People throw the word thug around too loosely.

In discussing the NBA, the word thug is actually a sort of short hand. It refers to players (mostly, or entirely) African-American who don't exactly spend their off days signing autographs at the local children's hospital. Ask people what the league's problem is and they will drop the "t" word.

But a thug, in the more traditional sense, is someone who bullies other people in order to have their way. Who steps outside the bounds of propriety with intimidation and threats.

Like the thugs in the NBA front office.

Today we find the NBA demanding $1.4 million from Tim Donaghy, the ref who traded inside information to gamblers. This comes shortly after Donaghy filed papers alleging widespread misconduct by league officials and executives.

The NBA doesn't need $1.4 million. This is a sport where Kwame Brown makes $3.9 million a year for single digit mediocrity.

I seriously doubt the NBA ever spent a fraction of $1.4 million they claim to have sunk into investigating Donaghy's charges and corruption in the ranks of officials. The league has pretty much turned a blind eye to most anything referees have done over the years.

Joey Crawford challenges Tim Duncan to a fight one season, and is back calling crucial playoff games the next. No problem. The Sacramento-LA playoff game in 2005 that smelled worse than a fixed prize fight? Never looked into. A college study that found patterns of point spread manipulation late in games? Denied as faulty methodology.

If the league didn't conduct a serious inquiry, what's the $1.4 million request for? As thugs do, Daniel Stern's goons in suits are trying to shut up someone who knows too much. In this case Donaghy. And send a message to any of the league's other officials to keep quiet or risk financial ruination.

Actually, it's $1,400,750. The NBA issued a separate demand for $750 to pay for the shoes the league provided Donaghy. See, that's another thing about thugs. They tend to be petty and try to rub people's noses into the ground to make a point.

Then there is Seattle.

Daniel Stern's personal touch of thuggery was his direct involvement in trying to extort a free arena from the taxpayers of Seattle. "Hand over the money or we take your team." So, the Sonics are a big part of the league's history with some of the most loyal fans in the sport?

It means nothing.

Stern believed he could bully and threaten Seattle into handing over the keys to a new arena to the Sonics new ownership, with minimal financial exposure by the new owners. New owners who just so happened to be from Oklahoma.

Now what were the odds? The league approved as the new owners of the Sonics a business leader in Oklahoma City who was active in trying to get the NBA to locate a franchise there.

Coincidence? No, a message. The message being the league was going to be given a free building or would move to Oklahoma, lease or not. The NBA is now in court trying, in a heavy handed, thuggish way to rip the Sonics away from Seattle before the arena contract says it's time to go.

There is a line I like in an old Woody Guthrie song called "Pretty Boy Floyd the Outlaw". It says, simply, "Some will rob you with a six gun, and some with a fountain pen."

The Stern gang won't shower money on strippers, or get stopped at 3 a.m. with residue in the ash tray and automatic weapons under the front seat. But make no mistake about it, the real thugs in the NBA are on Fifth Avenue in New York.

And it's time for the NBA owners to do something about them.