By Stephen Nover

Violate our trust of pro basketball. Kill our appreciation and love of baseball. Make us sick to our stomachs.

Congratulations go out to now ex-NBA referee Tim Donaghy, Barry Bonds and Michael Vick for achieving all of the above things during the past week.

What’s worse, Donaghy allegedly fixing games, Bonds allegedly lying and cheating his way to breaking one of sport’s most hallowed records or Vick allegedly being an integral part of the fighting and killing of dogs?

I choose to write about bad guys this week. Since Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy are dead and Charles Manson is in prison, I’ll settle for Donaghy, Bonds and Vick. At least Dahmer, Gacy and Manson were and are insane. What’s the excuse for Donaghy, Bonds and Vick besides being morally bankrupt?

Things are truly rotten in sports when Bonds rates third among the miscreants in the news. There’s an excellent column in this week’s Sports Illustrated by Rick Reilly listing, tongue-in-cheek, around 15 things people can do when Bonds’ breaks Henry Aaron’s all-time home run mark.

Reilly compares celebrating this event to throwing a giant party for a bank robber as he counts his money.

Commissioner Bud Selig should follow Aaron’s lead and not attend any of Bonds’ games, nor even comment about him. This is what baseball should do when Bonds hits the record-setting homer – ignore it. Make no big deal. So should the fans and media. Just report it and leave it at that. No celebration, no commentary, nothing.

Is there anyone who likes Bonds outside of the mindless homer-worshippers in the Bay Area? If there is such a soul or two, I recommend they read Jeff Pearlman’s excellent and fair biography of Bonds titled, “Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero.” That should get them to change their minds fast.

Vick is a low-life who happens to be immensely skilled in football. If the animal cruelty charges against him are true, and I don’t doubt they are, he should do prison time. Some are turning this into a racial thing. It’s not. No race – black, white, red, yellow or whatever – has a right to do that to dogs or any living thing.

As for the NBA, I hope sanctimonious David Stern is feeling good now. One of his own, not Las Vegas, could bring down his basketball empire.

If Stern would have gone with the inevitable and tacitly accepted sports betting instead of unrealistically fighting it so much, he might have been able to uncover Donaghy’s alleged misdeeds ahead of time, or at least not been totally blindsided by them.

The last thing bookmakers want is a crooked game. They’re the first to blow the whistle, or at least call attention, to any unnatural betting patterns. This is something many politicians just don’t grasp. They should.

Here are some suggestions for Stern to save his league:

Screen and closely monitor your referees better. The more that comes out about this Donaghy fellow, the more you wonder how he could have maintained his job.

Lobby to have sports betting legalized outside of Nevada. That would kill off the Mafia influence and make betting patterns mainstream.

Set up standards for garbage time. So many times the pointspread and total are determined during the final minute when games already are won or lost. Often times an arbitrary decision by a referee at the end decides if you win or lose your wager.

Stop the randomness in these situations by ordering referees not to call fouls unless they are totally blatant, mandating that if a team is behind by more than six points it can not foul with less than 10 seconds left and restrict the winning team from trying to score a meaningless basket.

Insist on full disclosure for injuries like the NFL is trying to do.

Stern and the NBA did catch one break in this horrible referee mess. This news broke shortly after the season ended. The NBA has four months to repair the damage and gain back people’s trust. It won’t be easy.

The NBA is difficult enough for bettor’s to beat without malfeasance involved.