NBA Insider with Ken Berger

If it is any consolation to David Stern, his news conference Tuesday didn’t spend much time on the front burner.

By the time I got stuck in traffic on the LIE, less than two hours after Stern finished speaking, the breathlessly anticipated media event already had been bumped out of the leadoff spot in sports talk radio updates by another circus act – a news conference scheduled for later in the day by Falcons owner Arthur Blank to discuss horrific dog-fighting charges against NFL quarterback Michael Vick.

The shelf life of sports scandals isn’t what it used to be.

A lot of our readers post comments on Newsday stories online. Stern should take solace from the fact that when I checked at one point Tuesday afternoon, there were five comments on my breaking story about Stern and 298 comments on our story about Lindsay Lohan getting arrested again.

If LiLo were a referee, maybe more people would’ve watched the NBA Finals.

This isolated, unscientific poll of reader interest could be good or bad for the NBA. On one hand, sports fans and the public in general get bored with scandalous news a lot faster than ever before. But if the lack of online chatter about the NBA referee scandal Tuesday was any indication, Stern’s league may brushing up against an enemy even worse than Donaghy.

Apathy.

When interest wanes, there are no more customers. When there are no more customers, there is no more sport.

So what happens next? Donaghy now isn’t expected to surrender until sometime next week, so the scandal probably will die down for a few days. If and when Donaghy or his attorney speaks publicly, there will be more stories, more speculation, and more facts about what actually happened here and how widespread it was.

By that time, Lohan might have gotten arrested again or Britney Spears might have been caught engaging in some new form of bizarre behavior. In the court of public interest, rampaging starlets beat white-collar criminals 99 times out of 100 – although there is no official Vegas line on that. But maybe there should be one on how many days its takes the sporting public to completely forget that Tim Donaghy ever existed.

Whether that is good or bad for Stern and his league is even money at the moment.