For weeks, TNT analyst David Aldridge has been delving into the state of officiating in the NBA, trying to separate the perception of the league's referees and how they do their job with the reality of it. He's heard from fans, talked to officials, debated with owners and gone straight to the top, to NBA commissioner David Stern.

Here is the second of Aldridge's three-part, in-depth examination.

I hear the whispers wherever I go and see the complaints whenever I open my e-mail. Here are a few more against the league from the pro-conspiracy/anti-refs crowd:

Call every foul. A foul in the first quarter should be a foul in the fourth quarter.

This is the Mark Cuban argument; that there should be no such thing as "putting the whistles away" in the final minutes of games. On the face of it, this is perfectly reasonable, and most likely to produce a fair outcome. It drives everyone crazy when it appears the game is officiated differently in the last minute of play because the refs don't want to influence the game's outcome. Of course, the exact opposite is true: By not making the right call, the referees are influencing the outcome. It was neither Brad Miller nor the Bulls' fault that Rajon Rondo whacked him upside the head as Miller drove the basket in the final seconds of Game 5 of the Bulls' first-round series against the Celtics in what clearly appeared to be a flagrant foul.

But Mark Wunderlich, Joe DeRosa and Sean Corbin didn't call one, a woozy Miller missed two free throws and the Bulls lost that pivotal game. The next day, the league backed them up and didn't upgrade Rondo's foul to a Flagrant 1.

Such bang-bang calls, made in real time, are part of the day-to-day lives of officials.

"Their job is to get every call right," says Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle, the president of the National Basketball Coaches' Association. "Whether it's early in the game, late in the game, preseason, the regular season or the Finals. It isn't going to be perfect. People are human. Mistakes are going to be made. When those things happen, you have to deal with them and then you move forward."

I agree. But as to the larger issue of calling every foul, I disagree.

If refs call every foul throughout 48 minutes of an NBA game, there would be three players by the end. Games would be three hours long. Each team would shoot 30-40 free throws per game.

Given the size, speed and coordination of today's NBA player -- not to mention the rules changes that have made it almost impossible to guard any skilled offensive player -- everyone on the court commits way more than six fouls during the course of a game. But the officials don't foul everyone out. They use some discretion, just like NFL refs don't call holding on every play.

If NBA refs were went strictly by the rules book, the risk of a season being decided with superstars on the bench instead of on the floor would increase dramatically. Does anyone really want that?

The refs don't call anything on LeBron and Kobe. They get away with murder.

"... It just seemed like the stars always get the calls in the NBA, and the rookies don't. Maybe I think this is why there is a conspiracy theory that the teams with the stars get favorable treatment from the refs and other people. David Stern almost seems to issue this kind of directive to the refs to call games these days ..."
-- Michael Nelson

"... We tolerate superstar calls because we have to: Kobe, Shaq, Rip. It isn't fair, and they diminish what I consider to be the greatest of all the team sports ... I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I haven't drunk the Coolaid (sp) that you have: I love the game too much to cover my eyes ..."
-- Gregory W. Pinney

"I am a diehard basketball fan on all levels, & watch the playoffs, with guys who are former players on every level except the pro level and a few who are refs on the college levels, and they see calls by the refs that favor the star players ..."
-- Chuckie Longs

Let's look at the numbers. The most accurate gauge of what players get whistled the most would seem, to me, to be average fouls called on that player per game (you can't use total fouls; those would be skewed higher for players whose teams play longer in the postseason).

Before The Finals began, 198 players on the 16 playoff teams had committed at least one foul in the postseason. Bryant had committed an average of 2.6 fouls per game, which ranked somewhere between 63rd and 70th in the league among those 198 players. The scale is because seven other players also had committed an average of 2.6 fouls in the Playoffs: Bryant's teammate, Fisher; Atlanta forward Mo Evans; San Antonio's Tony Parker and Kurt Thomas; Miami rookie guard Daequan Cook; Chicago's Kirk Hinrich and Denver's Dahntay Jones.

James had been whistled for 2.1 fouls per game, tied for 90th in the league, along with Dallas' Dirk Nowitzki and Houston's Ron Artest and Chuck Hayes.

Those averages would mean Bryant is actually about in the top third among players called for fouls in the playoffs. And James is, roughly, in the middle.

But, you may say, those numbers still could be skewed. Bryant and James are starters. Guys coming off the bench, who are playing fewer minutes, are likely to have fewer fouls called per game on them.

Fair enough. So let's limit the search to starters, and see where Bryant and James fall on that scale.

Bryant, remember, averages 2.6 fouls. So does Fisher, a starter. Atlanta's Evans comes off the bench. Parker starts for the Spurs; Thomas is a reserve. So is Miami's Cook. Hinrich is a nominal bench player but he frequently was on the floor at the ends of games for Chicago. Jones started for the Nuggets.

Starters that averaged fewer than 2.6 fouls per game entering the Finals included Boston's Ray Allen, Orlando's Rafer Alston and Portland's Brandon Roy (each averaging 2.5 fouls called per game). At 2.4 fouls: Houston's Shane Battier, the Mavericks' Josh Howard and Jason Kidd and Denver's Chauncey Billups. No one had averaged 2.3 fouls per game entering the Finals. At 2.2: the Spurs' Tim Duncan, Atlanta's Joe Johnson and Houston's Aaron Brooks. Nowitzki and Artest, as noted above, checked in at 2.1 fouls per game with James. Below James, at an even 2 fouls per game were the Spurs' starters Matt Bonner, Roger Mason and Bruce Bowen and Cleveland's Delonte West. Orlando's Courtney Lee had averaged 1.9 fouls per game entering the Finals. The Magic's Rashard Lewis and Dallas' sixth-man-in-name only Jason Terry were at 1.8 fouls. New Orleans' Chris Paul averaged 1.6. The 76ers' Andre Iguodala was at 1.5. And Detroit's Tayshaun Prince averaged just 1 foul per game in Detroit's first-round series.

One NBA head coach -- let's call him Coach A, because, obviously, I can't give you his real name -- thinks that if referees show any bias, it's not toward the superstars but toward young players.

"I think the longer you play, the more (officials) know how you play," coach A says. "So that's the way you're officiated. (Young players) don't get the benefit of the doubt because the referees don't know their game."

Bottom line: A lot of starters in the postseason were whistled for as many or fewer fouls per game than Bryant and James, and that wouldn't be the case if Bryant and James "got every call." And bigger than any stats is this: Bryant and James are both excellent defensive players, who use their feet, read angles and hustle. They are on teams that play defense without fouling, which would help explain why so many of their teammates are on the list with them. (It's no surprise to find so many Spurs on this list, is it? I wrote about San Antonio's philosophy of not fouling on defense before the Playoffs began.)

At the other end of the court, are there some phantom calls against Bryant's and James's defenders? Sure. But they also get fouled a lot because they're unstoppable offensive forces. Once James gets his shoulders past you, you're done. The only way to stop him from dunking is to foul him, and foul him hard. Bryant's footwork is impeccable, and he's a crafty veteran who, like Allen Iverson and Billups and Gilbert Arenas and others, knows how to draw contact and get to the line.

Officiating should be transparent, and it's not.

I think this means you expect officials to be held accountable when they make mistakes, and that they should be replaced if they have a history of making mistakes.

But when Mark Wunderlich blew that call in Game 3 of Mavericks-Nuggets on May 9, when the Mavericks' Wright tried to give an intentional foul on Anthony in the final seconds, with Dallas up two and with a foul to give, and Wunderlich didn't blow the whistle, and Anthony drained the game-winning 3-pointer, it took the league only two hours to release a statement acknowledging that Wunderlich blew it.

"At the end of the Dallas-Denver game this evening, the officials missed an intentional foul committed by Antoine Wright on Carmelo Anthony, just prior to Anthony's three-point basket," the NBA's president of league and basketball operations, Joel Litvin, wrote.

That's pretty transparent to me. And it was pretty transparent to Carlisle -- who classily did not hang Wunderlich out to dry afterward.

Others disagreed, saying it was worse that the league admitted its refs blew the call.

"People can argue whether that was a good thing," Carlisle said. "But any time you put truth and honesty first, I just can't see where that could ever be a bad thing."

Cuban, whose ongoing pressure over the years on the league to improve its officiating and grading procedures has led to many innovations, had advocated for years that a person be brought from the outside to supervise the officials -- someone who wasn't a former referee and not part of the various geographic cliques that dominate the referee ranks. The hiring of General Johnson has assuaged many of Cuban's concerns about that supervisory position.

The Mavs' owner also thinks much of the very transparency fans seek in officials already is in place. That is why, in part, conspiracy theories take hold.

"The reality," Cuban wrote to me via e-mail, "is that it would be very, very easy although time-consuming for any media outlet or blogger to go through the calls of any and every game and come to their own conclusions. I think you should do just that David."

Bill Simmons wrote an impassioned critique of the officials on ESPN.com a few weeks ago. Simmons cares deeply about the NBA, writes very well and very funny, and has a historical understanding of the game and how it's evolved. Anyone who likes pro basketball as much as he does is OK with me.

But a big part of his column was an assertion that the league takes way too long to replace its officials, some of whom are now in their 60s. Surely, Simmons wrote (and I'm paraphrasing here), the reactions and reflexes of refs with that much mileage have to be slower than they were when those guys were in their 30s. And couldn't that explain some of the poor calls we're seeing?

I hold in my hand the 2005-2006 NBA Officials Media Guide. In it is the name of each of the 63 refs that worked NBA regular season games that season, along with six that only worked preseason games.

In my other hand I hold the 2008-2009 NBA Officials Media Guide. Also with the names of the 61 refs that worked NBA regular season games this season, along with five that worked only preseason games. (Two fewer full-time refs; one fewer preseason ref than three years ago? I dunno ... the recession?)

Seven referees that worked games three years ago are gone from the 2008-09 staff. One is Donaghy. We know what happened there. But there are six others who are gone as well. Six refs replaced, for one reason or another, out of 63. That's 9.5 percent of the total workforce turned over in three years. Is that not a reasonable rate of replacement? Is it reasonable to assume that that percentage of the workforce was the least able to continue officiating at a professional level, whether it was because of age, injury, retirement, or whatever?

Does that mean the other refs are beyond reproach? Of course not. Nor does it mean that they aren't susceptible to blowing calls, making poor decisions or that they could, possibly, be up to something more sinister. The point I'm trying to make is that there is a fairly regular turnover of officials (and three more -- Luis Grillo, Jim Clark and Jack Nies -- will be retiring after the Finals), and if the pool of remaining refs is older, perhaps it's because they, with more experience, call a better, cleaner, more consistent game.

Or, maybe not. It's just an opinion.

Wunderlich, who blew the call in the Mavericks-Nuggets game and who was one of the officials that didn't call a flagrant on Rondo against Miller, is 50 years old. If you're 50 and can run up and down a basketball court for two hours, four times a week, seven or eight months out of the year, for 18 years, like Wunderlich, you're in way better shape than I am.

Lakers-Kings, 2002. Lakers-Kings, 2002. Lakers-Kings, 2002 ...

In large part because of Donaghy's allegations, fans point to this Western Conference finals series -- in particular, Game 6 of that series, with the Kings up 3-2 -- as prima facie evidence of conspiracy. In Game 6, the Lakers shot 27 free throws in the fourth quarter, following a series of dubious foul calls that went against the Kings, and went on to win that game and Game 7 in Sacramento. Afterward, the Kings hinted darkly about forces beyond their control that altered the outcome.

Last year, while awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to conspiring with gamblers and giving them information about refereeing crews, Donaghy claimed to federal officials that the league had instructed its referees to "manipulate" games in order to "boost ticket sales and television ratings," and cited the 2002 Lakers-Kings game among his examples. Donaghy claimed that he learned from one of the three refs working that game that that official and another ref working the game "wanted to extend the series to seven games," and would presumably do so by helping the Lakers as much as possible.

"... After the second time the Lakers beat the Kings (with help from the officials) in the western conference finals I swore off nba basketball (i have no allegiance to the Kings). I just could not watch the product that the nba was putting out there ... I can't believe that I was the only person to be outraged by what i saw of the officiating (conspiracy or not). I can't be the only person that was outraged enough to (not) waste my time with watching the following years ..."
-- Donovan Weber

"... Real good article, but you don't address the one fact on fans' mind: what about Donnelly (sp), the ref who was convicted, wasn't he, of in fact rigging games? (just to beat Vegas spreads, but still, it's corrupt refs.) ...what's the real scoop on that whole scandal, and tell us why should we have confidence in the refs now? Has the league changed anything or just covered their butts?"
-- Gabe Scott

Donaghy's accusations, of course, have been categorically denied by the officials working the games: Ted Bernhardt (who has since retired), Dick Bavetta and Bob Delaney. And, of course, the league has dismissed his accusations as those of an admitted felon who was looking to, perhaps, cut a deal before sentencing. (Donaghy was subsequently sentenced to two 15-month jail terms, to be served concurrently, for taking money from the gamblers with whom he provided inside information and tips.)

Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference finals troubles me more than any game I've seen or covered in 22 years of being an NBA reporter. I was there. It didn't make any sense. The calls were ... weird. But other than Donaghy's accusations, there's just no proof that anything was amiss other than three referees having a tough night. No one has stepped forward to back Donaghy up.

Three inquiries -- the Pedowitz Report, and separate investigations by the FBI and Justice Department -- have found no basis for his claims. People have been interviewed and given depositions, under oath. Lying to the Feds is, I'm pretty sure, a felony. But if anyone has any information to the contrary, you know how to reach me--daldridgetnt@gmail.com.

I asked Stern if all the damage that could be done by Donaghy had been done.

"We've had this great year," Stern said. "I think our fans believe that our referees want to do the best possible job ... we develop them with statistics and video and the like. It's really quite a system. And over time, people will come to understand -- the people that are willing to understand -- that it's the best system that's ever been developed in professional sports for the recruitment and development of referees."

NEXT: What's wrong and how to fix it.

PART I: Conspiracy charges hard to swallow.