Didn’t Anybody Learn Anything ?

Well, I hope those Portland Trail Blazer basketball players are really proud of themselves.

Six or seven of them took three underage girls into a Utah hotel room and had an all-night slumber party.

Wasn’t that sweet of them?

Isn’t it nice the way they took the message of Magic Johnson to heart?

Pathetic, is what it was.

No, not pathetic.

Frightening.

Grown men. In their 20s. Men who endangered their own lives. Who endangered the lives of others.

And I don’t mean the lives of consenting adults.

They endangered the lives of children.

The girls were 16, 16 and 15. Sexual relations were had with at least two of them.

The girls told the Trail Blazers they were 19, 17 and 17. Oh, like this made everything all right.

I hope these guys have sisters. I hope they have nieces. I hope one of them someday has a 16-year-old daughter who finds out what he did, looks him in the eye and asks: “How could you?”

I hope these guys find out what it is like to be a parent and wonder where your child has been all night.

Or with whom.

Here we are, in the AIDS age, and we still have to hear horror story after horror story.

Are some men so hard up for companionship that they have to take up with teen-age kids?

Yes, there are professional basketball players as young as 20. But is this any way to behave? What is wrong with you guys? Do you have a death wish? Are you eager to do some jail time? Feel like trading in your salary, your reputation and your self-respect for a little action at the hotel?

The girls from Salt Lake City were no princesses. They got picked up for shoplifting the next day.

But I don’t care if they were Pollyanna or painted with tattoos.

They were too young. You Portland fools might have believed their fibs, but since when was being 17 OK? Show a little self-control. These girls’ lives were in your hands. And yours were in theirs. What if they were really 14? Or 13? At what point would you have asked to see a driver’s license? When they got on their bicycles to go home?

Well, you got away with it.

Too many men do.

Salt Lake City police have dropped the charges. Legally, their hands are tied. Prosecutors evidently can’t make any case stick. Legislators said Thursday that maybe it’s Utah’s sex-crime laws that need some investigating.

Since Jan. 23, when this “party” took place, look at the pain these players have caused.

--The parents of the three girls are devastated. After the shoplifting arrest, the girls told their mothers and fathers where they had spent the night. Picture yourself getting that sort of news.

--The girls themselves are now arguing over what actually happened, two denying the third’s claim that she tried to make the men stop what they were doing.

--The Portland organization has been protested and publicly embarrassed. Certain players, distinguished ones such as Terry Porter and Clyde Drexler who were not among those under investigation, have been left twisting in the wind while the identities of the suspects were kept secret.

--The play of the team itself has suffered greatly. As of Thursday, the Trail Blazers had lost four games in succession and had slipped into third place. A coincidence? Not everyone thinks so.

By now, I would have thought everybody would have seen the harm such behavior can do, if only by studying the lessons of the Lakers.

How great the temptations must be at times. The sheer availability of it all. The smorgasbord of favors. The hedonist’s delight.

And how tired the listeners must be of the lectures. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Say no to drugs. Say no to sex. Got it. Can I go now?

Yeah, go. Go on. Have fun. Fly now, pay later.

When Magic Johnson eventually took inventory of his excesses, it was the only time I had ever seen this individual make others around him uncomfortable. So it must be true what they say about discretion being the better part of valor. Yet it also is true that if you have enough indiscretions, by the end, valor will be the least of your concerns.

These Portland basketball players had better not press their luck.

They got away this time. Next time, no way.

The taller they are, the farther they fall.