In new era, it’s ‘T’ and no sympathy

We’re not even two weeks into it but it’s clear they’ve taken the emotion out of basketball ... not to mention the actual basketball

Oh, you didn’t notice?

Of course, everything is going swimmingly for both local teams, even if that’s a surprise to some people.

Unfortunately, everyone else is in the usual turmoil with NBA Commissioner David Stern making them play with a medicine ball, at least until they roll their eyes and get thrown out.

You may have noticed a trend. I’ve always pined for the golden age of the ‘80s when the lions lay down with the lambs and everyone -- commissioners, union heads, even Lakers and Celtics or at least Magic Johnson and Larry Bird -- got along.

I don’t think we’re in any golden age anymore, Toto.

Now everyone makes way more money, is way more insufferable and the league is Controversies ‘R’ Us. Conflict is continual along well-established lines.

With its predominantly African American cast of characters, everything in the NBA tends to have a racial subtext. By convention, this is rarely acknowledged, like the elephant in the room no one talks about.

It’s not that racism has gone away as a social issue. It’s just that the problems of millionaire athletes aren’t high on the list.

Nevertheless, it exists as a state of mind with Stern as The Man. Whatever he says, no matter how well-intentioned, is resisted, as when he suggested that his players leave their guns at home after Indiana’s Stephen Jackson fired off his fusillade.

Prominent figures from past generations agreed. Boston Coach Doc Rivers noted the inherent danger of running the streets at night. Reggie Miller, a former teammate, decried Jackson’s “Wild West Show.”

However, they were drowned out as indignant players arose as one to assert their right to bear arms, sounding like an NRA rally. New Jersey’s Richard Jefferson went so far as to ask where the outrage had been when Vice President Dick Cheney winged a friend in a hunting accident.

With fame comes self-obsession. In fact, the Cheney incident got many times more coverage.

Not that Stern is always content to make suggestions. Haunted by the 2004 Auburn Hills riot, which horrified the sponsors (ka-ching!) who pay everyone’s salaries from Jackson to Stern, The Lawgivers in the league office have spared no effort.

Each fall Stern now seems to come down from the mountain like Moses with more rules, or as they call them, “points of emphasis.”

Of course, most are innocuous. The union even signed off on last season’s dress code, not that it detracted from the ensuing protest movement.

This season, they started with a new basketball that the players regarded as if it were made from the hides of greased pigs. Even if Stern didn’t dream of provoking such an outcry, it wasn’t worth fighting over, falling firmly into the realm of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Trying to refute that time-honored principle, NBA vice president Stu Jackson declared, “If it’s not broke, break it and make it better. That’s what we feel we’ve done.”

Exactly.

Unfortunately, this was only the warmup to the real controversy, the one they should have seen coming -- “zero tolerance.”

Last week as everyone, or at least the Pistons, ran around as if the sky was falling, league officials hastened to point out it was really just another of those points of emphasis. Getting the hint, the press rechristened it “hardly-any tolerance.”

I go back to the days of the giants, referees like Mendy Rudolph and Earl Strom, who took nothing from anyone, showing the way for successors like hair-trigger Joey Crawford and Steve Javie, who once ejected the Washington mascot.

On the other hand, NBA stars often carried on career-long debates with officials, such as Johnson, who argued every call without hurting the game too badly.

Cracking down inevitably was going to provoke a reaction, even if it died down, although at the two-week mark it hasn’t.

Take the Pistons (please.) They whined enough when they were on top, and going south hasn’t helped their disposition.

Worse, after trading Ben Wallace, they’re more dependent on Rasheed Wallace, who has always been bananas with referees and, with customary martyrdom, calls it “the ‘Sheed rule.”

Needing more, not less, from Rasheed, teammates pleaded with him to adjust. When he was ejected opening night, Chauncey Billups noted, “A rule is a rule.”

Wallace went scoreless in two of the Pistons’ first five games, is still railing and is now sucking teammates in too. After last week’s loss in Utah, where a technical on Rasheed led to a five-point play, mild-mannered Coach Flip Saunders snarled, “My comment was, we might as well be playing PlayStation if we’re going to take the emotions out of it.”

Of course, taking the emotion out of the game suggests that to play hard, one must attain a state in which he can tolerate no disagreement.

Unfortunately -- did you ever notice how many things in this dialogue are unfortunate? -- there really were lots of problems, like Denver’s Carmelo Anthony getting tossed in the opener for a garden-variety toss of his headband.

So the league will, indeed, have to fine-tune this, or in other words, go back to the old way.

Everyone will live happily ever after, or at least for a week or two.

mark.heisler@latimes.com