Today's release of the Pedowitz Report -- which, among other things, backed up the league's assertion that Tim Donaghy was the only one doing what he was doing -- prompted David Stern to take questions from the media via conference call. Here were some of the hightlights:

- The question was asked that if the report found that referees were not manipulating the outcomes of games, how were they able to win between 60 and 70% of their wagers? Stern answered simply, "I don't know," then questioned the reporter on that statistic. He added that he hadn't seen those numbers and that he didn't know if that was accurate. But he guessed that if you start by guessing and you're at 50-50, any additional piece of inside information would be likely to increase your odds of guessing correctly.

- Speaking of inside information, that was the reason the commissioner gave for implementing the game-day release of the names of which officials would be working which games. He said that the more information that's available publicly, the less of a gambler's advantage there is, because there would be almost no inside information anymore. Stern stated that the "gambler's edge would be blunted" by the release of more public information.

Something we touched on briefly in discussing the explanation for the 130 phone calls between NBA referees Tim Donaghy and Scott Foster was the boredom of life on the road. In the independent report on the NBA's referee program, Lawrence Pedowitz goes into a fair bit of detail about the lonely nature of the job.

[M]uch of a referee's life involves travel, and travel involves a great deal of waiting time, so Foster often makes calls to "kill time." Foster is a creature of habit and a basketball and sports junkie. When he is on the road, he works out every morning at 10:00 a.m. He is also an early riser, which means that he has several hours to kill every morning. [...]

Referees have more time on their hands in the afternoon before a night game. Foster described this time as often boring and lonely, because referees rarely spend it together. Therefore, Foster usually returns to his hotel room after lunch and makes more calls to fellow referees. [...] The excitement of officiating an NBA game in the evening typically leaves him "wired" and unable to sleep right away when he gets back to his hotel room after the game, often after midnight. Because it is often too late at night to call his family, Foster calls his fellow referees to discuss the games they have just officiated.

Scott Foster needs a hobby he can take on the road. Online poker? Erm ... maybe not. The league should include some fix for this problem in its restructuring of the referee program. Why not hire a little buddy to hang out with and entertain each ref? Or give the refs supplemental jobs, like transcribing Gilbert Arenas' blog posts. Keep these guys busy. We all know an idle mind is the devil's playground.

In echoing the NBA's stance that Tim Donaghy was a "rogue, isolated criminal," Lawrence Pedowitz's team was forced to explain away some rather suspicious findings from a summer investigation of referee Scott Foster's call records.

The report from FOX Sports found that Donaghy called Foster more than 130 times over a six-month period, 10 times more than he had phoned any other co-worker. Worse, most of the calls lasted less than two minutes, and many of them preceded calls to Donaghy's betting buddies.

How did Pedowitz explain the odd behavior? By noting the long friendship between Foster and Donaghy and detailing how so many short calls could show up in records:

Foster told us that he frequently calls other referees and either hangs up when the call goes to voicemail or leaves a short voicemail message, and that other referees do the same when calling Foster. Foster's cell phone service agreement, which appears to be typical for cell phone carriers, provides that a call begins as soon as the phone being called rings, and a call as short as one second is recorded as a one-minute call. If the phone rings five or six times and the caller then leaves a message, it is likely that the call will last over one minute and will be recorded as a two-minute call. Therefore, it seems likely that many of Donaghy's short calls to Foster were in fact instances in which Donaghy and Foster did not speak to each other.

So basically, Foster never answers his phone. The report also discusses how lonely life as a referee can be, and notes that talking with other refs is a way to relieve boredom.

The lack of interest in Foster's involvement by the league, the FBI, federal prosecutors, and basically every media entity save for FOX ... that has also served to strengthen the skepticism of Foster's involvement. And while little the league has come up with in its defense has gained much public traction, it seems like this particular explanation could stick.

Everyone's been waiting for the independent report on the NBA's referee program from former federal prosecutor Lawrence Pedowitz. It's out -- big ol' PDF file here, NBA press release here. The major hook Pedowitz offers: Tim Donaghy's allegations that other referees and the league conspired to "fix" games to extend playoff series are without merit. From the report:

We have discovered no information suggesting that any NBA referee other than Tim Donaghy has bet on NBA games or leaked confidential NBA information to gamblers. In this connection, we reviewed a suggestion that referee Scott Foster was somehow involved in Donaghy's conspiracy (a suggestion raised in a press report about Donaghy's phone records) and found it to be meritless.

If you'll recall, a FOX Sports report over the summer raised suspicion of Foster when phone records revealed how often he and Donaghy spoke on game days ... and how often those calls were followed by calls between Donaghy and his gambling connections. An analysis of Foster's called games also indicated funny business.

Pedowitz also finds no evidence that Donaghy made calls to affect games he bet on, a claim backed up by federal prosecutors who pinched the ref. The report does offer recommendations to improve the NBA ref program, but to be honest they aren't very strong and have little in the way of public outreach or transparency for the fans.

Basically, the report backs the NBA's line that the hiring of a new oversight guy will fix everything, and that really folks, there's nothing to see here. I have a hard time believing the paying public will buy it.

The best part? Even David Stern agrees! Kudos to Basketbawful (via Sactown Royalty) for finding this gem, which was produced for Vlade's Humanitarian Organization Divac, a worthy organization that provides resources for refugees.

Remember when David Stern tried to introduce the NBA to the brave new world of synthetic microfiber balls? It didn't end well. After players complained non-stop the first two months of the season, Stern was forced into making an unprecedented decision to switch equipment mid-season.

But even while throwing his players a bone, Stern didn't completely give up hope, instead moving his experiment to the D-League, which used several versions of the synthetic ball in hopes of finding a model that could be deemed an acceptable replacement. How did the experiment go? Apparently, not so great. From ESPN's Ric Bucher:

The NBA will use leather basketballs in its developmental league next season, temporarily ending its attempts to re-introduce a composite ball at the NBA level, a league official has confirmed.

"We are committed to leather for the foreseeable future," said league spokesman Tim Frank. "We just realized leather is what our guys wanted."

You can now exhale, old school NBA traditionalists. Microfiber will receive no second act. Long live leather.

Here's original footage from TBS Sports covering the 1987 draft. Just how long ago was 1987? Well, I was about to enter the third grade, the NBA had only 23 teams, David Stern still had more pepper than salt in his hair and the draft lasted seven rounds.

At 9:25 minutes, the video is long, but once you get past the ridiculously cheesy intro, it's worth it, from the unintentional humor of Patrick Ewing's blatant goal-tending "highlight" (1:05) to the shots of Reggie and sister Cheryl shooting hoops in his backyard (6:50).

Kudos to YouTube user 1987Hawkeyes, who also posted the entire first round. Seriously, it's like cracking open a time capsule, going back to a time when drafting Dennis Hopson (3rd overall) over Scottie Pippen (5th) and Reggie Miller (11th) actually made sense.

The NBA has a lot to gain by finding the next Yao Ming or Yi Jianlian -- who wouldn't be interested in capturing the attention of a billion potential customers? But instead of just biding its time and hoping the next Chinese sensation washes up on US soil, the league is taking a proactive approach:

Stern said NBA China is in an "ongoing dialogue" with Chinese authorities about installing 800,000 baskets in villages across this sprawling country. The NBA also hopes to be involved with a Chinese professional league. But Stern balked at comparisons with the NBA's Development League.

"That would be a separate league that would be NBA-affiliated or NBA-sponsored, but it would be independent," Stern said. "And it would just sign players. For a very long time to come it would be at a lower scale than the NBA. But as the sport develops in China, and as more players around the world recognize the opportunities of playing in China, we see that league growing and strengthening."

The NBA is already quite popular in China -- members of the Redeem Team have been mobbed everywhere they go -- so it's possible that an investment in Chinese basketball at the grassroots level now will pay huge dividends down the road. Right now, it's still unclear if this league would compete with the already existing Chinese Basketball Association (or it's second division, the Chinese Basketball League).

Just like every other company who does business in China, the NBA can get more bang for its buck by outsourcing its player development. The most a player can earn in the D-League is $32,000. The average income for people living in cities and towns in China, on the other hand, is just 25,000 yuan, or $3,643 in US dollars. In other words, for the cost of one D-League payroll, the NBA could probably finance the entire Chinese league. It makes too much sense not to consider.

Jose Calderon tried to explain Team Spain's controversial slant-eyed pose as a "somewhat loving" gesture of respect. It's a laughably weak explanation, but so far, it's worked ... at least when you consider that the NBA has yet to issue any kind of reprimand or suggestion of possible future punishment.

Can you imagine David Stern quietly accepting that lame excuse had Carmelo Anthony or Kobe Bryant pulled a stunt like that? And yet, despite the fact that four NBA players (veterans Calderon and Pau Gasol, as well as soon-to-be rookies Marc Gasol and Rudy Fernandez) took part in the offending pose, Stern has been suspiciously quiet -- and Jason Kidd can smell the hypocrisy in Secaucus all the way from Beijing. From Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports:

"We would've been already thrown out of the Olympics," he told Yahoo! Sports. "At least, we wouldn't have been able to come back to the U.S. ...There would be suspensions." And for his European peers, well, Kidd suggested, "They won't do anything to them. It's a double standard."

The photo shoot may have taken place in Spain for an advertisement that ran in a Spanish newspaper featuring players wearing Spanish uniforms, but as Wojo correctly explains, NBA players "are always on the clock."

I'm not sure the NBA can justify handing out actual suspensions (after a Eurobasket game last summer, Darko Milicic ranted to reporters about wanting to rape the referees' mothers and daughters and escaped with a mere verbal reprimand from the Grizzlies), but at the very least, the NBA needs to make some kind of official statement.

Previously on FanHouse:
Spaniards Meant the Slant-Eyed Photo to Be 'Loving'
Spanish Team Should Be Prepared to Get Called Into Principal's Office

The New York Daily News has a wild set of quotes from retired FBI special agent Philip Scala, who led the team which uncovered the Tim Donaghy betting scandal (as well as a number of other profile cases involving things like Gotti and al Qaeda). Scala discusses a talk he had with Donaghy following the ref's indirect but incendiary statements about Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals being fixed.

"Donaghy, for some reason, looked up to me," Scala said. "He came to me one day and said, 'It means a lot to me if you could answer this question: Do you believe that I've told the truth?' I told him, 'I believe you.' ... Donaghy told us the truth."

As someone who is not an elite interrogator, I have no idea if there's some greater narrative in or purpose of Scala's belief of Donaghy's accusations. I imagine David Stern will ignore this story completely -- he has been begging for Donaghy to disappear into a cell for a few years, something that will happen very soon.

But Stern may not be able to ignore it forever. Scala tells the Daily News he has started up a private investigation firm focused on uncovering sports corruption. Good news for fans, possibly bad news for the NBA (and maybe Scott Foster) ... if Donaghy really was telling the truth.