In my never-ending quest to get out of speeding tickets, I was shocked to find out that if you go to court to contest a ticket and the officer doesn't show up, the ticket doesn't automatically get thrown away. Why? It has to do with #1 rule of all defense attorneys: DENY, DENY, DENY.

If you get stopped and a police officer asks if you know the reason you were stopped, you should never say, "Well, I might have been speeding." The officer will then record that admission, and when you go to court to contest the ticket and the officer who issued the ticket is not there, you have almost no chance of getting the ticket bounced.

After watching NBA Commissioner David Stern's press conference where he refuted all of disgraced referee Tim Donaghy's claims of game-fixing, I couldn't help think that David Stern must know exactly what to do when he gets stopped for a speeding violation: DENY, DENY, DENY.

Donaghy's claims seem very similar to Jose Canseco's claims in his first book "Juiced" that really blew the steroid scandal wide open. Everyone we should have trusted denied that Canseco was even remotely telling the truth. We know better now.

Similarly, when watching the NBA Finals, it's almost impossible to dismiss Donaghy's allegations. Were there some highly questionable non-calls that went against the Lakers in Game 2? You bet. Did the same thing happen in Game 4 to the Celtics? Absolutely.

What those two games demonstrated is that when the refs call chintzy fouls against one team, that team becomes timid and non-aggressive. The only reason the Celtics won the game last night was because it seemed that the refs had decided that they had made enough lopsided calls in favor of the Lakers and helped them to a large enough lead that there was no way the Celtics were going to come back. To the Celtics credit, they staged the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history.

But home-cooked officiating has not been limited to this year's NBA Finals. It's occurred throughout this year's entire NBA playoff.

David Stern can deny everything, but even he has to know that it means nothing until a thorough investigation is conducted. Maybe Sen. Arlen Specter can lead it since he obviously can't seem to get off his personal agenda of destroying Bill Belichick.

In the end, my feeling about Tim Donaghy's claims are the same as they were after hearing Jose Canseco's allegations: they have the definite ring of truth.

Do I believe that referees were illegally fraternizing with players? Hell yes. They even do it on national TV during the game, so why wouldn't they do it off the court?

Do I believe that referees were receiving signed memorabilia? Yes. Do I think all of the stuff they received were bribes in return for more favorable officiating? No. I think that there are some NBA basketball players out there who are very generous and gave autographed items to the refs for their kids or godkids or nephews or nieces.

Do I believe that some NBA players and teams gave autographed items to referees as inducements? Definitely. LaDamian Tomlinson said it best when describing PatriotGate: "I guess that they live by the saying that if you ain't cheating, then you aren't trying."

Everyone is looking for an edge.

What David Stern needs to do is take a page from the NFL, conduct a thorough investigation, and then admit that referees were fixing certain games. He needs to look very carefully at Tim Donaghy's allegations and stop being a lawyer.

Denial in this case will only lead to people being as disgusted with the NBA as they are with baseball.

But then again, maybe Stern looks at Major League Baseball's record attendance record during the most recent steroid/HGH/Viagra scandal and thinks that it might just be what the NBA needs. So, he'll probably have a whole boat-load of denials ready for the near future.

It's what happens when you mix the NBA with lawyers.

Some of you might wonder what an NBA finals game and last weekend's USA vs. China women's softball game have in common. Answer: they're both jokes.

My prediction is that Game 3 is going to be a tremendous blowout by the Lakers (note: I'm a diehard Celtics fan). The reason for this is the ridiculous state of NBA officiating. People make a lot of noise about last night's game where the Celtics had 38 free throw attempts to the Lakers 10.

Folks, it doesn't matter. Were there some fouls that should have been called against the Celtics and weren't? Yes. Were there some incredibly obvious traveling calls against the Lakers that weren't called Yes. Calls are missed. But when you have a player like Leon Powe who is really attacking the basket like an incredibly hungry animal jumping for a steak, then you understand why he goes to the foul line a lot.

The ridiculous thing is that you know the officials in Game 3 are going to give the Lakers a huge advantage in foul calls. This is the current ridiculous state of affairs in the NBA. Can't we train NBA refs to just call the game and forget about where it's being played?

And how exactly are the refs supposed to call fouls when every play looks like a foul? Point guards on both teams are getting mugged and there are no calls. Ball handlers on both teams are using their free hand to constantly push back defenders and there are no calls. Palming has become part of mainstream basketball, travelling has to be egregious to get called, and as we saw from last night's game, even incredibly overt acts of travelling aren't always called. It's a joke.

Now for women's softball. I happend to watch the first part of the USA v. China match. One of the reasons is because I like Jenny Finch (the U.S. pitcher). What I saw stunned me. First, players in the field area allowes to wear no hat,  a visor, or a regular baseball hat. Both teams had a variety of headgear they were wearing in the field. What ever happened to the idea of playing and looking like a TEAM?????

The second incredibly ridiculous thing is the rule that if a coach sends in a pinch runner, it does not mean tha thte pinch runner plays the field in the next half ot he inning. Instead, the original runner reenters the game and continues. Can someone explain that rule to me?

In the end, both women's softball and the NBA finals are going to be lessons in ridiculous behavior.

P.S. letting the Lakers come back last night was terrible, especially because it was evident that Bryant found his missing stroke.

In today's world of hyperbole it's easy to lose sight of reality. Jon Lester's recent no-hitter for the Boston Red Sox (my beloved team) is a victim of sports writers across the nation who are looking to hype a story.

The facts are that Lester is a good guy who less than 2 years ago got dealt a bad hand with anaplastic large cel lymphoma. The good news is that it's one  of the few truly treatable forms of cancer and that he had the resources to receive early detection and top-quality treatment. He's a cancer survivor, but not quite in the way that a woman having undergone a double mastectomy is a cancer survivor. Lester was lucky.

If we want to call his no-hitter "heroic" as so many professional sportswriters and broadcasters have done, then let it be that way because no-hitters are rare at any level of baseball. But if someone is going to call it heroic because he is a cancer survivor, then that's ridiculous. His cancer was detected early and it's not like he had a tumor that affected the stability of his bones (e.g. an osteosarcoma).

If he had metastatic cancer that had traveled to his brain and during treatment had pitched at all, I would call that heroic. If he had an incurable form of a fast-growing cancer and pitched a no-hitter, I would label that as super-heroic. But that's not the case. He was a bit unlucky but still far luckier than most.

Let's save the word "heroic" for the firefighters who pull people out of burning buildings, for the troops who risk their lives daily in a country for people they don't even know, for the parents of kids with severe disabilities who sacrifice everything for their childern, and for the Tibetans who continue despite being repressed to great lengths. Those people risk their lives and their health for a greater good. That's as good a definition of heroic as I know. Pitching a no-hitter - cancer survivor or not - does not qualify for "heroic" status.

Thank goodness for track & field. It takes some of the heat off of MLB and Roger Clemens.

Aside from the less-than-shocking announcement that Marion Jones will get 6-months in prison for her web of deceipt, the big new is that Oscar Pistorius, a South African double-amputee sprinter, will most likely be barred from the Beijing Olympic Games.

There are many reasons to applaud this decision with the top one being that it anticipates what will happen in the future.

Pistorius was born without fibulae (the thin bone next to your shin bone) and he had both legs amputated below the knee at age 11. Therefore, he runs using special carbon fiber prosthetic legs called "Cheetah" extensions.

Pistorius is not fighting to run in the Paralympics but rather the regular Olympics.

There is some debate about the data which demonstrated that the "Cheetah" extensions give him a clear advantage over other runners who don't use that device. What is clear is that regardless of what the numbers show, he should never ever be allowed to run in the regular Olympics.

Why?

There's something called "precedent". And once that door is open, it's almost impossible to shut.

Maybe Pistorius wouldn't make the South African Olympic team for this upcoming summer. But that's not the point.

The point is that there is a good reason why no one with prosthetic limbs should ever be allowed to compete with someone who has all of their limbs: advances in the future.

It is just a matter of time before those "Cheetah" extensions give such a tremendous mechanical advantage to its user that regular runners would not be able to compete. Think about it like an Olympic swimmer having to compete against a swimmer with similar upper-body strength and arm technique but who is a double-amputee using fins for prosthetics. It wouldn't even be a close battle. The double-amputee would win every time.

How about a pitcher with an artificial arm that allows him to throw a baseball 140 miles per hour. It may seem impossible now, but it's an inevitability.

Suppose that today you allow a baseball player to compete in MLB with an artificial leg (a prosthetic below the knee). Would that player have an advantage? No. The technology hasn't advanced that point yet. But it will. And what if such a player were running to second base and slid and snapped the prosthetic in the same manner that a an athlete without prosthetics would snap a tibia or fibula. Would that player be allowed to go to the dugout and switch the broken prosthetic for a new one? Or would he have to sit out the average time that an able-bodied runner would be out with a similar injury? These are the types of questions that have to be addressed now ahead of the technological advancement. The problem is that once you let such a prosthetic-utilizing player onto the field, it will be very difficult to draw the line at which prosthetics are allowed and which are not.

Therefore, any sport at a high level should have a very simple rule: you must compete using only the same types of equipment as your competitors. If everyone else is running in shorts, shirts, socks, and sneakers, then no one else should be able to use anything else. Period.

My guess is that we're not too far away from a time when amputees using things like the "Cheetah" extensions will run faster than any able-bodies athlete. How do I know this? Because the last time I checked, if I want to travel a mile as quickly as possible, I'm going to ride a motorcycle over pedaling a bicycle. Technology wins almost every time.

Are people like Pistorius dealt an unfair hand from birth? Yes. But we shouldn't let our sympathy for his suffering cause us to overcompensate and create a lot of suffering for others. He has a place that he can compete. And one day it's entirely possible that the top 5 finishers in a Paralympic 400-meter dash will run faster than any Olympian has ever run that distance. But if the goal of banning steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs is to create a level playing field, then there's no place for limb prosthetics on a field with able-bodied athletes.

Prosthetics have as much legitimacy as steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs: only if everyone gets to use them.

The Giants-Cowboys divisional playoff game on Sunday was a fantastic game, and all of America, including Dallas fans, should be happy about the result: the Giants pulled off a shocking win.

No, I'm not a Giants fan, but they probably are the greatest overachievers this NFL season. Who deserves the credit? Well, it's complicated, but here are a few names:

1.  Tom Coughlin - if he had rested his starters for the supposedly "meaningless" season finale against the Patriots, I guarantee you that the Giants would not have gotten this far. I don't think it's a coincidence that the 4 teams remaining are all teams which had momentum heading into the postseason.

2.  Eli Manning - I've dislike him since he and his father dictated terms on draft day, but the thing is that after spending much of the season looking like a bona fide 3rd level QB, he's really improved his game since playing the Patriots.

3. The rest of the Giants - they were outgunned but they won, and they won by doing certain little things better like catching passes thrown to them, grinding it out on the ground.

4. The Patriots -if you honestly look at the way that the Giants played most of the season, you'll have to admit that they played on a completely higher plane against the Patriots. There's a saying that if you want to get better, then you have to play with better talent. I'm not saying that the Patriots get all the credit for the Giants success this post-season, rather I'm saying that had the Giants played a team like the Jets, they most likely wouldn't still be in the playoffs now. The Patriots deserve credit for bringing up the Giants game, but there's no doubt that Coughlin and his players get the lion's share of the credit for playing their starters in what should always be regarded as a meaningful game.

Here are some other thoughts about the Cowboys:

1.  Tony Romo - not a horrendous game yesterday, but he still doesn't get it. If he were a kicker or a special teams player, then no one would criticize him for dating Jessica Simpson during the season. But when he's the starting QB of one of the most visible teams in the NFL, he has to assume leadership (whether he likes it or not). Part of me thinks that if he can't handle a beautiful woman and football at the same time, then how are all the other pro players who sleep with their groupies during the season able to still perform at a high level?

Was going to Mexico a bad idea? Hell yes. It wasn't bad that he took time off to rest, because he was going to rest anyway. It's the idea that he went to another country to party with his attention-seeking girlfriend which not only rubbed the public the wrong way, but probably also several of this teammates. Tom Brady may have taken a couple of days off with Giselle in NYC, but you can be sure that his teammates knew that his mind was never far from the game.

With Romo, it seems that he wants to do things his own way while playing a team sport. Maybe he can personally separate his private life from his public one, but there are a lot of other athletes (most notably the ones on his team) who feel that there is no such separation during the playoffs. Romo has to grow up and understand this.

One other thing about Romo that really irritated me yesterday. How is it that he can grab an official and not get a flag for it? There has to be a very very clear rule in all sports that players are not allowed to grab, fondle, or bump officials.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. The problem is not that Romo is immature, rather it's that he's horny. At the start of this season he publicly said that he didn't want to continue his relationship with Carrie Underwood during the season because he just wanted to focus on football. Do you know how many Dallas fans rejoiced at that proclamation? All of them. And then he chases after Simpson? Btw, he actively pursued her and not the other way around. How is that consistent with his stated goal of focusing on football during the season?

Part of me understands it, because he's been fantasizing about having Simpson, and judging by Simpson's record, the chances of her being single at any given time are extremely small. So, maybe Romo thought he had to strike while the proverbial iron was hot.

Why couldn't Romo have waited a few weeks to go to Mexico with Simpson? Unless he has insider info that a meteor is going to strike and destroy the earth in the next week or so, Mexico will still be there. And maybe part of Jessica Simpson is happy about all this. She's been trying to jumpstart her career, and what intrigues people more than a woman who can emasculate a guy? Look at history: Helen of Troy, Liz Taylor, Yoko Ono, and Marilyn Monroe. Maybe this type of controversy is just what she wants and needs.

As for Dallas fans, all of you should be happy that your team lost. Maybe this will cause Romo to wake up and realize his role on the team. Usually people don't realize this until it's too late. But Romo still has time, although the feeling is that he's kind of like Britney Spears: there's time for redemption, but not as much as one would like.

The Giants may not be 'America's Team', but they sure sent a wake-up call to them. And maybe that will be what the Cowboys need to get past the disappointment of the past 2 seasons in the playoffs.

2.  Terrell Owens - there are things that a player can and can't say in public. T.O might be angry that Romo seemed to not show as much commitment as players like Tom Brady or Brett Favre, but there's no way he can say anything publicly, because he probably has to play with the guy next year. But you can be sure that he's going to have a few choice words for Romo.

Don't be surprised if Owens finds some way to contact the Patriots. Owens is no idiot and he's seen the way that Randy Moss has been reborn this season. Owens probably also can feel that even though Romo is still young in NFL experience, he's behind guys like Brady and Manning in terms of making sure that the game is #1. He wants to win, but he also knows that with the current makeup of the Cowboys, they don't have a great shot at winning the Super Bowl next year or even the year after.

3.  Jerry Jones - sorry Jerry, but owners should not be allowed to stand anywhere near head coaches during games. In fact, owners should not be allowed anywhere near the sidelines during the game. I might not like Mark Cuban, but at least I respect his passion for the game AND the fact that he doesn't watch games from the Mav's bench.

Some quick thoughts about the Colts-Chargers game.

1) The Chargers deserved to win. They played hard, were big underdogs going into a very noisy and hostile stadium, and they persevered. Give them their due credit.

2)  It's shocking that the Colts lost to them at home. But there are rare moments when the tide turns on a stupid play, and the Colts defensive player who slapped Chargers' kicker Keading on the shoulder pads and taunted him after he had missed a field goal should be roasted in the media.

That kind of behavior is so ridiculous that they should change the rules and assess the penalty as if it happened before the play. I was neutral about the game until that moment, and then I spent the rest of the game rooting for the Chargers.

3) As for Philip Rivers, he's another QB who has to grow up. His behavior towards the crowd while returning to the locker room and then on the sidelines at the end of the game was childish. He's getting paid a lot of money to play a game that all of the fans have paid a lot of money to witness it. The fans get to say what they want, he doesn't (at least not during the game, and especially when he's on the sidelines while his backup is winning the game).

4) Marvin Harrison's career as a top-flight receiver is finished. He's had a fantastic run, and every indication is that his knee injury was not necessarily devastating, but for an elite receiver it marks a major turning point. I think that he's such a fantastic athlete and person that he would never want anyone to know how much his knee was hurting, but the fact that he sat out so many weeks, he had to sit out much of yesterday's game, and certain dependable reports have said that his knee injury is chronic and will not heal with time is ominous for Harrison. I hope I'm wrong, because he's the type of player that every league needs as a representative of what's good in sports.