Perhaps there’s another side to the Jim Rome-David Stern story. I’ve had a few people tell me they thought the NBA Commish overreacted here and went overboard with Rome.

During his Rome show on CBS Sports Network, he discussed the now controversial radio interview with panelists Jason La Canfora of CBSSports.com and Kelly Dwyer of Yahoo! Sports. They backed Rome and disagreed with the views, including mine, that he set off Stern by asking the horribly loaded question of “Was the fix in?” regarding the New Orleans Hornets getting the No. 1 pick in the draft.

La Canfora and Dwyer thought Stern was out of line.

Dwyer took offense to Stern’s retort to Rome, bringing up the “Hey, have you stopped beating your wife” question. He said, “I don’t care if it’s the old joke, loaded question kind of thing…This is guy is 69 and has done this for a number of years. I don’t care if he was in a deli in ’61, you don’t make a joke about domestic violence.”

La Canfora said: “He’s a big boy. If you’re going to make the rounds with the national media, if you don’t think somebody is going to say, ‘Hey, you own this franchise and they got the magic ball’…I don’t think it is beyond the realm of possibility that somebody would ask that. He went off the script, went off the rails, and I’m sure he regrets it.”

Later Dwyer said: “It’s an awful answer to a legitimate question.”

Now, speaking of conspiracy theorists, as Rome said in his initial question to Stern, you might say, did you expect Dwyer and La Canfora to disagree with Rome when he’s sitting right across from them?

I’ll knock that down by saying Rome likely told them he wanted an honest appraisal, and that the veteran reporters expressed what they thought.

It’s an interesting subject, one I’m sure will keep Rome’s name out there for a while. Not a bad thing for a guy with a new TV show.

Perhaps, Rome owes Stern a note of thanks.