THE NBA / MARK HEISLER : A Little Unsolicited Advice for Sterling

Management seminar for Donald T. Sterling, while waiting for the other Schuler to drop:

We have tried to help the Clipper owner with tips such as: Stop firing coaches every 18 months; stop hiring low-wattage replacements you’ll fire in another 18 months.

Recent events suggest we were talking over his head, so we now offer more basic advice:

1. A coach is important.

2. It’s important your players respect your coach.

3. It will be hard for your coach to command your players’ respect if they know he’s on a short--say, 18-month--leash.

4. Your players wouldn’t spit on your coach if he was on fire, once your front office leaks the word he’s in trouble.

We offer these pointers in the hope they will help the next coach--because it looks as if it’s too late for Mike Schuler, who has just about completed the circuit.

In November, his 13th month on the job, a Clipper official let it slip in the newspapers they were taking a hard look at him.

Then came last week’s stunt, when 11 players voted themselves a day off.

Of course, they said they were doing it to honor Martin Luther King Jr., although there was also background grumbling at Schuler’s fly-first, practice-later schedule and that they had flown commercial (coach class) to San Antonio.

However, their peers were playing--there were six games--or practicing, so the Clippers are either unusually sensitive or immature.

Doc Rivers, resident Clipper-with-his-head-screwed-on-straight, suggested pointedly it was a mistake.

Rivers, however, was home, resting his hamstring. He lets them out of his sight for one day and look what happens. They should have hired a baby-sitter until he got back.

Deserved or not--and it’s not--this also may wind up on Schuler’s doorstep.

Speculation is the Clippers have held off, because Sterling doesn’t want to get ripped for yet another coaching change.

Of course, subsequent events can be expected to force his hand, yet again.

A MODEST PROPOSAL: ABOUT $3-MILLION WORTH

The fault, dear Donald, lies not in your coaches.

Heaven knows, you have had a wide enough assortment to find that out.

Because you failed to get behind Schuler, Don Casey, Gene Shue, Don Chaney, Jimmy Lynam and Paul Silas--a list that includes three coaches of the year--the onus is on you to prove there is someone you can get behind.

Your next coach shouldn’t be an assistant off your bench. You have tried that.

He shouldn’t be an interim guy who can go 9-4 in March when the race is over so you can go dewy-eyed and hire him.

He should be a heavyweight with a proven track record.

He should get a lot of money, say $600,000 annually. If he comes cheap, he’s not a heavyweight.

He should have a five-year contract, so everyone knows you’re serious and you won’t be tempted to pull the plug on him for at least three years.

He should be young enough to handle young players, old enough to know what to do with them.

He should be able to acknowledge his mistakes. You shouldn’t disqualify him from consideration because, say, his act wore thin with his old players after many years together. If he hadn’t made mistakes, he would still be at his former job.

His name should be Mike Fratello.

THE LAST HONEST MAN

Here’s a story about Larry Brown:

In 1988, having just won an NCAA title at Kansas and signed an unheard-of five-year, $3.75-million contract in San Antonio, he told a friend he was leery of buying a house, because Spur owner Red McCombs might one day fire him.

We’re talking about a man as insecure as he is talented and likable.

As such, he is no stranger to early exits, although he usually leaves on his own terms, after achieving notable success and wearing everyone out, especially himself.

At San Antonio, where he had just won 113 games in two seasons, he had peculiar problems:

--A young and foolish team. Remember Rod Strickland throwing the ball away on a blind over-his-head pass at the end of the 1990 series against the Portland Trail Blazers? Strickland getting hurt in an incident in a nightclub parking lot? The adventures of David Wingate? Having to put certain San Antonio night spots off limits?

--The Texas owner, McCombs, beset by falling asset values, being impatient enough to bother Brown with questions such as: Why did we let Vernon Maxwell go?

McCombs let Strickland hold out for two months, although he should have been able to afford him. The Spurs are the lone NBA power under the salary cap and, as they were about to prove, no power without their point guard.

What they couldn’t afford was adversity.

Three years into any Larry Brown program, everyone is worn pretty thin, given his habit of baring his soul, personnel evaluations and estimate of management to the media.

Having shown how brilliant they could be in a rout of the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden, the Spurs skulked through losses to the Bulls in Chicago and the Celtics in Boston, where David Robinson was outplayed by Will Perdue and Robert Parish.

McCombs told Brown it might be time to make a change but backed off.

When it hit the press, Brown said he preferred termination to lame-duck status.

He says he wants to return, which is good. The NBA is a duller place without him.

THE TEMPEST

How many bridges did George Karl burn?

With the Cleveland Cavaliers, he inherited a 28-54 team, went 36-46 and made the playoffs. With the Golden State Warriors, he inherited a 30-52 team, went 42-40 and made the playoffs.

He didn’t make it to the end of the next season in either city and had to endure three Continental Basketball Assn. seasons and one in Europe to get another shot.

Newly hired by the Seattle SuperSonics, he has to live down a reputation as the NBA’s Billy Martin: a quick-fix guy too volatile to last.

“Let’s face it, I didn’t have much bargaining position as far as getting back in the NBA (is concerned),” Karl said last week.

“After four years, I’ve matured a lot. . . . I’m not going to say I haven’t done some things I regret.”

Like emptying Joe Barry Carroll’s stall during a rage?

“Oh yeah, J.B.,” Karl said. “Well, you know something? He came up to me and said, ‘Coach, we can’t beat the Lakers.’ How could I not react to that? It was while we were still playing them in the playoffs.”

Karl doesn’t expect problems with Benoit Benjamin, but everyone else is holding his breath.

“I think George Karl will be an excellent coach of the Sonics--if there is an excellent coach for the Sonics,” an unidentified Western Conference coach told the Tacoma News Tribune.

“If you sleep with dogs, you get a lot of fleas, and those people in Seattle are sleeping with a lot of fleas.”

LAKERS: THE AGONY AND THE AGONY

However much everyone says it, it’s not easy adjusting to a Laker era of diminished expectations.

The players are used to elite status. The fans paid incredible sums for their seats, just happy to be first in line for the privilege. The coaches don’t know how to accept mediocrity, nor does management.

The fact is, they’re talent-thin.

They made the 1991 NBA Finals with a team that was basically six-deep--the starters plus A.C. Green.

Since then, they’ve added Sedale Threatt and lost Magic Johnson and Vlade Divac.

Other NBA general managers ask if the Lakers have less sheer talent than any team in the Pacific Division. OK, throw out the Kings.

Laker slumps are met by gnashing of teeth, but it’s unlikely they have undergone a character transformation--from having a lot during their nine-game winning streak, to little since. Some nights, they just don’t bring as much as others, and those nights aren’t pretty.

“When you’re without a key player, you have a tendency to play extra hard, extra well, extra careful,” said Denver Nugget Coach Paul Westhead, who saw this phenomenon first-hand in Loyola Marymount’s NCAA tournament run after Hank Gathers’ death.

“It’s like you’re on a celestial planet, but your feet eventually touch the ground.”

FACES AND FIGURES

The Spurs’ Robinson, mourning Brown’s firing: “We’re all disappointed--well, most of us.” . . . After a 108-80 pasting by the Jazz in Utah, Houston Rocket Coach Don Chaney let his players have it between the eyes, declaring: “I don’t know if we can stay as we are now and win.” Reaction was swift. “The players don’t feel that way,” Otis Thorpe said. “We know we can win. I think that was just Don. He’s been saying that sort of thing since I got here.” Stay tuned to see if it translates into anything real, or as improbable spokesman Maxwell said: “We’ve been talking all year. Talk is cheap.” . . . The resurgent Detroit Pistons renegotiated Orlando Woolridge to $2.4 million a year but won’t do it for Mark Aguirre, who has been requesting it since he arrived. “They just bypassed me,” Aguirre said. “You know, I could fuss and complain, but that would make this team go down.” Comment: Don’t count on an extended silence. . . . The Lakers have put no Magic Johnson memorial patches on their uniforms, probably because it’s awkward-- Johnson being very much around. Here’s something that would be appropriate: a patch with a smile like the one the PSA airplanes used to have, over their hearts.