Viewers Show Their Delight in Dream Team Nightmares

Maybe basketball mismatches will become the next television craze.

Prime Ticket could show the Lakers vs. Crenshaw High, live from the Forum. Or better yet, the Lakers vs. the Crenshaw High JVs.

Absurd? Of course. But so is what the Dream Team has been doing up in Portland this week.

Those aren’t basketball games, they’re massacres. You can see better games at the local YMCA.

But so far, the American public is eating it up. The national Nielsen rating for the first game against Cuba on NBC last Sunday was an impressive 7.5, meaning it was watched in nearly 7 million homes.

The amazing thing is that the rating peaked at 8.6 during the final half-hour of the telecast.

You can envision viewers at home saying, “Pour it on,” as the United States eked out a 79-point victory.

The overall rating in Los Angeles was an 11.3, even though Channel 4 delayed the telecast an hour because of earthquake coverage.

TNT’s U.S.-Argentina telecast Wednesday night got a national cable rating of 5.6. TNT averaged a 3.0 for its NBA playoff telecasts.

Turner Broadcasting, it appears, underestimated the Dream Team’s appeal, scheduling only two weeknight TNT telecasts. Games Monday and Tuesday night were left off the schedule.

The public outcry that resulted stunned Kevin O’Malley, Turner’s senior vice president in charge of programming.

“I was mystified,” he said from Portland. “We thought four basketball games in eight days, counting NBC’s two, would be plenty for the middle of the summer.

“From a sales standpoint, we just didn’t think six games in eight days made a lot of sense.”

O’Malley realizes that was a mistake.

The interest is understandable, considering that the Dream Team represents perhaps the greatest collection of athletes in history.

“It’s a unique situation, probably one we’ll never see again,” O’Malley said.

But the novelty is bound to wear off, and the lack of competitive games may hurt NBC at the Olympics.

Before the Olympics, viewers get two more chances to see the Dream Team thrash outmanned opponents--tonight at 7 on TNT and Sunday at 1 p.m. on NBC.

During the Olympics, NBC will show three of the Dream’s Team’s eight games in their entirety--the first game, the final and one in between.

All eight will be shown on the pay-per-view triplecasts, with Chick Hearn calling the action.

The question is, will the public pay to see non-competitive basketball?

Wimbledon update: NBC had a smoother day at Wimbledon Thursday than it did Wednesday.

On Thursday, during four hours of tape-delayed afternoon coverage, NBC was able to show all of Monica Seles’ victory over Martina Navratilova, the conclusion of John McEnroe’s victory over Guy Forget and about 20 minutes of the wrap-up of Andre Agassi’s victory over Boris Becker.

Steffi Graf’s victory over Gabriela Sabatini was shown on Thursday night’s late-night coverage, which began at 12:50 a.m.

Wednesday morning, NBC, after two hours of coverage, had to leave Wimbledon at 11 a.m., while the McEnroe-Forget and Agassi-Becker matches were being played.

Rain delays caused the matches to run late, and NBC, like it or not, couldn’t stay with Wimbledon because of the network’s commitment to show the soap opera “Santa Barbara.”

But NBC got a break when a little later the rain came again, causing both matches to be suspended. That enabled NBC to pick up the conclusions on Thursday.

Add Wimbledon: NBC’s featured match today, beginning at noon, will be McEnroe-Agassi. Time permitting, part of the other men’s semifinal, Pete Sampras vs. Goren Ivanisevic, also will be shown.

HBO will show that match in its entirety at 5 p.m.

NBC’s coverage of the women’s final Saturday will start at 8 a.m., a delay of two hours, and the men’s final on Sunday will be shown at 7 a.m., a delay of one hour.

Because of McEnroe’s unexpected success, he has not been available to work for NBC, which has meant more air time for Chris Evert.

The topic of Seles’ grunting won’t go away. She was warned about it twice during her match with Navratilova.

Dick Enberg compared it to Samson’s hair, meaning without it she just isn’t as strong.

HBO commentator Arthur Ashe, on the phone from London, empathized with Seles.

“It’s the way she learned to hit the ball,” he said. “It’s a habit and would be hard to change now.”

Sort of like asking Michael Jordan to not stick out his tongue.

Add Ashe: He said his life is pretty much back to normal after the turmoil that followed his announcement that he has AIDS. He added that he has been pleasantly surprised by the mostly favorable reaction.

“After reading about some of the horror stories, I feared the worse,” he said.

About his health, Ashe said: “I have good days and bad days, but a lot more good days than bad.”

He also talked about his daughter Camera, 5, as he had on NBC last Sunday in an interview which was preempted on Channel 4 for earthquake coverage.

“She knows Daddy has something called AIDS,” he said. “But we’ve adopted the policy to tell her only as much as she can handle right now. We haven’t told her what she doesn’t need to know.”

Recommended viewing: The first “Jim Thorpe Sports Award” show will be televised on ABC Monday night at 9. The event, to be shown live in the East but delayed three hours in the West, will be held at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood.

The creator of the show is Ken Wolfe, the Emmy Award-winning producer of “Monday Night Football.” Wolfe, working in conjunction with Dick Clark Productions, is also the producer.

The director is Lou Horvitz, who also directed the outstanding special on Muhammad Ali’s 50th birthday earlier this year.

The top athletes from eight sports, selected by a panel of journalists and sports figures, will be honored. Also, James Earl Jones will present a special award to Ali.

Wilt Chamberlain, Bo Jackson, George Foreman, John Forsythe, Dyan Cannon, Rita Rudner and Leeza Gibbons will be among the others on the show.

The host is Bob Saget.

TV-Radio Notes

This will be a busy day for Tom Lasorda. Before the Dodgers’ doubleheader at Dodger Stadium, the manager will cook linguine and meatballs on ABC’s “Home” show this morning at 10. Jo Lasorda will be on the show as well. . . . The second part of a feature on Laffit Pincay will be on Prime Ticket’s “Press Box” tonight. In tonight’s segment, Pincay tells Larry Burnett: “I don’t fall in love with horses. I have to whip them in order to win races. But I love the sport.” About his constant battle with weight, Pincay says: “I was not born to be a jockey. If I go out and let myself go one night, I have to lose six pounds when I get to the track the next day. Sometimes I’ll put food in my mouth, chew it and then spit it, so at least I had the taste in my mouth.”

The USA network offers an attractive fight card next Tuesday from the Hollywood Palladium. Unbeaten middleweights Tim Littles and Frank Liles meet in the 12-round main event, and in a preliminary bout Rafael Ruelas faces Mauro Gutierrez. Ruelas suffered his only defeat at the hands of Gutierrez last year when he lost track of the count and didn’t stand up before being counted out. The fights will be shown at 9 p.m., a delay of three hours.

The Tour de France, which begins Saturday, will be shown exclusively on ESPN, which picked up the event without having to pay a rights fee. ESPN will mainly use France’s world feed, but will have Barry Tompkins and analysts Phil Leggett and Paul Sherwen in France for supplemental coverage. . . . Richard Petty won his last NASCAR race on July 4, 1984, at the Firecracker 400 in Daytona Beach, Fla., with former President Ronald Reagan there. Saturday morning at 7:30, ESPN will televise a half-hour tribute to Petty at the Pepsi 400, then show the race at 8. President George Bush will be there for the tribute.

Joe Weakley, assistant basketball coach at Crenshaw High who has run summer basketball programs for 25 years in South-Central Los Angeles, will be featured on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” Sunday. Sports Illustrated’s Shelley Smith, who also works for ESPN, did the piece. . . . ESPN this week announced a contract extension with the PGA Tour and the Senior PGA Tour that runs from 1993-96. The new deal extends the number of ESPN senior tournaments by one each year through 1996, going from 17 to 20. From 1987-92, the number of ESPN tournaments went from nine to 16.