COMMENTARY : Faded Stars Are Old and in the Way

Under the heading of Things We Really Don’t Need To See come the following blue-plate specials this week:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Julius Erving playing one-on-one basketball.

Jerry Tarkanian trying to rescind his resignation.

Talk of Larry Holmes and George Foreman eventually boxing.

And you wondered where the great new talent was coming from.

Kareem and Julius -- whose combined age in dog years is now 602 -- will go at it this weekend in Atlantic City. Perhaps you’ve seen the television ads that are trumpeting this as “Clash Of The Legends.” (I guess they couldn’t use “Old Men At The Sea.”) Noted jurist Donald Trump is involved, so you know it has to be a real quality event; the backboards are probably faux marble.

The ads are shot in the gauzy, grainy style they use for Katharine Hepburn, so she looks like she just got out of finishing school, instead of a mausoleum. We see Julius and Kareem way over the rim, jamming their brains out. What they don’t tell us is whether the “clashers” are using a 9-foot or an 8-foot basket. I don’t know what the rules of the game are -- I’m guessing they’ll play either to 21 or until someone collapses.

I’m sure there was a time when such an exhibition would’ve been compelling, as a Michael Jordan-Charles Barkley one-on-one would be now.

But basketball is one of those sports where when you lose it, you lose it in a hurry. Just a few weeks ago, at the NBA Legends Game in Orlando, they had to cart David Thompson and Norm Nixon off the court on a gurney, and those guys are five years younger than the Doc, and eight years younger than Kareem.

You can see this baby for $19.95 on pay-per-view. (I believe this is a new pay-per-view channel called “Shlock-Yo-Mama.” Apparently, you can get anything on pay-per-view. I’m shocked they didn’t buy the rights to Geraldo’s recent cosmetic-surgery procedure, in which fat cells were liposuctioned from his big behind and transplanted onto his face to smooth out his wrinkles -- oh, this is a true fact; it aired here on Monday. Talk about literally being a butthead! And as a bonus you get an undercard of Rick Barry playing Connie Hawkins (combined age in dog years: 665) and George Gervin playing Nate Archibald (574). Between games, Dick Button will skate, attempting the difficult single Axel.

Look, they were great players -- emphasis on were. Please don’t misunderstand, Julius Erving is my idea of a true role model. And there is, at least, the mitigating factor that a portion of the proceeds will go to fund AIDS research, in Magic Johnson’s name. But as they go from talk show to talk show, Julius and Kareem pitch this as some sort of meaningful athletic trial. Am I the only one wondering why anyone would care if Doctor J can beat Kareem now? What’s next, George Mikan vs. a stop sign?

Jerry Tarkanian is involved in a one-on-one also. His is against UNLV, America’s first coin-operated college. Last June, one step ahead of the posse as usual, Tarkanian tendered his resignation to school president Robert Maxson, effective at the end of this season. Most people thought this wasn’t so much an act of statesmanship on Tark’s part as a plea bargain after the NCAA alleged 29 separate infractions in Tark’s recruiting of Rhodes Scholar Lloyd Daniels -- not to mention America’s Funniest Home Video of convicted sports fixer Richard Perry in his hot tub with three of Tark’s Eagle Scouts.

Now Tark wants his job back. He’s charging UNLV conspired to discombobulate his program; an inside job, a set-up, sabotage. Draping himself in Father Flanagan’s cape, Tark even made his announcement in a church.

He’s coming back to defend his honor, he said.

Oh, please.

1. What honor?

2. There isn’t enough time in the millennium.

Tarkanian has this thing about authority: he thinks it’s out to get him. If Oliver Stone made a movie based on Tark’s perception of his own life, it’d make the conspiracy theories in “JFK” look like “101 Dalmatians.” According to Tark, nobody was ever hounded like him. He has been able to sell this hook, line and sinker to almost every coach and CBS and ESPN analyst. To hear them talk, he’s Joan of Tark.

The basketball people like him because he’s one of them. He’s fought their fight against the NCAA. He has spent so much time in court getting injunctions, he could be technical adviser to “L.A. Law.” The academic people shudder about his recruiting a player who never graduated from high school -- anyway, they shuddered after Daniels was shot during an argument over an old drug debt.

The reasonable position about resignation is that a person has the right to change his mind. But Tarkanian’s resignation seemed to be his end of a deal in which the NCAA deferred probation of UNLV and allowed Tark to defend his national title last year. Having taken the sweet, Tark is in that familiar position of seeking an injunction against taking the bitter.

Jerry “Who, Me?” Tarkanian is a superior basketball coach. He recognizes talent and develops it. Any pro team would do well to hire him. But each day Tarkanian remains at UNLV is one more day the school is regarded as an outlaw. Eventually, everybody taps out in Vegas. It’s Tark’s turn.

This leaves us very little space for this pie-in-the-sky (or would that be pie-on-the-plate?) bout between Holmes and Foreman (dog years: 602), if Holmes can’t close a deal with Evander Holyfield. Which is good, because how much can you say about two Tubs-O-Goo maneuvering to fight each other two decades after the fact?

If this fight ever comes off, it may require an interpretation on the rule about hitting below the belt. With their stomachs it’ll be very hard to see the belt -- and very hard to even get a belt. They’ll probably wear tow ropes.

Needless to say, this fight will be on pay-per-view. I suppose Xavier Cugat will sing the anthem. And Shelley Winters and Zsa Zsa (combined dog years: unimaginable) will go one-on-one as the ring card girls.