Crying Foul : Children: Four 30-second ads airing during the National Basketball Assn. finals spotlight abuse problem.

On a deserted basketball court late at night, a young boy is shooting hoops. The ball hits the rim with a hollow thud. A quiet voice says, “The reason Robert isn’t leaving is not because he doesn’t want to be beaten on the basketball court. It’s because he doesn’t want to be beaten at home.”

Set among the hard-driving jump shots, last-second three-pointers and overtime action of the NBA playoffs and finals, four dramatic, 30-second public-service announcements have been attracting nationwide attention.

They deal with child abuse.

The “Robert” spot is the most chilling. In another, basketball players are shown in action taking hard knocks during their games. The point? On the court, that kind of violence is a foul. With a child, it’s abuse.

The other two spots feature a toe-to-head pan up the towering length of an NBA player--Mark Eaton of the Utah Jazz in one, Buck Williams of the Trail Blazers in the other. “If it makes you nervous to have someone my size in your face,” each says, leaning down toward the camera, “now you know how your kid feels when you’re in his.”

Each spot ends with a stark, white-on-black message: “No One Wins With Child Abuse.”

That the National Basketball Assn. has allocated air time to bring such sophisticated, somber images to its fans indicates that child abuse is achieving growing recognition as a threat to the fundamental health of society.

“They must trigger a nerve somewhere,” said Russ Granik, NBA deputy commissioner. “We’ve gotten more favorable notice--fan letters and (media comment)--for these spots than any other public-service announcement campaign.”

Childhelp USA, a Woodland Hills-based organization that assists abused children and operates the National Child Abuse Hotline, reported a major increase in “crisis calls” during the April/May NBA playoff period.

“Although our number was not shown in the (NBA) spots,” said John O’Grady, Childhelp’s chief of operations, “we normally average about 7,500 calls a month attributable to TV shows or (public-service announcements). During the playoff period we had an increase of 4,293 calls.

“We had no spots or shows of our own going on at the time to explain the increase,” he added.

The prime mover behind the NBA campaign is Jerry Fine, the Los Angeles-based attorney for Jerry Buss and the Lakers. A chance remark by a friend was the catalyst.

“He mentioned that 98% of the people on Death Row had suffered from child abuse,” Fine said. The lawyer did some research and said he heard “similar numbers” from Childhelp USA.

“In the last 10 years,” Fine said, “the California prison population has increased over 200%. I thought, if child abuse is a major reason people are in prisons, why not try to do something about it?”

NBA Commissioner David Stern gave him a green light to put together a public awareness campaign, and Fine fired up those who could help him do it: Venice attorney Paul Mones, a noted authority on cases involving abused children who kill family members; local psychologist Paul Tobias; Anthony La Scala, a marketing expert involved with Big Brothers; Stanford psychologist Dr. Alberta Siegel and Ann Cohen and Nancy Peterson of the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse.

Another key member was Dr. Robert Pynoos, director of the program in violence, trauma and sudden bereavement in UCLA’s department of psychiatry and behavorial sciences. Pynoos works with children who witness violence; he was one of the specialists called in after the San Francisco earthquake and the Stockton schoolyard shootings.

“What we generally concluded,” Fine said, “is that there is a pool of child abusers. I identify them as hard-core and soft-core abusers. You probably can’t affect the hard core; you might effect the soft core. But the most hopeful thing is to prevent people from entering the pool of child abusers--to make good parents better.”

The NBA spots differ from more usual public awareness sports campaigns, Fine said, in “addressing conduct, rather than using role models. Conduct persists; role models may disappoint you.”

The other key element, he said, is that the campaign supports children’s self-esteem, conveying the feeling that the players and the league care about them.

With input from Fine’s group, the New York advertising agency of Follis & Verdi created the spots; a $75,000 private contribution from Robert and Marian Wilson provided the bulk of the funding. The NBA also contributed “a portion,” said Granik.

Pynoos praises Follis & Verdi for designing spots that “capture what is terrifying and despairing about child abuse, without sensationalism.”

Mones explained, “What we’re trying to show is that child abuse is really an abuse of power. The first spot, with Mark Eaton, really is very subtle--it reminds you that . . . you don’t see how big or intimidating you are to a child.

“People use physical punishment at home in ways they’d never use on peers,” Mones said. They don’t “smack their friends and co-workers for spilling food or being late,” but somehow see some wisdom in physical punishment, “as if it’s good for children, the way eating spinach is good for them.”

Child abuse is “one of the major contributors to many other problems,” Pynoos said, “like alcohol and drug abuse, violent behavior, a child’s personal development and capacity to learn and later behavior as parents and spouses.”

Fine, who has become an impassioned spokesman for child-abuse prevention, is now working to involve other sports leagues in the program. He said Prime Ticket, with its 18-million subscriber network, and the National Hockey League have agreed to join the effort and that Major League Baseball will soon discuss a similar campaign. The NBA’s Granik said that his league will continue its child abuse awareness campaign after the finals, “based on the reaction that these provoked.”

“We’re not going to change the world,” Mones said. “If we can just open a window on people’s consciousness, that’s enough.”