In Vegas, NBA ref’s plea felt on the court and in the books

LAS VEGAS -- Tim Donaghy didn’t come to Las Vegas to place his bets. He never frequented the sports book at Caesars Palace or hung around with the wise guys before they blew up the old Stardust.

If he had, someone might have figured him out before he got in too deep.

Donaghy did his business back East, dealing with guys with nicknames like “Baba” and “Sheep,” the kind of guys you see in the back row at the local strip club or spending way too much time in the corner booth at a crummy diner.

They have nicknames in Vegas, too, but it’s not the same anymore. Donaghy wouldn’t have lasted long in the old Vegas, because the weak never did. Their bad habits eventually did them in, just as Donaghy’s gambling addiction ended his run.

If anything, the NBA referee would have been pitied. There’s not a lot of upside selling yourself for $5,000 a game, especially when getting caught means a $500,000 fine and possibly 25 years in prison.

There’s not much of the old Vegas left anymore. The mob has left for more lucrative places, and any casino more than 20 years old has been imploded. Everything is glitzy, but everything is also corporate and very middle America.

So there weren’t too many eyebrows raised when the best basketball players in the world gathered here Wednesday, not long after Donaghy pleaded guilty to betting on games some of them likely played in.

They will be here for more than two weeks, working to put together a team to win the Olympic gold medal a year from now in Beijing. Every day they’ll walk out of their hotel rooms past sports books where they can bet on anything from the next major fight to who will win the NBA championship next season.

And no one is terribly worried about them committing some nefarious act.

Amare Stoudemire isn’t going to put down a wad of bills on the Phoenix Suns to win it all next year at 4-1 odds. And Kobe Bryant won’t be tempted to bet on his Lakers even if he can win $3,000 on every $100 he wagers if they should go all the way.

They’re so cautious they probably wouldn’t even join Charles Barkley on the $1,000-a-pull slot machines in the high-roller casino.

“A little blackjack, that’s about it,” Chauncey Billups said.

“We know our limits. We know right from wrong, what we can do and we can’t do,” Carmelo Anthony said after a scrimmage in a sweaty high school gym a few miles from the Strip.

Besides the blackjack, they can hit the slot machines but the sports book is strictly off limits. And the players don’t need any special NBA directives to remind them of that.

“They know and they don’t come in here,” said John Avello, who heads the sports book operation at the Wynn hotel-casino, where many members of the USA Basketball team are staying. “For the most part they know that to be in a sports book, to even think about wagering on a game, is off limits.”

At the books, oddsmakers are still going over games from last season that Donaghy refereed, hoping to make sense of any shifts in the point spread that may have come about because of his involvement. So far, they’re perplexed because they’ve seen nothing major, but if Donaghy is cooperating with authorities, as expected, the puzzle may soon be solved.

The money likely never made its way to Vegas anyway. Bookies on the street take cash and draw less attention, and sports books that run from Costa Rica or Antigua are there for anyone with a computer and a mouse.

That hasn’t stopped the scandal from hurting the chances of Las Vegas landing its own team because anything associated with betting is now suspect. But it also hasn’t stopped USA Basketball from running its training camp here, or FIBA from holding its regional Olympic qualifier here beginning next week.

Donaghy wasn’t the main topic of conversation among players Wednesday, though they are more than aware of the scandal.

“Honestly, I don’t think anybody’s thinking about it,” Bryant said. “Us players, we haven’t discussed it. It’s not something that’s on the radar for us. We know that the commissioner and the league and whoever else is handling the situation, they’re going to take care of it, so we don’t have much to worry about.”

They don’t need to. Because there’s plenty of worrying to go around.