, and I can say I've attended plenty of his news conferences and sessions over the years, the annual ones at All-Star games and the Finals, at appearances at playoff games, regular-season games at various locations, during labor negotiations and the 1999 lockout, and during controversies. I spoke to him almost too often 10 years ago when Latrell Sprewell choked P.J. Carlesimo, and that remains one of the more unpleasant situations he's ever dealt with, including the brawl in Auburn Hills. He'd never looked downright queasy the way he did in the first 15 or 20 minutes today.

The back-and-forth with the media (always a strength of his) was incredibly engaging, and showed every emotion within him: pain, frustration, anger, even occasional confidence in what had been done to prevent it even when those things had failed. At that point, he looked as if he wanted to be there, as opposed to how he'd looked at the start. He wished he didn't have to be there, but he felt he had to answer questions, so he did, reasonably well.

The truth is, though, that there was nothing he could say that would answer all the questions, because he and the league are as accountable on this as Donaghy is.