NBA NOTEBOOK : Ellison’s Return Appears Imminent

The Sacramento Kings put on their warm-ups. Pervis Ellison puts up his feet.

Ellison’s multimillion-dollar foot, which has kept the first pick in last summer’s NBA draft out of all but four games this season, isn’t quite right. But it’s close. The Kings are expected to activate Ellison any day now.

He’s not said much to the media, but after one of his first workouts since re-injuring his right foot in December, he sat in a corner of Arco Arena and talked about his first year.

“It’s been disappointing, to say the least,” he said. “I watch some other guys that I played with in college go out there and I can see that they’re really enjoying it. The practice is rough and the long road trips are rough, but to me it’s like something really new. It’s new to you and you’re new in it.”

There’s been word that the Kings’ new braintrust is anxious to see what kind of goods they’ve got, that they want Ellison to play as soon as possible. Maybe too soon. He says no.

“There’s pressure to just establish yourself,” he said. “Nobody has come up to me in the organization and said to me, ‘Well, you have to get out there and play.’ There’s pressure just to get out there and re-establish yourself. It’s just like rebuilding your reputation all over again.”

What a surprise! Dick Motta traded for a forward. The Sacramento coach pushed through the trade of Kenny Smith, who could yet be a productive player in this league, for Antoine Carr, who has made a career out of having potential. Motta brushed off concerns about Carr’s attitude last week, saying, “I don’t like a guy to talk back to me, but I’d rather have a guy who’s mad at me when I pull him than if he’s going to be a (wimp) all of his life.”

Carr will give Motta the forward-on-either-side look he’s favored all his NBA coaching life, and when Ellison plays, Sacramento will have a more-than-credible quartet, including Wayman Tisdale and Rodney McCray. But the Kings paid a big price.

With Smith gone, Vinny Del Negro is running their offense. That will not do for the long haul, and the Kings know it. Problem is, there are exactly two quality point guards available in the draft, Gary Payton and Rumeal Robinson. Sacramento will be in the lottery, so it might get one of the two. But if not . . .

Hello. Mr. Al Bianchi’s office, please?

How can you describe a team that:

--Signed Blair Rassmussen to a $17.5 million contract, then asked the backup center’s agent if he might please redo the deal?

--Was negotiating to buy out the contract of its general manager-vice president, Pete Babcock, only to fire his successor, Jon Spolestra, a few days later?

--Wound up losing Babcock to Atlanta when he found out he wouldn’t be doing much of anything? He found this out at the All-Star Game from friends.

--Told the league that one of its co-owners would be in charge of trades, only to have him go to France two weeks before the trading deadline, forcing the league to telex the other teams that assistant coach Allan Bristow would be the trade contact?

Ladies and gentlemen, the never-boring Denver Nuggets. Most of the above has surfaced in the last couple of months, and that doesn’t include the summer’s back-and-forth attempts by Peter Bynoe and Bertram Lee to purchase the team, becoming the first minority owners in a major team sport.

“I think they’ve got it straight now,” one general manager said. “Doug and Allan Bristow are calling the shots. I would think that makes it easier because the coach is the guy who knows his players. That’s who you talk to anyway.”

Harmonic convergence isn’t working in Boston, but not being chummy with Larry Bird is not what has Kevin McHale down. “The unknown is a scary thing, and we’re going into every game with a little bit of the unknown,” he said. “The more success you’ve had, when things go good, you start to expect it.”

Dick Versace acknowledged that all the ballhandling drills in the world haven’t made Vern Fleming so good at point guard that the Pacers don’t need any help there.

Rookie George McCloud “didn’t really solve the problem for us,” Versace said. “Vern Fleming played a lot better, but we’re just trying to get by with Rickey Green as a backup until we can bring in someone that’s better than Vern. But he’s beat out everyone brought in the last six years. We need a guard, but not necessarily in place of Vern. We need someone in addition to Vern.”