BASKETBALL AND BOXING AND MEN WITH THE MIKES

The sports fan speaketh . . . .

Basketball is ideally constructed for TV: Fast action. The world’s best, most electrifying athletes. Excitable crowds. A playing area small enough to be contained by the screen and covered by a few well-placed cameras that give the TV audience extraordinary views.

No wonder that the NBA regular season ratings and overall playoff ratings to date on CBS both improved 2% in 1985. But ratings for the initial playoff games were drastically down. Why?

One reason is that some of the earlier games were scheduled on Saturdays, traditionally a bad day for pro sports (excluding baseball), according to Ted Shaker, executive producer of the NBA telecasts on CBS. Another is the large number of audience-boring blowouts, says Shaker.

Still another is the playoff system. So many teams jammed the playoffs that the playoffs seemed less special. A team would have to have bubonic plague not to qualify.

A different matter, though, is the championship series matching the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics. Even Monday’s first-game Boston blowout of the Lakers was great fun for a while, if only because the intensity level was so high and the performances by the Celtics so skilled.

As it has all season, the CBS broadcast team of Dick Stockton and Tom Heinsohn performed well too. Stockton has always been a smooth and competent pro. But it took Heinsohn, a former Celtics coach and player, all of last year to evolve in the booth, and he still occasionally has instinctive lapses of Celticmania.

Here he was commenting during Monday’s game on the prospect of Boston center Robert Parish tiring after a fast start: “I tell you that really concerns me . . . for the Celtics.” Oh, for the Celtics .

The CBS superstar in the booth for earlier playoff games, meanwhile, was benched for the Lakers/Celtics series. He is New York Knicks coach Hubie Brown, who was at his slamming, jamming Hubiest during his playoff stint with Brent Musburger. If voices could kill. . . .

Not only was Brown informative, he also gave you distinctively brash and brawny commentary. It was like opening a window and letting in a fresh . . . tornado.

Brown may not be available to CBS for next season’s playoffs. That’s because his Knicks have the rights to Patrick Ewing, the dominant Georgetown center and top draft pick in the NBA. And Ewing may get the Knicks into the playoffs.

The talk is that Ewing’s presence also will enhance the NBA’s TV appeal and increase its bargaining position when its present contract with CBS expires.

Alongside NBA scoring champ Bernard King, Ewing will give the Knicks the kind of TV charisma that rookie Michael Jordan gave the Chicago Bulls this season.

CBS carried two Knicks games this season. Look for that to jump next season. Yet if the NBA is expecting Ewing to single-handedly lift ratings, it should heed this season’s dismal ratings of the USFL on ABC--despite the presence of the league’s so-called “savior,” Doug Flutie.

The best TV broadcast team in any sport may be working on cable at WTBS, the Atlanta super station which does a fine job with national telecasts of Atlanta Braves baseball.

Ernie Johnson, Pete Van Wieren, John Sterling and Skip Carey blend so well in alternating on TV and radio that you hardly notice when one is replaced by another.

For all viewers know, the four may be clawing at each other’s throats in the booth, but you never sense that on this side of the screen.

One of the best of the best is Carey, 46, son of the famed Harry Carey and rare sportscaster who is equally skilled (NBC’s Dick Enberg is another) at basketball and baseball.

An Atlanta Braves announcer for 10 years, Carey has a sly sense of humor, never blows the game out of proportion and is as even and unruffled on the air as his father is volatile. Carey occasionally roots for the Braves in a quiet way, but is completely objective in reporting the course of a game.

If Carey is among the very best at what he does, Ferdie Pacheco, “the fight doctor,” is among the very worst.

Pacheco may talk a lot on the air as NBC’s boxing commentator, but at least he is wrong. This is an expert analyst? Then what’s a novice?

May was a bad month for Pacheco, who unofficially scores NBC fights for viewers. First, he had Rocky Lockridge retaining his junior lightweight title. Lockridge lost a split decision.

Then he had challenger Carl (The Truth) Williams significantly ahead of champ Larry Holmes in their recent heavyweight championship bout on NBC.

So much so, in fact, that he announced at the beginning of the 14th round that Holmes would need a “Rocky Marciano finish” to pull out the fight, referring to Marciano’s come-from-behind 13th-round knockout of Jersey Joe Walcott to win the heavyweight title in 1952.

Holmes ended up winning a 15-round decision over Williams, and by a huge margin of 11 rounds to 4, according to two of three ring judges.

Though long of talk, however, Pacheco is short of memory. He was back on NBC the other day with post-fight comments about contrasting strategies employed in the corners of Williams and Holmes, who he said didn’t need much advice because “he was winning the fight.”

But not on the fight doctor’s card.