Usually during all-star weekends I?m on the sidelines trying to get the most out of the experience through a mix of TV, the Internet and print.

When the chance to actually attend the NBA All-Star Weekend in Atlanta came courtesy of my day job I figured those days were behind me.

Not so fast. Turns out being in the middle of the action doesn?t mean you know what?s going on.

I even had to read The Atlanta Journal Constitution  to find out which celebrities were at the same party. By the time the Sports Skills Challenge rolled around Saturday night I realized it would take my usual mix of media to fill in the gaps created by being on site. I heard later that some of the fans from the nosebleed seats at Phillips Arena actually left their seats to watch the slam-dunk competition on hi-def TVs.

		?At the end of the day the journalism credentials of Sports Illustrated means something," says SI.com managing editor Steve Robinson

Luckily plenty of online media outlets were working overtime to feed my needs. Among them (in addition to the hometown newspaper?s site): the intense and dense NBA.com, the newly christened SI.com -- more on that later -- and sports traffic leader ESPN.com.

One problem: I could watch ESPN SportsCenter all night but with dial-up access speeds no higher than 26.4 kbps at the hotel, I wouldn?t be doing much online while I was there.

I was in the middle of a techno wonderland -- the high-powered gathering for the NBA Technology Summit, hi-def TV feeds, a press release from Avaya bragging about a new wireless ?Event in a Box? deal with the NBA, the home of CNN Interactive -- and I was out of the loop. So what if I had a wireless PDA or a wireless card in my laptop? My subscription to Real?s broadband video service would have to wait. I couldn?t ask Jeeves if a player had ever fouled out of an NBA All-Star game. Even my cell phone sputtered.

(Luckily, my brother?s nifty new Samsung with the color digital camera was working just fine. The tall man on the left is former NBA player Dale Ellis; the blur on the right is my brother.)

Back home Monday on my own broadband network, I was able to get a much better sense of how the weekend?s various events had played online.

	Dale Ellis & Billy Kramer

I was reminded quickly of the lock rights holders have on game and event footage. ESPN could offer a plethora of coverage but very little video. Watching most of the video at NBA.com required either a subscription to the RealOne SuperPass or to the NBA?s own Inside Ticket. (Inside Ticket is $9.95 a month on its own or $14.95 with Real.)  Some grainy clips guaranteed to send viewers to the nearest broadband ISP are available as part of a Reebok sponsored micro-site.

Watching video at SI.com requires either a RealOne subscription at $9.95 a month or the CNN NewsPass for $4.95 a month/$39.95 a year. The site will experiment with free video Feb. 18 when Levi?s sponsors the live Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Party Webcast.

Gordon McLeod, the new president of Sports Illustrated Interactive, says the video experiment is part of the effort to expand the magazine brand online. McLeod?s appointment was announced earlier this month at the same time as the decision to change the name from CNNSI.com, named in conjunction with the now-defunct cable sports network, to SI.com.

One of the reasons the name lasted a year longer than the network is practical -- until recently Sports Illustrated didn?t have the rights to the si.com domain and sportsillustrated.com was too unwieldy to be the primary address. ?It?s just a very user friendly name ?SI.com,?? says McLeod.

The name switch took place Feb. 6 as visitors poured into Atlanta for the All-Star festivities.  Other sites have changed direction and gone through redesigns but this marks one of few times -- if ever -- that a major news and information site has re-branded completely. The time between the decision and the change was four weeks, enough time to prepare everyone but not enough to clean out all the references to CNNSI.com. McLeod jokes about an in-house contest to find the remainder.

It?s still part of the CNN Interactive family; note the tag line below the SI.com logo that reads ?A CNN Web Site.? The words ?Sports Illustrated? in the style of the magazine?s masthead are tucked into the logo as the site works to highlight its magazine heritage.

Says McLeod: ?I think some of our users were probably confused. Are we a news site, the news department of CNN?? Removing CNN from the site?s name avoids that confusion, but McLeod and SI.com Managing Editor Steve Robinson insist the site won?t move away from 24/7 coverage or an emphasis on news.

?It?s important for us to let people know the name change is only that,? says Robinson. ?Our relationship with CNN, which really is the 24/7component of this, that?s not changing at all.?

Robinson, who has been with the site since the its launch in 1997, doesn?t view the initial decision to go with CNNSI.com as a mistake. Including CNN in the name allowed them to train users to think of Sports Illustrated as being more than a weekly magazine.

?That logo says to people news, global coverage and 24/7. SI says sports, a smart approach to sports, analysis, wit, insight, investigations, all those things,? Robinson explains, adding: ?We?re strong enough that people are aware of us. Sports fans are very much aware that SI is in the 24/7 space.?

		Despite the flood of information from weblogs, fan sites and the like, Robinson and McLeod say the greatest competition comes from ESPN.com, CBS Sportsline and, in season, the various league sites.

By the end of this year, SI.com will sport a different look as well. Says McLeod: ?We are drastically changing the navigation process. I think you?ll get a stronger sense that it?s SI, not that you?re seeing a magazine online but you?re seeing the online home of the magazine.?

(Ironically, SI.com was one of the few sites I could manage quasi-comfortably from my slow-access hell.)

Robinson adds: ?We?ve given ourselves some time to do it right. Redesigning a Web site takes a lot. ... We?re not in a rush. I think our users would say it?s very easy to navigate (now) so we?ll take our time and get it right.

?In the meantime, I think the name change has helped us to define ourselves.?

The site isn?t a shovelware version of the magazine by any stretch. Archived content is used to produce features like the Swimsuit section and to add depth. A searchable database of covers went online last year.

Some magazine stories are posted but most of the content is separate. For instance, Dennis Erickson was named coach of the San Francisco 49ers as the magazine was hitting newsstands. SI.com was able to post two stories right away and to provide continuous coverage.

SI.com has a staff of 50 but can draw heavily on the magazine?s staff. ?The advantage for us is we can call these guys any time day or night; they?re already in the story,? says McLeod. ?They?ve been unbelievably helpful and many of them like, frankly, to get their work out on a more timely basis.?

That involvement increases the site?s aura. Robinson wants fans to think you?re ?not inside, not knowledgeable, haven?t really read the last word until you?ve come to us. We want to be a destination.?
 
Despite the flood of information from weblogs, fan sites and the like, Robinson and McLeod say the greatest competition comes from ESPN.com, CBS Sportsline and, in season, the various league sites.

Says Robinson: ?One of the fascinating things about this medium is you can get information from so many different places. ... They all have their places in this medium. At the end of the day the journalism credentials of Sports Illustrated mean something.?

		A serious fan will figure out soon enough that there is no such thing as true one-stop shopping for most sports. I couldn?t even find one for the NBA All-Star Game.

McLeod is exploring ways to leverage the brand?s value through licensing and other deals, including a soon-to-be launched exclusive eBay store. SI.com recently signed a deal with Yahoo, makes some money off fantasy leagues and sells covers through sicovercollection.com.

?We?re continuing to explore photos -- we have the best collection of sports photography in the world, color photos going back 50 years, but we want to explore all our options before placing such a valuable collection online,? he explains.

Visitors to NBA.com can buy photos now. American Express was even offering a two-for-one deal as a post-All-Star promotion. But that?s the difference between an enterprise that?s just beginning and one with half a century of history. (For more on this, see my interview with Brenda Spoonemore of NBA.com.)

NBA.com has one -- OK, two -- distinct purposes: sell the league and produce revenue. SI.com has to create one identity while protecting another, perpetuate two brands and make money, all while keeping the commercial mud away from its roots.

Does the fan care? A serious fan will figure out soon enough that there is no such thing as true one-stop shopping for most sports. I couldn?t even find one for the NBA All-Star Game.

(NHL.com comes close with a mix of free video highlight, subscriptions and 48-hour pay per view; you can even see the overtime shootout that ended the NHL All Star Game two weeks ago.)

You can get game video and audio from league sites, stats and scores from just about everyone, including non-sports sites, and photos from numerous places. Polls are ubiquitous. Within hours of the All-Star game, thousands of people had placed totally meaningless votes on everything from whether Vince Carter should have given his starting position to Michael Jordan to whether the ref who called the foul that led to a second overtime was on target. (From section 109, row m, seat 1, it sure didn?t look that way.)

Sports journalism sites offer a mix of analysis, news and features that should -- and usually do -- go far beyond what the promotional league sites have to offer. Even that line gets a little blurry as league and team sites add respected writers whose work appears with a notice that it doesn?t represent the views of the league or team.

Serious single-sport fans will want to subscribe to the premium content for those league sites much the same way we subscribe to out-of-market TV packages, like NHL Center Ice or NBA League Pass. Fans who like multiple sports and have a life beyond pucks and hoops might get enough from a subscription to RealOne with its multiple news and information services (CNN, ABCNews, Fox Sports, SI, etc.) or one of its competitors. For some, a subscription to ESPN?s Insider premium service might provide all the depth they want.

But if you want more than video highlights, odds are you?re going to have to pay -- for the access and for the high-speed data flow that makes watching worthwhile.

Staci D. Kramer is Editor at Large at Cable World and was a contributing editor to Inside.com. Based in University City, Mo., Kramer's clients have included Time, Life, the Detroit Free Press, the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Multichannel News, APBNews.com, mediainfo.com, Editor & Publisher, The Sporting News, St. Louis magazine, SI.com, Time, Life, several major papers in Canada, and numerous others. Her work has been syndicated by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, reprinted in two books and she has even co-produced a segment for "Nightline."