Sports for many Americans is the stream of nearly pure pleasure that flows around and over the jagged rocks that comprise much of daily life and its sometimes distressing news.

It is what you turn on for distraction at the end of a trying day. Scores -- wins or even losses -- are what you look for in the newspaper first thing in the morning for an antidote to the ever-present stories of war, disasters, indignities and the usual round of murders, robberies and accidents.

Thus, when something bad happens in sports -- particularly a piece of corruption, since some kind of fairness is supposed to be the essence of it -- it is a bit like when one finds a corner of green mold in an otherwise tasty loaf of bread. It spoils the loaf.

That is the case with the current report that a National Basketball Association referee may have been misjudging NBA games to produce outcomes that helped him win his own bets on the games. The report indicates that others may have been involved as well.

Atlanta quarterback Michael Vick and his possible involvement in dogfighting is bad enough, although that apparently involves him personally, not football directly. European cycling is rotten to the core with doping, but most Americans think the Tour de France might be a road and could care less. But a certain number of Americans watch NBA basketball. It turns out that if we wanted competition sport, we might have done better to watch World Wrestling Entertainment rather than supposedly serious NBA games.

The measures the NBA now takes to clean itself up may help, if it can shake itself out of denial, but the damage will have been considerable. That is too bad, not only for the fans, but for the honest players, coaches, and referees as well as for the disappointed fans.