The Votes Count : Ellis’ 27-Point Performance Rewards Seattle Fans Who Stuffed Ballot Boxes

It turned out to be The Stuff dreams are made of.

Dale Ellis wins a spot as one of the starting guards for the 39th annual National Basketball Assn. All-Star game when Seattle fans and employees stuff the ballot boxes with, they admit, upward of 60,000 votes. He beats out John Stockton of the Utah Jazz by 26,490 votes, thanks to the legal tactics.

Magic Johnson gets hurt four days before the game, and Stockton is elevated from reserve status to replace him. Stockton ends up with 17 assists and 11 points.

Ellis merely makes the folks in Seattle--those who organized ballot-stuffing gatherings and offered $50, a basketball and a gym bag to the first two people who turn in 10,000 ballots--look like political geniuses. They throw him an electoral party and he responds first by winning the three-point shot competition and $20,000 Saturday afternoon at the Summit. Then, some 24 hours, he joins the rest of the West across town at the Astrodome and contributes 27 points and six rebounds in 26 minutes during the 143-134 victory over the East.

“Pressure?” Ellis said after his first All-Star appearance. “No, this was just a fun game. There’s no pressure.”

He didn’t think it was such a fun game last season, when, en route to averaging 25.8 points a game, he was passed over in favor of San Antonio’s Alvin Robertson. Ellis was visibly upset, and that Jan. 26 night he scored 42 points to lead the SuperSonics to a victory at Sacramento.

This season, he is the NBA’s third-leading scorer, averaging 28.2 points a game. He is also No. 2 in three-point shooting and the main reason Seattle is only 3 1/2 games behind the Lakers in the Pacific Division, so a spot on the All-Star team of 1989 was undoubtedly his. Let’s just say the SuperSonics, they of the 9 1/2-hour Super Bowl-day party of stuffing five pizzas and countless ballots, guaranteed his delivery to the Astrodome.

“I just didn’t want to get my hopes up for making the All-Star team,” he said. “I just wanted to get it over with.”

“I was ready to get on with it. It was hard mentally. Once the game got started, it was easy.”

Ellis did look impatient. He opened the game--as the people’s choice starter, of course--by making six of his first seven shots, including a three-point jumper and a three-point play with the help of a free throw. He had 14 points after the first half, when the West already led, 87-59.

Then, when the East started to climb back into the game in the fourth quarter, Ellis looked like a man who wanted to avoid overtime.

At 123-116, he tipped in an Akeem Olajuwon miss, was fouled and made the free throw. That pushed the cushion back to 10 points.

His dunk with 4:56 left put the West up to a more-comfortable 130-116 edge, and his 20-foot straight-away jumper with 3:52 to play kept the lead at 14, 134-120. The East was never heard from again.

Until after the game in the locker room, that is.

“Dale Ellis and John Stockton played just as well as Karl did,” Philadelphia’s Charles Barkley said, referring to Stockton’s teammate on the Jazz, Karl Malone, who was named the game’s top player. “The MVP could have gone to either one of those guys.”

Ellis finished with 12-of-16 shooting from the field--not counting his successes in the three-point contest--and his 27 points was just one behind the game-highs of Malone and the East’s Michael Jordan.

“I wanted to play well,” Ellis said. “I always want to play well. But I tried not to put any pressure on myself, so I wanted to treat this as if it were any other game.”

It was left to Ellis and Clyde Drexler of the Portland Trail Blazers to play point guard any time Stockton left the game. The responsibility usually fell to Drexler, playing in his hometown.

“We had our problems,” said Ellis, a 6-foot-7 shooting specialist. “They (the East) trapped us a few times and created some turnovers when we had the two big guards in the game at the same time. But for the most part, we handled it well.”

The 6-7 Drexler, who finished with 14 points and 12 rebounds in 25 minutes off the bench, agreed to a point.

“I think I did OK,” he said, smiling. “But I don’t plan to pursue it much. It’s not going to be a new career.”

Neither will it be for Ellis. Perhaps he should go into politics after basketball, what with the backing already in place.

After his showing, the constituents have reason to be happy.