Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, then you're fully aware that Tim Donaghy has made the claim that Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals between the Sacramento Kings and the LA Lakers was fixed in the Lakers' favor to force a Game 7 ratings bonanza.

It's a pretty bold claim to say the least.

Naturally David Stern immediately went into damage control mode after Donaghy's claims were released:

"He's a singing, cooperating witness who is trying to get as light a sentence as he can," Stern said. "He turned on basically all of his colleagues in an attempt to demonstrate that he is not the only one who engaged in criminal activity. The U.S. attorney's office, the FBI, have fully investigated it, and Mr. Donaghy is the only one who is guilty of a crime. And he will be sentenced for that crime regardless of the desperate attempts to implicate as many people as he can."

And there are plenty of people who agree with Stern, that Donaghy is trying to drag people down while attempting to get a lighter sentence.

But I'm not so sure that means Donaghy isn't telling the truth.

The fact of the matter is that over the course of human history, many whistle blowers haven't exactly had the purest of hearts. Sure, we'd like the people who inform us of things like massive political corruption or fixed NBA games to be upstanding do-gooders. But that's almost never the case.

Most often, whistle blowers expose a major scandal for one of two reasons: revenge or the threat of punishment. And sometimes, like in Donaghy's case, it's a bit of both.

And we only have to go back a few months to the McNamee and Clemens saga to see how this works. McNamee was the shifty, slimeball trainer making up stories for the Feds to get a shorter sentence while Clemens was the superstar hurler who - while steroid allegations had dogged him a bit through the years - was more or less given the benefit of the doubt. But McNamee kept talking, Clemens kept denying, and pretty soon, McNamee was right about pretty much everything, and Clemens had become the total slimeball.

And there are plenty of other examples of whistle blowers not having the purest of intentions. The most famous here in America is Deep Throat, aka Mark Felt, who basically took down the Nixon Administration because he was mad Nixon made another guy the head of the FBI.

Does that diminish what Felt did? Not in my mind. He still took down one of the most corrupt administrations in US history.

The point is that just because Donaghy is in serious trouble and trying to reduce his sentence, that doesn't mean he's a liar. Besides, why would he lie? He'll get charged with perjury if he's lying, which will only hurt him more.

In my mind, nothing Stern or anyone else says will change my mind about Donaghy's claims. I watched Game 6 with two friends back in 2002 from start to finish. There wasn't a doubt in our minds that game had been fixed for the Lakers. Just to recap, there were 27 4th quarter free throws for the Lakers. The Kings "committed" a ridiculous 31 personal fouls during the game. Almost every single Kings player was in foul trouble, including Chris "I hate contact" Webber. And to top it all off, the Lakers won by a slim 4 points.

It's pretty simple to me. Donaghy is telling the truth, even if he isn't the type of person we'd necessarily like to hear it from.